Interspersed in the information war: Russia's "skill" and "potential"

Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on February 24, information warfare has always been a hot topic.

On August 9, 2022, the New York Times reported that although most social media have taken measures to restrict official accounts of Russian media since February, for example, "Russia Today" (RT) has been blocked by Facebook, Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube limit traffic or forcibly remove them from the shelves, and Sputnik is also in the same situation. However, looking back on the results after half a year, it seems that such an encirclement and suppression campaign has not been completely successful.

The report pointed out that although major platforms have banned RTs one after another, since most of the ban sponsors only focus on their preferred languages, such as English, French, and German, more than 80% of law enforcement resources are in English, and the ban is not a “package” It was issued in a form, but was gradually accumulated many times. Therefore, the implementation of various bans, although it did hit Russia’s propaganda channels, it also squeezed out the “Chu River and Han boundaries” of regions and languages: in Spanish, Arabic and even On the Japanese platform, the traffic of Russian media has not decreased but increased.

Taking the Spanish-language public opinion field as an example, RT en Español, Sputnik Mundo, and RT Play en Español are among the top 10 most viewed Facebook pages in Latin America. RT en Español is a “highly credible” media, especially in Latin America. 42% of the site's overall traffic comes from Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico; its Facebook page has 18 million followers, more than RT's English-language site and CNN's Spanish-language channel.

In addition, from the outbreak of the war to mid-March, RT's Arabic page RT Online on Facebook was also reported to have an interactive growth rate of 187%; Japan's Sputnik homepage also saw an increase in traffic, which shows the popularity of Spanish public opinion. The phenomenon is not an isolated case.

Judging from the current international media and discourse structure, RT and Sputnik's breakthrough against the trend is not only because Russia is good at operating "skills", but also related to the "potential" they rely on.

"Art": How to blossom everywhere under sanctions

First of all, the focus of information warfare lies in the contention of narrative territory, that is, after exposing its own propaganda discourse, making the content of the discourse convincing enough to even compete with the opposite narrative. In this context, the smooth flow of propaganda platforms and channels is the first priority, otherwise, even if the discussion fronts are well arranged, it will still be difficult to say.

After the outbreak of the war, Russia quickly fell into the disadvantage of being "forced to be deaf and dumb": Since February 27, the European Union announced a ban on RT and Sputnik's business in 27 member states. RT TV networks in the EU, which also rely on sources from the EU; Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have restricted EU users from using RT and Sputnik’s social media content since February 28; Microsoft also removed MSN on the same day , Microsoft Store and Microsoft Advertising Network, RT and Sputnik related content; YouTube has banned users from accessing RT and Sputnik channels in EU countries and the UK since March 1, and officially blocked it globally on March 11 RT and Sputnik; Apple also announced on March 1 that RT and Sputnik would be removed from the App Store in all countries and regions except Russia; Reddit also disabled the link between RT and Sputnik from March 3; March 4 Today, RT America announced its closure.

Such encirclement and suppression did once put Russia's propaganda into a desperate situation; but after a short period of chaos, the Russian side quickly stood firm and broke through the siege with "skills".

According to an investigative report issued in July by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Russia has traversed the hail of EU sanctions through four types of websites: first, pointing to RT servers that are and are in The newly created RT domain name variant website after the outbreak of the war; second, a website that is completely mirrored with the RT page, but cannot be directly attributed to the official outlet of RT; third, a website that copies articles from the full text of RT; fourth, directs traffic To RT's drainage website.

Among them, the first and second types of websites have accumulated millions of page views between March and July, and the key is the sharing of RT's official account on social media, even if users cannot access RT's Facebook account from European locations. , Twitter users can still easily circumvent the ban by manually changing their account location. In addition, the content of the four websites is not filtered by Google search results, so readers may still contribute traffic to RT content through search engines.

Taking the German public opinion field as an example, after the original RT Deutsch (domain name "deutsch.rt.com") was banned, RT quickly launched a new variant website (domain name "rtde.site") to continue operating the German version of the news website .

In the fruitful Spanish public opinion field, RT is even more multi-pronged. Between February and April, RT’s official Twitter account shared website links to the domain names “es.rt.com” and “actualidad.rt.com”, both of which are subdomains of the official website of “rt.com”;4 Since January, RT's official Twitter has started to share a large number of website links to the domain names "actualidad-rt.com", "esrt.press", and "estr.online". Without exception, these websites are all copies of RT Spanish news websites. RT Official Twitter even posted a link to remind readers: "If the page doesn't work, you can try this address."

In addition to the European Union, RT also broke through the siege in the United States and Canada, creating channels on Gab TV, a video sharing platform in the United States, and Rumble, a video sharing website in Canada, to continuously broadcast RT's 24-hour live broadcasts.

"Potential": People's Disgust with Western Narratives

The development of the situation has reached this point, and the Western containment can be said to have failed. The original Russian propaganda channels have indeed been intercepted on most platforms, but there is always a sparse in every hundred secrets. keynote. However, the above-mentioned operations are nothing but a performance of “techniques.” The key to the resounding effect of Russia’s information war is the change in “situation”, that is, the disgust of Western narratives among readers around the world.

Looking back at the Iraq War at the beginning of the Cold War in 2003, there were few voices in the world that questioned the U.S.’s provocation of war. Even though the artillery fire on TV was so ruthless and the local people’s cries were so tragic, most readers around the world still believed that this was “necessary”. The sacrifice" is a "just battle" to liberate Iraq, overthrow the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, and make the region the cornerstone of democracy in the Middle East.

However, after the local military and civilians paid a heavy price, Iraq may have become a "democratic country" that meets the US standards, with regular and open parliamentary elections, but the economic prosperity destroyed by the war is difficult to recover, and the weak central government cannot restore the old territory. , the Islamic State (IS) and other extremist groups are everywhere. Judging from the results, the United States has indeed reshaped Iraq, but such an Iraq is far from the bright picture it once boasted about, and even gives people a sense of desolation.

Since then, with US intervention and promises becoming increasingly bankrupt, including the upheaval in the Middle East in 2010, which was ridiculed as the "Arab Winter" many years later, and the "color revolution" that increasingly caused negative public opinion, some global readers began to narrate the West. Rebellious sentiment arises, believing that the so-called "liberal democracy" that prevails is nothing more than the sugar-coated poison of the globalization of Monroe Doctrine; while the dictators and tyrants condemned by the West are the wronged persecuted by the stick of "liberal democracy"; In areas swept away by "chemical revolutions" and "color revolutions", there are often more ruins than construction. Viewed from this perspective, the Iraq war looks more like a domino than just a display of American exceptionalism.

In all fairness, the Western camp, led by the United States, has not significantly changed its external intervention logic and action content for a long time. They are all based on geopolitical calculations and long-term political and ideological camp shaping considerations, using "freedom and democracy" as their propaganda discourse. , inciting and assisting in organizing violence as actions, intervening in the endogenous political operation of a place, in order to strengthen its own domination over the place, in the Middle East and Africa, as well as in Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European regions. However, the senses of the people around the world cannot be blocked forever. Especially after entering the Internet age, the chaos in the above-mentioned areas can be described as "iron proof." In addition, with the shrinking political and economic strength of the United States, the rise of emerging markets such as China and Russia, many reject the outdated West. Narrative readers began to gather on the opposite side of Western propaganda, and gave non-Western countries, which were originally at the disadvantage of public opinion, the confidence and space to carry out propaganda.

Long before the Russian-Ukrainian war, the changes in Afghanistan in 2021 will be a shock. Twenty years ago, the Taliban was still an "evil group" that persecuted ethnic minorities, oppressed women's rights, anti-modernization, and conservative and retrogressive. It was full of all negative labels and notorious. This time it regained power, but it unexpectedly received a lot of praise on the global Internet. Some people even likened him to a "liberator" who led the Afghan people out of the domination of US imperialism. The key to the prevalence of such romanticized narratives is not whether the Taliban, which has just taken over the regime, has changed its face, or whether it has used Internet propaganda to break through, but because the Western narrative has condemned it before.

In the same way, the reason why Russia was able to promote its own narrative of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict among Spanish, Arabic and even Chinese users this time, including the continued eastward expansion of NATO, the genocide in the Donbas region, the proliferation of neo-Nazi atrocities in Ukraine, the U.S. In addition to making good use of media and Internet tools to break through the wide range of biological laboratories in Ukraine, the key is the public opinion field of the above-mentioned language, which has already gathered many people who are dissatisfied with the Western version of the narrative. The root of dissatisfaction is not only close to bankruptcy due to the consistent discourse of "liberal democracy" in the West, but also closely related to the frictions with the United States in the Middle East, Latin America, and China in recent years.

In short, Russia's propaganda and information war, despite being encircled and suppressed by the West, was still able to fight a bloody path, not only because it had mastered the skills and tools to break through the encirclement, but also because long before the Moscow action, there were a considerable number of people. The crowd, emotionally opted for a narrative front opposite the West.

Original published URL:

2022.8.16

Interspersed Breakthroughs in the Information War: Russia's "Tactics" and "Potentials" | Hong Kong 01 https://www.hk01.com/sns/article/804098