The company, which became a favorite target of the Trump administration, has been working to avoid accusations that it’s been favoring any one side in the conflict. Ukraine officials have, however, previously implied that the company might have intentionally sabotaged its products. For its part, DJI has insisted that its products are not sold for military purposes.
Tag: Russia
Germany Russia and RT
Russia to target German media in response to German ban on RT TV
In December, YouTube had removed RT DE, saying it violated community standards, and the MABB media watchdog for Berlin and the state of Brandenburg ruled RT DE was not eligible to broadcast in Germany for licensing reasons. read more
Sweden response to propaganda
categories: critical news literacy, media literacy
Sweden launches ‘Psychological Defence Agency’ to counter propaganda from Russia, China and Iran
The new agency is tasked with countering disinformation and boosting the population’s resilience in the face of possible influence operation
The agency’s main mission is the coordination and development of agencies’ and other actors’ activities within Sweden’s psychological defence.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3383c0a2-6d94-11ec-a1b8-3009dadbed4f
Russia’s collective memory
categories: academic library
Opinion: The Kremlin is trying to erase Russia’s collective memory. It won’t succeed.
Unlike in other post-communist countries, where atrocities committed by former regimes are being documented by government institutions — such as the Stasi Records Archive in Germany or the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland — in Russia this mammoth task was left to volunteers.
I Want Journalists to Die Old
categories: academic library
‘I Want Journalists to Die Old’: Nobel Winner Muratov’s Acceptance Speech, in Quotes
— “There are two contradicting trends in Russia today. On the one hand, Russia’s president supports the erection of a monument to Sakharov’s 100th anniversary. On the other hand, Russia’s Prosecutor General demands the elimination of the international organization Memorial. … But Memorial was established by Sak
QAnon goes European
categories: information literacy, media literacy
QAnon goes European
https://www.politico.eu/article/qanon-europe-coronavirus-protests/
In France, the Yellow Jacket movement has embraced the American movement. In Italy, backers hail from the anti-vaccine community. In Britain, adherents draw from Brexit followers.
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What’s behind the rise of QAnon in the UK?
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-54065470
The FFTCUK Facebook group has now amassed more than 13,000 members.
People were dressed in QAnon shirts or ones displaying the slogan “WWG1WGA”. Short for “Where we go one we go all”, it is the best-known rallying cry for QAnon believers.
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How QAnon Went Global
https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/qanon-europe-germany-lockdown-protests.html
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QAnon Gains Traction in Russia
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/11/30/qanon-gains-traction-in-russia-a72180
Alexandra Arkhipova, an anthropologist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration who tracks the spread of online conspiracy theories, has found that while there are fewer explicit references to QAnon on Russian-language social media than Covid-19 denialism and 5G fears, its prevalence is spreading.
Data gathered by Arkhipova since August reveals thousands of Russian-language social media posts about QAnon. On VKontakte and Telegram — an encrypted messaging service popular in Russia – groups dedicated to spreading the conspiracy theory in Russia have grown to include tens of thousands of members.
social media censorship Russia
Tens of thousands took to the streets across Russia, sharing photos and videos on social media faster than they could be removed, urging others to join.
Posted by NPR on Sunday, January 24, 2021
But the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor quickly jumped to pressure social media platforms to remove videos that it said called for minors to participate in protests, warning that it was illegal for them to do so. On Friday, the government claimed that 38% of all offending videos on TikTok, 50% on YouTube and 17% on Instagram had been removed. By Saturday Roskomnadzor said more messages had been deleted on TikTok and Russian social media app Vkontakte. Facebook and Google, the owners of Instagram and YouTube respectively, expressed uncertainty about the accuracy of the numbers, Gizmodo reported.
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more on censorship in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=censor
student data privacy
categories: announcement
Russia-linked spyware found on school laptops given to children by government from r/worldnews
Upon unboxing and preparing them, it was discovered that a number of the laptops were infected with a self-propagating network worm,” one teacher reportedly wrote
Laptops provided to schools in order to support vulnerable children learning from home during the coronavirus pandemic have been found to contain viruses.
Teachers from a Bradford school shared details about suspicious files they found on the machines which appeared to be trying to contact Russian servers, the BBC reported.
The government has sent schools over 800,000 laptops in order to help poorer children get the support they need, but have been roundly criticised about both the quality of the laptops and the time it takes to receive them.
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more on student data privacy and China in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/
Herd Immunity to Internet Propaganda
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/philip-howard/
Internet propaganda is becoming an industrialized commodity, warns Phil Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet…
Posted by SPIEGEL International on Friday, January 15, 2021
Posted by SPIEGEL International on Friday, January 15, 2021
Can We Develop Herd Immunity to Internet Propaganda?
Internet propaganda is becoming an industrialized commodity, warns Phil Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute and author of many books on disinformation. In an interview, he calls for greater transparency and regulation of the industry.
Platforms like Parler, TheDonald, Breitbart and Anon are like petri dishes for testing out ideas, to see what sticks. If extremist influencers see that something gets traction, they ramp it up. In the language of disease, you would say these platforms act as a vector, like a germ that carries a disease into other, more public forums.
at some point a major influencer takes a new meme from one of these extremist forums and puts it out before a wider audience. It works like a vector-borne disease like malaria, where the mosquitoes do the transmission. So, maybe a Hollywood actor or an influencer who knows nothing about politics will take this idea and post it on the bigger, better known platform. From there, these memes escalate as they move from Parler to maybe Reddit and from there to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We call this “cascades of misinformation.“
Sometimes the cascades of misinformation bounce from country to country between the U.S., Canada and the UK for example. So, it echoes back and forth.
Within Europe, two reservoirs for disinformation stick out: Poland and Hungary.
Our 2020 report shows that cyber troop activity continues to increase around the world. This year, we found evidence of 81 countries using social media to spread computational propaganda and disinformation about politics. This has increased from last years’ report, where we identified 70 countries with cyber troop activity.
identified 63 new instances of private firms working with governments or political parties to spread disinformation about elections or other important political issues. We identified 21 such cases in 2017-2018, yet only 15 in the period between 2009 and 2016.
Why would well-funded Russian agencies buy disinformation services from a newcomer like Nigeria?
(1) Russian actors have found a lab in Nigeria that can provide services at competitive prices. (2) But countries like China and Russia seem to be developing an interest in political influence in many African countries, so it is possible that there is a service industry for disinformation in Nigeria for that part of the world.
(1) Russian actors have found a lab in Nigeria that can provide services at competitive prices. (2) But countries like China and Russia seem to be developing an interest in political influence in many African countries, so it is possible that there is a service industry for disinformation in Nigeria for that part of the world.
Each social media company should provide some kind of accounting statement about how it deals with misuse, with reporting hate speech, with fact checking and jury systems and so on. This system of transparency and accountability works for the stock markets, why shouldn’t it work in the social media realm?
We clearly need a digital civics curriculum. The 12 to 16 year olds are developing their media attitudes now, they will be voting soon. There is very good media education in Canada or the Netherlands for example, and that is an excellent long-term strategy.
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more on fake news in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news
Stalin defamation
categories: academic library