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Propaganda 2.0. Weaponising Information in the Age of Social Media and the Traces of Russia’S Information Warfare in Lithuania’S Mediascape

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Propaganda 2.0. Weaponising Information in the Age of Social Media and the Traces of Russia’S Information Warfare in Lithuania’S Mediascape Propaganda 2.0. Weaponising Information in the Age of Social Media and the Traces of Russia’s Information Warfare in Lithuania’s Mediascape. 23 June 2017 by Pija Ona Indriunaite Student Number: 11312955 [email protected] MA Thesis, Media Studies MA New Media and Digital Culture, Thesis Supervisor: mw. drs. L.C. (Lonneke) van der Velden The Second Reader: dhr. dr. M.D. (Marc) Tuters Word Count: 19 043 Table of Content Abstract Introduction 1 Literature Review The Internet as a Tool for Democratisation? 6 Defining Information Warfare 8 Russia and Information-Psychological War 11 Lithuania and Russia 15 Methodology Digital Methods and the Choice of Social Platform 18 Choice of Facebook Pages 29 Time Frame 21 Tools 21 Data Collection 21 Data Analysis 22 Content Narrative/Type Analysis 22 Page Likes Network 24 Content Traffic Analysis 25 Findings Narratives and Types 27 Page Likes Network 30 Content Traffic and Shared Content 35 Findings Analysis 40 Propaganda 2.0 47 So What’s Next? 50 Conclusion 52 Bibliography 55 Appendices Appendix 1. 61 Appendix 2. 64 Appendix 3. 67 Appendix 4. 69 Abstract This work is interested in the activities and organisation of a group of Facebook pages in Lithuania that are highly controversial due to their alleged involvement in Russian Information Warfare campaigns, as well as their tendency to spread hate speech. Through close analysis of the online community of interest, I intend to discuss the new strategies of Information Warfare as well as reasons behind the struggle to counter it. Most importantly, I am interested in the role of social media sites such as Facebook in enabling this contemporary phenomenon of warfare and propaganda practices. With a carefully selected sample of over 30 pages representing the network of interest, I conduct a close content analysis to determine the key narratives and discourses bonding the pages, as well as a more infrastructural analysis of the community, which includes familiarisation with the Page Likes Network and the shared content comparison. The findings reveal a specific set of narratives and themes recurring among the pages analysed, including highly anti- western, anti-Lithuanian independence themes, as well as racist and homophobic content, just to name a few. While being bound by similar narratives and rhetoric, the pages specialise in different sub-communities, varying from entertainment through informative to political. While initially there appear to be no direct links between the community of the pages analysed and Russian Information- Psychological Warfare strategies, findings suggest that the news sites that are part of the Kremlin’s information network are key sources of information for the network, and thus agenda setters. This work therefore argues that through new social practices enabled by social media communication, Information Warfare strategies move away from the conventional, direct, authoritarian ways of spreading propaganda and towards using organic communities as platforms and tools for energising influence over the public. I then argue that the textbook understanding of propaganda and warfare limits the way we situate such information offences, and restricts the ways to counter these problematic phenomena. Introduction Many of those following the election campaigns prior to the 2016 US presidential election have at some point encountered or perhaps even been rather entertained by the multitude of bizarre conspiracy theories and fake news stories inundating their news feeds. Whether it be scandalous ‘confirmation’ that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS, shocking news about Pope Francis endorsing Trump’s candidacy, or everyone’s favourite outlandish theories surrounding Pizzagate — an underground paedophile circle run by Hillary Clinton herself (Ritchie) — many intellectuals across the globe were rather amused by the imagination needed to produce, popularise or believe in such modern tales of the 21st century. However, after the fiasco defeat of Hillary Clinton, the same stories now are seen in a different light and phrases such as ‘misinformation’ and ‘fake news’ have migrated from being buzzwords to representing new dangerous phenomena. Various social media platforms became the target of the general public and experts trying to rationalise the outcome of the election (Connolly et al.), for they afford the spread of misinformation and are indifferent to the social/political consequences they can cause. Facebook, being the main social media platform in dialogue with this debate while initially denying any responsibility for the popularisation of fake news and its influence over the election (Solon), recently acknowledged that social media has become a battleground and facilitates ways to manipulate public opinion, and consequently took action to deal with it (Menn). And while misinformation and fake news stories are in no way a new thing and have been used in various ways for centuries, the concerning difference seen today is a fundamental shift in western society — the realisation that it may have moved to an age of post-truth. Within the mindset of post-truth society any narrative is just as effective and influential as fact, which opens concerning ways to manipulate public opinion. Social media and the Internet in general, while upon its creation celebrated as democratic and emancipatory (Halpern and Gibbs; Kline), now is a tool for accelerating and normalising misinformation. Furthermore, there are no easy ways to counter or deal with the issue. While Western intellectuals are trying to figure out what is happening and how to understand this unexpected turn of events, on the other side of the world, the spread of disinformation as a dangerous act of warfare is not such a novel thing. As Dmytro Shymkiv, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration has mentioned in his interview with Quartz: ‘This post-truth era? We have been living in the post-truth era for the past three years’ (Timmons). With this comment the Ukrainian official refers to the highly controversial 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and many cases of propaganda and Information War !1 happening between the two countries prior and after the events (Mejias and Vokuev; Ojala, Panatti and Kangas; Timmons). Indeed Russian Information Warfare is a fascinating case for thinking about 21st century media, warfare strategies or geopolitics. Through the last few decades Russia has been perfecting its strategies and operations within the cyber realm: whether it be the widely discussed history of cyber attacks through hacking or DDoS (recently a highly covered topic due to the allegations of Russia’s involvement in hacks interfering with the US presidential election (Thielman)) or its ‘Information-Psychological War Operations’ (Lucas and Nimmo; Pomerantsev) that have been globally discussed since various disinformation and propaganda campaigns surrounding the 2014 Ukraine Conflict. In this work I am particularly interested in the ‘Information-Psychological’ aspect of Russia’s Information Warfare and how this type of warfare is employing various technical and social affordances of contemporary information and communication infrastructure and environment to spread and normalise misinformation and propaganda. They use this modern cyber infrastructure in the wake of years of experience in the field of propaganda gained through the Soviet Cold War (Fattibene; Blank). Furthermore, reports reveal that these information strategies have received very generous funding (Boffey and Rankin). The most important characteristics of such Information Warfare as it has been observed and covered so far are: the use of a high number of channels and mediums to spread their narratives and information (Paul and Matthews) (these channels can be huge media houses, local television stations, small Facebook groups, or even so-called paid trolls managing individual accounts); a huge quantity of content produced and spread (Paul and Matthews); disinformation and manipulation of truth (Aro; Mejias and Vokuev); lack of consistency (Lucas and Nimmo; Pomerantsev); and finally, receptiveness (Lucas and Nimmo; Paul and Matthews). As I will argue in more detail in this work, Russian Information Warfare as an active but covert strategy initiated by the Kremlin is, by definition, not visibly apparent, which makes it difficult to track and research. This makes it difficult to label it as propaganda or sometimes even as an act of warfare, however constant cases of misinformation and other politically manipulative content points to the existence of a complex and concerning network of influence that cannot be ignored. But this proposition gets even more complicated, as while this type of Information Warfare could be defined as simple and repetitive, it is also highly adaptive to cultural context. It is based on quantity of content produced just as much as in the specificities of the audiences it !2 targets. Most importantly, it does not aim to inject specific narratives, but more likely aims to spread confusion and mistrust. How is one supposed to research and evaluate such a growing phenomenon? As of today there exist few different ways societies are attempting to familiarize with and counter this type of warfare. There exist various small scale local investigations usually organised by journalists or private organisations that are covering and popularising the websites or pages that are considered to spread propaganda or be part of Russia’s information operations (examples of such actions include
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