In a previous post, I wondered how much of the anti vax and other disinformation about the covid epidemic might be pushed via other countries.
At the time I had no evidence, but now the WaFreeBeacon has an article about election interference by other countries, including this snippet:
Iran's efforts include amplifying anti-Trump voices in its state-controlled news outlets and creating false online personas to elevate similar material.
Both Facebook and Twitter have moved in recent months to remove a litany of false accounts that they say were controlled mainly by Iran, Russia, and China. These countries have promoted disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and critiques of Trump's response.
well, duh.
the UKGuardian (left wing) article back in July noted the same thing.
Though US officials have warned before about the spread of disinformation tied to the pandemic, they went further on Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos and that operates a series of websites – InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press – that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-western objectives and to spread disinformation.
this Russian disinformation is not new: CBS story in May 2019 (!) also notes the Russian information war promoting anti vax propaganda. This article notes how it is causing people to hate measles vaccine, and adds this:
According to Axios, however, misinformation about vaccines is not the only threat, as Russia is focusing on spreading misinformation around health care issues ahead of the 2020 election.
CornellAllianceForScience notes the sites behind the anti vax conspiracy theories (the article is about the linking of the anti vax types and the anti GMO types with with 5G paranoia).
a similar article about the anti everything type conspiracy groups can be found on this Australia news site.
We’ve heard a litany of conspiracy theories since the pandemic began, but where exactly are they coming from and to what extent are they organised?
From anti-5g articles to fabricated stories about vaccination trials, Russia is using bots, state media and troll farms to cultivate a disinformation narrative during the pandemic.
But Russia is far from the only country that’s using social media to spin the truth, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The Chinese Communist Party is also using social media to paint a positive image of its government and to heap blame on the United States for the COVID-19 crisis, researchers at ASPI have found...
he gives an example of a US Vaccination program that they claimed killed five people in the Ukraine, something that did not happen but originated in a pro Russian site in the Ukraine.
“You see a lot of people repeating it on Twitter, or whatever and they have no idea that it originated from a pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist group,” Thomas said. “They just remember they saw somewhere that Ukrainian soldiers died in a vaccine trial and they just repeated it,” she added. But what are these countries hoping to achieve? COVID-19 is the latest issue that has been weaponised by Russia to sow discord in the West, according to Dr Graham.
italics mine.
I see the Russian propaganda being believed on the right, including right wing Catholic sites who should know better: but the anti vax propaganda has always been believed by the extreme left: so what you have here is a convergence of anti science between the naive paranoid on both sides of the political spectrum.
and given the Russian (and Chinese) moves to give vaccine to poor countries, one wonders if a lot of their disinformation is being pushed to make money and geopolitical points.
More here about China's push and how they will use it for political influence
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02523-x
Seven vaccines being tested in western countries, three are completing phase 3 tests. Includes links
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-are-seven-coronavirus-vaccine-candidates-being-tested-in-the-us-heres-where-they-stand-2020-09-08
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