International Politics

[Potato]

Pretty interesting story about Russian propaganda efforts targeting western media outlets and journalists

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-04/russia-war-ukraine-propaganda-disinformation-australian-media/103927386

Pro-Russian influence campaign targets Australian media outlets, including ABC, researchers find

Australian news outlets, including the ABC, have been targeted by a sophisticated new pro-Russian influence campaign, designed to sway public opinion about the war in Ukraine, according to researchers.

Australian Associated Press (AAP), The Daily Aus, The Conversation and the ABC are among 800 organisations in more than 75 countries that have been approached over email or social media to debunk purpose-made false content, such as anti-Ukrainian graffiti or fake news clips.

The coordinated effort has been dubbed Operation Overload in a report by Check First, a Finnish software company that investigates online disinformation, and Reset Tech, an online safety not-for-profit group.

The novel and surprising part of the campaign is that its tactics target journalists directly, instead of trying to push fake news onto the general public, as has previously been the case.

The name Operation Overload was chosen because one of its main goals seems to be clogging fact checking systems in newsrooms.

Maybe if modern journalists actually paid attention to their code and didn't think their job was about activism, then these tactics wouldn't work, but anyway...