Friday , 29 March 2024

Will Russia Step up its Disinformation Campaign Post-Election?

iranwire.com – Emil Filtenborg and Stefan Weichert are independent journalists based in Ukraine. In a weekly series for IranWire, they examine the landscape of disinformation in Russia and some of the false information that has emanated from the country since the outbreak of coronavirus.

Russia has tried to influence the United States presidential election this year, and, as usual, social media has been the main battleground. However, Russia interfered less than it did in 2016,  probably because Russia is unhappy with President Trump and expected Joe Biden to win. But will Russia step up its disinformation and manipulation campaigns after the election?

All eyes are the US presidential election, and have been for weeks, though if people predicted it would be dramatic, they might not have been able to predict how the drama would play out. The world waited as Americans chose whether Donald Trump remained the most powerful person in the world, and Russia, which tried to interfere in the presidential election back in 2016, as the FBI found, has also paid close attention. In its attempts to interfere, Russia intimidated voters and spread disinformation on social media.

“This data (Russian voter-registration information obtained by Russia) can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” said John Ratcliffe, the Trump administrations’ Director of National Intelligence back in October, as CNN reported.

Mark Galeotti, a former British Foreign Office advisor and an honorary professor at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European studies, tells IranWire that Russian interference in 2020 appears to be less than in 2016. This is partly, he says, because Russia has been unhappy with Donald Trump’s first four years. During this time, Russian leaders saw the US pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), leave the international arms control regime, continued sanctions against Russia, and take measures against Russia’s interests with regard to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

“The amount of Russian interference has been low level this year, I think,” says Galeotti, who also points out that Russia is not exactly happy with Joe Biden either. “Russia has for a long time believed that Biden would win, and they know that any large interference could result in a serious response after the election and destroy their relation with Biden. I believe it is more likely that Russia will try to use the potential unrest after the election to serve its purpose.”

Brian Fonseca, director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University (FIU), agrees. He tells IranWire that Russia’s primary interest is to show the world that the US is chaotic and that its democracy is a flawed model. According to Fonseca, the US is doing a good job demonstrating that themselves and Russia’s role is, therefore, not so profound.

“You can see Trump speak for like 15 minutes, and all that he says is a flood of lies and disinformation about voter fraud without any evidence,” says Fonseca, “When the sitting president is doing that and has done that for a long time, there is no need for Russia to do anything. It seems like America has learned how to discredit the other side, which seems similar to what Russia did back in 2016. There seem to be some similarities.”

Pre-Election Disinformation

That Russian disinformation in the US election has decreased does not mean that there isn’t any. Fonseca says there was a lot of Russian disinformation among the Latino community in Florida prior to the election, where Russia tried to sow division between Democrats and Republicans by spreading stories on social media. Among them were the well-worn theory that the Democrats are run by the Hungarian investor George Soros and that members of the party are running a child trafficking ring, but Fonseca says there have been other stories as well.

“They are trying to tell the Latino community that the US is a failed state like Venezuela or Cuba,” says Fonseca, “But so far, it is hard to tell where these stories come from directly.”

Galeotti says Russian disinformation leading up to the US election can be split into two categories: first there is the information aimed at its domestic audience in Russia, and then there are the audiences in the US and the world in general. Inside Russia itself, the disinformation aims to show that the US is a failed state and that its democracy is an illusion designed to suppress pro-democratic voices in Russia. Simultaneously, with its disinformation abroad, Russia aims to sow division inside the US and the world in general because chaos might well benefit the Kremlin on the world stage.

The Russian news site Komsomolskaya Pravda is an example of how Russia has used the US election for its domestic purposes, says Galeotti. The site might appear to be ordinary journalism, but it focuses on topics that present the US and harmful and unstable.

Examples include stories about how the US postal system failed to deliver ballots, about an election volunteer who feared that the press is positioned to decide future elections, and stories about potential unrest in the US. In what appears to be a typical article, deputy editor of the International Policy Department at Komsomolskaya Pravda, Edward Chesnokov, wrote: “US elections have never been transparent. Now, it seems clear why. In the key territory for victory, the number of votes during the counting suddenly changed in an absolutely incredible way to please the candidate from the old elites — Joe Biden,” Chesnokov writes.

Worse After the Election

While Russia might have decreased its disinformation campaign during the US election this time when compared with 2016, it does not mean that it will stay this way. Fonseca and Galeotti both say it is likely that Russian disinformation will pick up after the election, because the election will then be over, and Russia will be less likely to be accused of interference. In particular, disinformation will pick up if massive demonstrations and riots begin to erupt on the streets, they say. As of 3pm GMT on November 6, protests had already begun in several cities in the States.

“Domestically and globally, the goal is to show that the US is a dysfunctional system. That the Western form of democracy does not work and gives more problems, where they can point to potential unrest in the US after the election as an example,” says Galeotti, “The message being: How can the US lecture us about democracy when they have violence in the streets?”

0