The information war: Putin's troll factories

Putin's Reset, Fred Fleitz, ed., 2016

Russia’s new information war is a logical outgrowth of the way Vladimir Putin engineered his rise to power. As the security minister and designated successor to the ailing and alcoholic President Boris Yeltsin in 1999, Putin engineered the bombings of apartment buildings in southern Russia and blamed the slaughter on Chechen rebels. His “propaganda by deed” provided the pretext to launch a new war to smash the Chechen rebellion. Both created the mass outrage that called for strong and decisive leadership, manufacturing and focusing public demand his quiet ouster of Yeltsin on the night of Y2K. Seen through that lens, the Kremlin’s weaponization of information is a logical, proven, cost-effective means of domestic political action, internal security, and international power projection. It succeeds because neither the Russian public nor the West demanded a public accounting of Russia’s Communist past the role of the former KGB as the sword and shield of the Soviet state. Both were willing to suspend their belief for their own purposes. Inaction from three successive American presidents empowered Putin and unwittingly gave the otherwise weak Russia an enormous capability to wage war, sometimes without firing a shot. Information, properly applied, gives leverage to the materially weaker side. The Kremlin’s new information warfare and propaganda capabilities, while innovative for a government, merit concern mostly because of the West’s flaccid and delayed response. The capabilities and actions present a strategic challenge. With the grave but unsurprising exception of subversion of the U.S. political system, they hardly merit the breathless reportage and commentary from many political observers, because they have been building up visibly for more than a decade. Putin’s unnecessarily aggressive info-centric actions give the U.S. and its partners the pretext to exploit the potentially profound vulnerabilities of the secret-police regime, and the fragilities that, if exploited, could widen many existing splits within the Putin leadership itself and the Russian Federation at large. All this, of course, lowers the threshold of conflict to the level of classical espionage, propaganda, and subversion, at which the Kremlin has excelled for the past century, with a modern digital twist. The U.S. and its allies generally have opted not to engage, out of the quaint “gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail” principle, or more likely, simple ignorance about what to do or how. After a long period of not wanting to see, the West finds itself surprised and alarmed at being on the receiving end of what historically is a simple and manageable method of statecraft.

Conference proceeding “Behind the Digital Curtain. Civil Society vs. State Sponsored Cyber Attacks”, 2019

In the post-truth world of Putin and Trump the international law is being spurned by some states; a development led by the two most powerful permanent members of the United Nation’s Security Council. In the past few years this has resulted in the obliteration of trust between different public and private actors of international relations, and everyone became self-righteous (Mäger, 2016; Herszenhorn, 2018; Applebaum, 2019; Harding, 2018). Next to journalists, lawyers, economists and political scientists, who are all experts on media, law, economic and political life respectively, everyone with access to a keyboard also claims to be an expert in these issues (i.e. bloggers, opinion leaders). The moment has come when all the crises – economic, ecological, migration, informational and political – are intertwined, and nobody can entirely figure out where they originated and how to address them but many declare to have “the solution” (Mäger, 2016; Herszenhorn, 2018; Applebaum, 2019; Harding, 2018). People are no longer observers but rather participants and targets of all possible conflicts that happen “remotely” – ideological and political, within and outside their country. The consequences of this “participation” have already affected their personal lives: religious-ethnic conflicts, Brexit, rise of the extreme right on the European continent, etc. (Nagan & Hammer, 2008). At the same time, it is harder for scientists (scholars) to reach their potential readership, their expertise discarded when inconvenient. Moreover, the quality of research materials has decreased and it has become difficult to check the reliability of their sources. To this comes the increasing noise generated by ever more Internet outlets with dubious funding and nefarious goals, which disseminate rumors, untruths, historic revisionism, and even fake studies (Karnaushenko, 2015; Jeangène; Escorcia; Guillaum & Herrera, 2018). Loss of control over dissemination of information that in seconds can reach millions of people, and can cause emotional outbursts and social unrest, is one of the consequences of globalization and the spread of the Internet which are both impossible to reverse. The extent to which the information disorder has developed in the world is also the result of a “hybrid war”, which has been waged by Russia, one of the biggest countries that have resisted globalization for over 20 years. Russia is trying to clench the past, to preserve what it calls “classical relations” between the states, although “the classical relations” between states (as Russia understands them) are not feasible anymore, due to the emergence of millions of “actors in the digitalized world”, who have the ability to actively influence the processes of coexistence. As a member of the UN Security Council, Russia continuously blocks resolutions that could solve burning issues of international relations (Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine etc.). Russia deliberately paralyzes international public law and weakens interdependence between states, triggering political and information chaos in liberal democracies (Lukas & Pomeranzev, 2016; Chivvis, 2017; Gerasimov, 2013). At the same time, Moscow experiments the introduction of controls over information within and outside its borders. Having problems with the freedom of speech (Report of the Freedom House on Russia, 2019), Russia undermines this norm in other countries through the activities of its agents of influence (Kamian, 2018; Mäger, 2016; Abrams, 2016). Russia creates conditions in which liberal democracies are forced to debate about the introduction of censorship for the sake of national security and sovereignty (Barandiy, 2018). As an example, citizens, politicians and officials in a country like Ukraine blame the existing licensed media for being Kremlin-mouthpieces, and call for “active or passive defense” against the Kremlin’s infiltration in their national discourse (Barandiy, 2018). The consequences of such allegations vary from counter-propaganda (as active defense) to the attempts to shutdown certain media outlets (as passive defense). The urgency of the reaction depends on the level of the freedom of the media in a country, and whether it suffers from or is under imminent risk of military aggression of Russia. Both, the military intervention, which is forbidden in international law, and interference in other states’ affairs through information, which is not forbidden in international law, are inherent to the concept of foreign policy of Russia. Though the second aspect is often considered to be a form of war not only by Russia (which will be discussed below) but also by many Western states – Russia’s war against liberal democracies aims to force back the international community to the “classic relations between states” time, without supranational bodies like the EU or NATO (Syuntyurenko, 2015; Putin, 2014; Pieters, 2018). One active actor that resists this “war” is civil society. NGOs and activists worldwide cooperate with public and private actors, organize events and produce reports with the goal to raise awareness on the level and consequences of “interference”. By now they have not managed to streamline the “information disorder” as the approaches of such “interference” differ depending on terminology, used in the states of the origin of such NGOs. There is a terminology that has been circulated in the communication flow of legal and political systems of nation states, but only few of them are actually regulated by national or international law. The officials and experts use active measures (Russia, USA), interference in internal affairs (Russia) or election meddling (USA), hybrid or ideological war (analysts worldwide), information aggression and information attacks (Russia), psychological operations, fake news and disinformation (the USA, the EU), manipulation of information (France), Russian propaganda (Ukraine), propaganda of war and hate speech (Council of Europe, OSCE, Germany), cyber attacks (worldwide) etc. Absence of common terminology amplifies the chaos and weakens the resistance of states against Russia’s extraterritorial information influence operations (Ristolainen, 2017). Nevertheless, it is of paramount importance to establish common definitions because of the tight technological and human interconnections in the current global world order. First of all, it is necessary to establish sources in politics and law of Russia that aim at information influence of the Kremlin on other states. Russia acts in a “bubble of interpretations”; the purpose of this study is to connect the actions undertaken by Russia to the terminology Russia itself uses itself for such acts and “reciprocal” actions undertaken by other states against Russia. This is needed to understand the approach, worldview and mindset of the Kremlin’s power elites and for the West to be able to resist or to adapt to the conditions imposed by Moscow (Bennett, 1995). In this paper, I intentionally do not connect Russia’s “measures” to officially existing terms in Russia as its actions are considered by Russians to be a “defense”. At the same time, I do not connect Russia’s “measures” to any existing western term or definitions, in order to avoid the confusion between those definitions and the findings in this study. I propose to use the term that contains elements of Russia’s “measures” that would resonate with all the states that have felt their impact. This term is “influence through information” (“information influence”) (Scott, 2016). The purposes of the study are 1) to determine the place of “information influence” in Russia’s concept of “interference in sovereignty” as interpreted by the law, science and rhetoric of the Kremlin, and 2) to offer a definition of “information influence” in relation to “interference in sovereignty” as defined by the Kremlin and, at the same time, as experienced by the Western states.

Media and Communication

This article explores aspects, transformations, and dynamics of the ideological control of the internet in Russia. It analyses the strategies of actors across the Russian online space which contribute to this state-driven ideological control. The tightening of legislative regulation over the last 10 years to control social media and digital self-expression in Russia is relatively well studied. However, there is a lack of research on how the control of the internet works at a structural level. Namely, how it isolates “echo chambers” of oppositional discourses while also creating a massive flood of pro-state information and opinions. This article argues that the strategy of the Russian state to control the internet over the last 10 years has changed considerably. From creating troll factories and bots to distort communication in social media, the state is progressively moving towards a strategy of creating a huge state-oriented information flood to “litter” online space. Such a strate...

Perceptions and misperceptions between Russia and the West have existed for centuries. With recent disagreements between Russia and the United States, the EU, and NATO over issues such as the Ukrainian crisis, the Syrian civil war, Baltic territoriality, and Arctic spoils, Russia has been utilizing an age-old tactic in a new battlefield: the manipulation of information in the cyber domain. Many Western media outlets, analysts, and academics have concentrated their efforts at looking at cyber conflict from the traditional Western perspective, defined as the use of computational technologies in cyberspace for malevolent and destructive purposes in order to impact, change, or modify diplomatic and military interactions between entities short of war and away from the battlefield. Yet the Russian perspective is different; the utilization of the manipulation of information for the purposes of promoting the Russian worldview and display of power in the cyber realm. In this chapter, I seek out this utilization by using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to demonstrate that Russian information warfare techniques are successfully influencing Western media outlets in that the latter are reporting the discourse set forth by Russian state media, social media outlets, and pro-Russian professional " trolls " , and this influence campaign is contributing to divisions in Western societies and electoral outcomes that are favorable to the Russian national interest.

During the last decade, 'information warfare' has become a much-politicised term in Russian domestic and foreign affairs. This article sheds light on the conceptual roots that have been shaping this idea in the Russian academic, political, and public discourse. Moreover, the article points to the major actors leading the politicisation of this idea by promoting narratives describing the so-called 'Western information war against Russia'. In the context of Russia's contemporary attempts to re-establish itself as a global power and Western fear and distress associated with Russian activities in the information domain, a grounded understanding of the major conceptual narratives influencing Russian thinking about information warfare, as well as perspectives on how these narratives have been politicised, is of paramount importance.

The international community faces serious challenges arising from a new mode of information warfare, which Russia has deployed during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2014-2016. This ongoing “propaganda war” is the most recent and frightening example of information warfare. It reflects the wide array of non-military tools used to exert pressure and influence the behaviour of countries. When skilfully combined, disinformation, malicious attacks on large-scale information and communication systems, psychological pressure, can be even more dangerous than traditional weapon systems, since they are extremely difficult to discover and combat. The current note aims to give a glance at the Russian “propaganda machinery” and to discuss the Estonia´s experience in combating the threats from the Russian information warfare.

Journal of Political Marketing, 2018

This essay focuses on the communicative aspects of geopolitical struggles and addresses a problem of self-evaluation of Russia in the context of information warfare. The concept of "information warfare" as used in this article is based on the idea that information superiority is a crucial precondition for the achievement of political goals in global political arena. The review and analysis of Russian scientists' writings and public presentations about information warfare reveal that Russia perceives itself as a target in information warfare. The dominant mood is that Russia for the present is at war with the West in informative environment. "Information warfare against Russia" is a wide and congruent narrative in Russian academic discourse that can be structured by six themes: (1) the collapse of USSR as a defeat in information warfare; (2) interpretation of history as a front line in information warfare; (3) Russia as a potential source of raw materials for the West; (4) Russophobia as a strategy of the West against Russia; (5) Color Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe as a direct threat to Russian security; (6) Eurasian superstate as a counterbalance to the West.

Media@LSE blog, 2022

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes More than 100 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, King's College London's Gregory Asmolov argues that the power of Russian propaganda to prevent any serious opposition from within Russian society remains a key aspect in understanding this ongoing war. Russian propaganda has become one of the core topics on the agenda since the beginning of Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. It seems that Russia lost the information war in the global information space (or has not even tried to win it there, despite the 22/06/2022, 12:45

Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Studia territorialia, 2022

Russian information warfare is being critically examined more and more in both journalistic and academic circles after Russia's aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Now the focal point is moving to the very heart of the issue. Western intelligence services regularly report that Russia is actively seeking to manipulate the public opinion abroad using a variety of state resources, including Kremlin-financed media outlets like RT and Sputnik. The Kremlin directly hires social media professionals to produce hoaxes and spread disinformation that favors the Russian government. Therefore, many investigative journalists are attempting to reveal and describe the structures of Russia's disinformation machine, which are capable of affecting major political events and people's lives within hours. The latest publication covering this topic is Putin's Trolls, a book written by Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro. The nerve center of Russia's disinformation machine is the Internet Research Agency, a company located in St. Petersburg. The Agency hires professional internet trolls to fight online for Russia's interests. In 2013, two journalists from the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the St. Petersburg local paper Moi Raion succeeded in uncovering the practices of this "troll factory" and describing how it functions. Since then, many journalists have attempted to penetrate the Agency to reveal one of the Kremlin's strongest tools in its subversion against the West. In 2014, Jessikka Aro, an investigative journalist working for Yleisradio, Finland's public service broadcaster, followed this path. She was determined to investigate the Russian disinformation that was increasingly being disseminated in Finland. Aro was one of the first investigative journalists to systematically describe the "troll factories" that produce pro-Kremlin media content abroad. She began to work on an article that focused on the Kremlin's propaganda tools in Finland. Its publication led to a major reversal in Aro's life. She has become the number one target of the pro-Kremlin troll army in Finland. Aro says that the massive smear campaign conducted against her is perceived as "extraordinary" by many security experts. The campaign aimed to force Aro to the point of mental exhaustion in order to make sure that she would never investigate the topic again. Aro eventually left Finland in 2017. Despite the pressure she was under from the pro-Kremlin internet trolls and their conspirators, her depiction of St. Petersburg troll factory has received acclaim. In 2016, Aro won the Bonnier Grand Journalist Prize. Subsequently, in 2019, she was nominated for the U.S. State Department's prestigious Women of Courage Award, which she did not receive, allegedly because of her criticism of former U.S. President Trump. Aro's book Putin's Trolls, however, is not limited only to describing the networks of pro-Kremlin internet trolls and the phenomenon of the troll factory as such. In her book, Aro examines the functioning of the Kremlin disinformation machine in depth, touching upon its impact on her life. She does so based on her experience in the years following the publication of her article in 2014. She has constantly been exposed to psychological