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Fighting Fake News: How Mis- and Disinformation ...
In the aftermath of Russia’s deadly attack in Mariupol, Ukraine, that left nearly 600 civilians dead, journalist Maria Ponomarenko found herself ensnared in a legal battle for posting online that Russia was responsible, which the Russian defense ministry denied. In February 2023, she was sentenced... |
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Covering the Authoritarian Playbook: How Coda St...
For years, Russia has been refining its digital authoritarian playbook, taking advantage of technological advancements to silence the regime’s opponents at home and abroad. The information war that accompanied its invasion of Ukraine has shined a stark light on the corrosive effects of these strat... |
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Russia’s Internet Crackdown
By Guest Blogger As part of Russia’s authoritarian turn following Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in May 2012, the Kremlin has launched an unprecedented crackdown on the Russian Internet. A barrage of restrictive new laws, the blocking of websites critical of the government, the prose... |
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Caught between the East and West: The “Media W...
By Marija Šajkaš and Milka Tadić Mijović As EU and U.S. assistance to independent media in Serbia and Montenegro declines, Russians are seizing the opportunity to support and promote pro-Russian media, broadcasting news in the local language, and investing in media development in the western Bal... |
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State takeover of public media in Poland: Is an ...
The Polish Media Development Success Story In the early 1990s, Poland went through one of the most far-reaching and, at times, traumatic media reform programs that the world has ever seen. Formerly state-owned media enterprises were privatized with breathtaking speed. Legal and regulatory structures... |
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Propaganda and Misinformation in Russia
Misinformation in the global context is a major problem, especially in an age of rapidly spreading information technology. As information crosses borders at an unprecedented pace, some sophisticated authoritarian regimes are using this to their advantage. A briefing sponsored by Freedom House highli... |
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State-Sanctioned Freedom of Expression: Russia a...
Guest post by Ariana Szepesi-ColmenaresRussia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has just returned from a three-day trip to Latin America, where he met with government officials from Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Colombia. This tour comes only a month after the visit of Sergei Shoigu, Russia... |
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Russia’s Citizen Journalists
Citizen journalists played a key role in discovering evidence related to the recent Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine. Sleuths posted images of what was purported to be a missile launcher near the crash site, and fellow netizens tracked down corroborating images and information. Similar insta... |
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Soft Power on the Air: The News with a Russian T...
When the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine last week, the Russian state media began to spread obvious disinformation and anti-Ukraine propaganda. With fabricated witnesses and unlikely hypotheses, consumers of Russian media received a disturbingly false picture of this international... |
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Treading Softly: Soft Censorship in Russia
Only a few brave souls will continue to produce objective, high-quality news when they have many incentives not to do so. Independent news sources in Russia face increasingly higher risks of litigation, verbal attacks by government news sources, or shutdown. Journalists must practice self-censorship... |