(06-04-2024, 10:58 PM)Potato wrote: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-04/russia-war-ukraine-propaganda-disinformation-australian-media/103927386Australian newsrooms do a lot of "fact-checking" of events around the Ukraine War? And graffiti?
Quote: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.
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The name Operation Overload was chosen because one of its main goals seems to be clogging fact checking systems in newsrooms.
Quote:Although there's no indication that any Australian outlets were among them.What about Australian journalists running stories about paranoids who see elaborate threatening conspiracy theories that are "just the tip of the iceberg" and must be Russia trying to do uh... something... everywhere?
The overarching purpose of the operation, according to Check First, is to sow doubt about the wisdom of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The campaign's aim is to "propagate these narratives in the heads of Australians", says Mr Kuster, so that people ask: "Should we be with the US and the Europeans in support of the war effort in Ukraine?"
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Check First has been tracking the campaign since it began in August 2023, before ramping up in January and reaching a peak in February and March 2024.
The overall volume of activity has diminished slightly since then, but not by much — some of the tweets targeting the ABC were published as recently as May.
While only a small number of Australian targets were identified in the report, Mr Kuster said their research was focused on Europe, and most likely provides only a glimpse of the true scale of activity in other countries, including Australia.
"There is no way for us to assess how exhaustive we are … we think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg," he said.
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Each attempt starts with an email or a tweet, purporting to be from a concerned citizen, containing bait in the form of links.
The journalist or investigator is encouraged to "check out" the content.
In some instances, it's images of fake graffiti on the streets of Paris.
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Another commonly used bait is a fake news video, seemingly from another outlet, smearing Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, or Ukrainians in general.
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Occasionally, the falsehood is something completely unexpected, and seemingly irrelevant — perhaps an eye-grabbing fake headline related to a celebrity.
For example, one email said: "Moby has not given any concerts lately, this is very strange information, please check it out."
Usually though, there's a clear link back to Ukraine, or an attempt "to emphasise divisions within European societies," Mr Kuster says.
Most importantly, in order for the technique to work, the fake content must appear to already be widespread, and therefore in desperate need of debunking.
"They would post different versions of the same narrative… on websites they control, Instagram channels and multiple Telegram channels, and coordinate… to give a false impression that, hey, that piece of content is everywhere," Mr Kuster said.
If the journalist is taken in and publishes an item debunking the fake, it's a case of 'the Streisand effect' — where an attempt to suppress information amplifies it instead.
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While the aims of Operation Overload align with the interests of the Kremlin, researchers say it's not possible to confirm whether Russia itself might be responsible.
"All we can say is, looking at the narratives, it's pro-Russian," Mr Kuster said.
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Even the size of the team behind the operations remains a mystery, he said.
"There could be one or two people behind the fake accounts or tens of them."
However the sophistication and scale of the operation is a clue in its own right, according to Shane Ripley, from Recorded Future.
"There aren't many private entities or individuals that would have the expertise, the resources, the know-how and the strategy to identify targets on this scale," he said.
"This would be a very, very big operation… requiring multiple experts in different things.
"You've got [to have] an army of people behind you to do something like this on the scale that we've seen."
Check First warns that Operation Overload is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Dr Ripley says the AUKUS alliance, coupled with an upcoming federal election, may further motivate groups like this one to target Australia.
"AUKUS unfortunately puts us in the crosshairs," he said.
"Influencing Australia also directly influences the US and UK at a political level.
"If [fact checking] gets harder to do … then we've got a much wider problem on our hands."