Propaganda Campaign Research Articles

Analyzing the Strategy of Propaganda using Inverse Reinforcement Learning: Evidence from the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by a large-scale, pro-Russian propaganda campaign on social media. However, the strategy behind the dissemination of propaganda has remained unclear, particularly how the online discourse was strategically shaped by the propagandists' community. Here, we analyze the strategy of the Twitter/X community using an inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) approach. Specifically, IRL allows us to model online behavior as a Markov decision process, where the goal is to infer the underlying reward structure that guides propagandists when interacting with users with a supporting or opposing stance toward the invasion. Thereby, we aim to understand empirically whether and how between-user interactions are strategically used to promote the proliferation of Russian propaganda. For this, we leverage a large-scale dataset with 349,455 posts with pro-Russian propaganda from 132,131 users. We show that bots and humans follow a different strategy: bots respond predominantly to pro-invasion messages, suggesting that they seek to drive virality; in contrast, messages indicating opposition primarily elicit responses from humans, suggesting that they tend to engage in critical discussions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the strategy behind propaganda from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine through the lens of IRL.

Artifacts of Glory and Pain: Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice

The American Civil War has been commemorated with a great variety of monuments, memorials, and markers. These monuments were erected for a variety of reasons, beginning with memorialization of the fallen and later to honor aging veterans, commemoration of significant anniversaries associated with the conflict, memorialization of sites of conflict, and celebration of the actions of military leaders. Sources reveal that during both the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, many monuments were erected as part of an organized propaganda campaign to terrorize African American communities and distort the past by promoting a “Lost Cause” narrative. Through subsequent decades, to this day, complex and emotional narratives have surrounded interpretive legacies of the Civil War. Instruments of commemoration, through both physical and digital intervention approaches, can be provocative and instructive, as the country deals with a slavery legacy and the commemorated objects and spaces surrounding Confederate inheritances. Today, all of these potential factors and outcomes, with internationally relevance, are surrounded by swirls of social and political contention and controversy, including the remembering/forgetting dichotomies of cultural heritage. In this article, drawing from the testimony of scholars and artists, I address the conceptual landscape of approaches to the presentation and evolving participatory narratives of Confederate monuments that range from absolute expungement and removal to more restrained ideas such as in situ re-contextualization, removal to museums, and preservation-in-place. I stress not so much the academic debate but how the American public is informed about and reacts to the various issues related to Confederate memorialization. My main point, where my premise stands out in the literature, is that, for the sake of posterity, and our ability to connect and engage with a tangible in situ artifact, not all Confederate statues should be taken down. Some of them, or remnants of them, should be preserved as sites of conscience and reflection, with their social and political meanings ongoing and yet to be determined in the future. The modern dilemma turns on the question: In today’s new era of social justice, are these monuments primarily symbols of oppression, or can we see them, in select cases, alternatively as sites of conscience and reflection encompassing more inclusive conversations about commemoration? What we conserve and assign as the ultimate public value of these monuments rests with how we answer this question.

From Digital Satire to Feminist Counterpublic Discourse: A Study of Participatory Mashups in China During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the effectiveness of China’s state apparatus and accumulated social discontent in the first half of 2020. Aided by a creative adaptation of a popular music video, a group of Chinese feminists initiated a short-term movement on the Chinese Internet in protest of the propaganda campaign of the Communist Youth League of China. The debut of two anime characters (Jiangshanjiao and Hongqiman) amid the pandemic stirred up strong grievances which led to an online feminist movement. Utilizing mashup videos, the movement, though ephemera, delivered a powerful counter-public discourse of women’s sufferings, which resonated widely in the digital sphere. Adopting a cultural perspective of Internet memes, this study closely examined the metamorphosis of a music video from an apolitical fanatic tool to sarcastic “guichu” mashups and eventually a powerful feminist counter-public discourse. Findings from this study suggest the strong potential of participatory mashups in the articulation of counter-public narratives from grassroots Internet users.

Manipulating Friends: Mossad's Covert Operations and Disinformation in Europe

Alongside targeted killing operations, intelligence agencies often organize disinformation campaigns to cast doubts about who is behind the murders. While there is a large body of literature that researches intelligence agencies’ efforts to influence the views of an enemy (such as propaganda or disinformation campaigns), this article looks at it differently: how does a disinformation campaign look like to influence the views of friendly counties or allies? The article focuses on specific reports sent by Mossad to European intelligence agencies during the early 1970s when Mossad was running a targeted assassination campaign in Europe. The reports that Mossad shared with its European partners provided alternative ways of interpreting Mossad assassinations. The article identifies two purposes of these cables beyond exchanging information: they allowed Mossad to feed disinformation to European agencies to deflect responsibility for the killings away from Israel. Later, they allowed European governments to plausibly deny knowledge of Israeli responsibility for Palestinian deaths and to continue to share intelligence with Mossad about Palestinian terrorist groups. This article advances current understandings of how states try to manipulate other states’ behaviour, and how friendly relations can be abused to foster one's own interests.

Academic Community – the Target of the KGB of the Lithuanian SSR

Starting from the very beginning of the Soviet occupation, the academic community became the target of the Soviet government. The government aimed to break the elite of society because of its potential and real resistance against the system and to subject it to its policies. Education and science institutions, therefore, were very important in the fight of the Soviet regime for human consciousness. Education was to be used for Communist indoctrination and instilling the values of the worldview important to the Soviet regime both in the country and outside the country. In addition, science institutions had an important role to play in the Cold War race with the West in the areas of science, technology and industry. With their discoveries, scientists had to help create the superiority of the Soviet system against the West. Furthermore, in the guise of scientific relations with the West, there was an opportunity for “intelligence activities”. The KGB, using its resources, helped the Communist Party implement its objectives in conjunction with the academic community. The KGB paid great attention to the behaviour of the representatives of the academic community, their attitudes towards government policies and other issues, monitored their relationships, analysed anti-Soviet manifestations among students and lecturers, and sought to identify and eliminate people who according to the authorities were unreliable. A network of agents was established for the implementation of these tasks, but it was not as broad as the KGB desired. Lithuanian scholars and scholars of the Lithuanian diaspora served both as the tool and the target of the implementation of the Communist Party propaganda campaigns. Achievements demonstrated by Lithuanian scientists in the West had to declare the progress of the Soviet system and also to discredit political campaigns by the diaspora. Scholars recruited by the KGB had a none-the-less important role to play in carrying out the KGB tasks of technical and industrial espionage in the West and thus helping create the image of superiority of the Soviet Union. Conferences and internships both in the West and in Lithuania were the perfect medium for collecting a variety of scientific and technical information. KGB agent reports show that achievements in medicine and in particular in the laser area, dominated in the records obtained by the agents.

Propaganda and thought work in the Mao era: Absoluteness, sharp transitions, and political instability

AbstractThis paper elucidates the reasons behind Deng Xiaoping's initiation of political reform from a propaganda perspective by examining the features of Mao's propaganda and thought work and their implications for the Chinese Communist Party, analyzing cases such as the “Two‐Hundred Policy,” the “Anti‐Rightist Campaign,” propaganda campaigns related to the USSR, and the transformation of Lin Biao's image. It argues that Mao's propaganda and thought work, characterized by their absoluteness and sharp transitions, were detrimental to the stability of the communist regime. These characteristics led to widespread indifference, distrust, and even resistance toward the Chinese Communist Party among the Chinese populace since the late Mao era. China had entered a post‐trust era, marked by a growing tendency among the populace to preemptively view official messages as untrustworthy. To restore the party's credibility, Deng Xiaoping initiated reforms in propaganda and thought work to address these shortcomings.

The Unsung Propagandists

As the nation rallied its resources for wartime in 1942, the Office of War Information (OWI) assumed a pivotal role in disseminating information related to the war and aimed at mobilizing the American populace. Within the organizational framework of the OWI, a small cohort of pioneering women ascended to leadership positions, challenging prevailing gender norms and reconfiguring the narrative surrounding women's wartime engagement. Classified after the war’s end, their records are now part of the 7,112 boxes that encompass the totality of the OWI’s records, now housed in the National Archives. An exploration of the documents of these women, including correspondence, published work, and other internal records, paints the picture of their continuous participation and influence which resulted in some of the most visible domestic propaganda campaigns of the Second World War. Previous scholarship, while plentiful in the exploration of the domestic roles of women during the war, fails to acknowledge the directorship of these women in their efforts to rally national support for not just female recruitment, but other facets of wartime activity. Through an in-depth examination of archival materials collected from the OWI, this research seeks to contribute to a nuanced understanding of female contributions on the American home front.

The origins of Russophobia: on the issue of social and political culture of interstate relations

The article examines the concept and implementation of the principle of «Russophobia» as a type of socio-cultural intolerance. The relevance of addressing this topic is justified by the modern realities of the socio-political confrontation of Western countries in relation to Russia. Particular attention is paid to the causes of Russophobia and the main trends in its manifestation in the modern world. The research was carried out using the method of socio-historical analysis, the epistemological method of analyzing literary, journalistic and scientific sources. The research examines concepts formed in different periods of history that comprehend this phenomenon. Based on reflections on Russophobia by authoritative Russian philosophers, writers and publicists, it has been proved that the Russophobic narrative, starting from the 16th century, became a stable ideological trend reflecting the expansionist interests of Western elites. As Russia strengthened on the world stage, Russophobia intensified. The ideological «crusade» against Orthodox Rus' was launched by European travelers of the 17th-19th centuries, who created a negative image of our country in the Western world. Currently, the countries of the united West have declared a «sacred war» against Russia. A powerful propaganda campaign was launched, directed against Russia and everything Russian. The authors of the article give a moral and ethical assessment of the sociopolitical processes of a new surge of Russophobia in modern conditions. It is suggested that in the current conditions it is necessary to carry out an open international fight against Russophobia and create a system of our own channels of influence in the Western information space, as well as counteract internal Russophobia using cultural and educational methods.

“They Behave Like Jews”: Anti-Speculation Propaganda and the Creation of a Caste of “New Traders” in Lithuania in 1941–1944

The article analyses socio-economic propaganda campaigns that were actively developed in the Lithuanian press during the period from 1941 to 1944: 1) anti-speculation propaganda; 2) calls for Lithuanians to engage in trading (this can be visually called the creation of a cast of “new traders”). In 1941, after the occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany, speculative activities increased due to the difficult economic situation, the faltering supply of food products to cities and the interruption of the supply of industrial goods (for example, kerosene, textiles) to villages. The occupation regime carried out an active anti-speculation propaganda campaign, which manifested itself in three ways: 1) calls not to buy goods from speculators and to report speculators to the authorities; 2) promoting legal alternatives to speculation (such as commissions or barter stores); 3) intimidation through repression. The creation of the caste of “new traders” was based on the belief that Lithuanians would willingly take advantage of the Holocaust, when Jewish traders who had held significant positions in pre-war Lithuanian trade, especially in the private sector, were killed (or isolated in ghettos) along with the Jewish community. Lithuanians were urged through the press to engage in trade business, to create a new, nationally socially oriented, qualitatively different trade system. The network of trade schools had been actively expanded in the towns of the provincial regions. Despite their ambitions, these two propaganda campaigns did not achieve their goals. Speculation was active throughout the war, while its legal alternatives were unattractive and unpopular, and the actual practice of punishing speculators was far more moderate than the press calls for the death penalty. The creation of the “new traders” caste was also unsuccessful: although trade schools soon began to prepare new trade sector employees, relatively few were prepared, and the same press soon began to criticize “new traders” for taking over “Jewish speculation” and for tending to deceive buyers and the regime.

Election Interference and Online Propaganda Campaigns: Dynamic Interdependencies on Facebook, Google Trends, and the New York Times

The relationship between propaganda campaigns, news outlets, and search patterns is of significant interest to political authorities and academic scholars from various disciplines. We explore these dynamic relationships using 3,500 Facebook propaganda advertisements, 167,000 New York Times stories, and hundreds of Google Trends searches for terms from the advertisements and articles in the two years preceding the 2016 US presidential election. The data indicate that propaganda campaigns utilize random content infrequently and instead follow specific Google search patterns. Depending on the subject matter, Facebook advertisements can anticipate the New York Times. In the contexts of immigration, racism, and the LGBT community, such patterns of content adaptation are more prominent. We use the results to provide policy and research recommendations.

The New York Times on the Day After: News Coverage of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the New York Times covered the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The analysis identifies the news frames of front-page stories in the Times during the first two days after the nuclear strike and compares them to the frames promoted by the U.S. government. This study adds to the literature by offering a micro view of the way the government propaganda campaign was embedded directly into the Times’ coverage of the atomic bomb. While previous research has provided a broad assessment of how the Times and the news media in general were manipulated, this study identifies the specific news frames as they appeared in government documents and news reports.

Sovietisation of Schools in the 1940/41 School Year: bolshevis indoctrination,compain of eadult education in in Schools of Šakiai County; Teachers between Resistance, Conformism and Collaboration; Repressions (3)

This article introduces some of the events, phenomena and facts of the Sovietisation (Bolshevization) of schools in annexed Lithuania in 1940–1941. The use of teachers in introducing the Bolshevik ideology to the society and pupils, the pseudo-elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 12 January 1941, the propaganda campaign for adult education, and other aspects of the research that have been examined or have just been brought up (including the aspect of adaptation to the occupants, cooperation with them, and resistance, which will be developed more in the final part of the research), are mainly illustrated by the examples of the archival documents that reflect the situation in the Šakiai County. An address to teachers of 19 November 1940 and fragments of other documents are published.

The Internal Settlement and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in Patriotic Front Propaganda

ABSTRACT In 1978, following years of failed negotiations with Britain, the Rhodesian government agreed to an ‘Internal Settlement’. This eventually led to the creation of the new state of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1979. This process posed a serious threat to ZANU and ZAPU, the African nationalists in arms against Rhodesia, and so they launched a propaganda campaign against the settlement. This article considers the different attacks that they made with the aim of explaining the nature of their propaganda and the ways in which they used it to put pressure on their opponents. It argues that the strength of their condemnation is suggestive of the extent to which they were fearful that their position was being undermined both internally in Rhodesia and on the international stage. It also highlights the nature of ZANU and ZAPU’s public political thought during this crucial period at the end of the war in Rhodesia.

Decoding The Playbook: Multi-Modal Characterization of Coordinated Influence Operations on Indian Social Media

Manipulation of online discourse through organized disinformation and propaganda campaigns is a threat to information integrity and democratic dialogue. Taking cues from on-ground reports and recent literature on online trend manipulation in the Indian political landscape, we argue that organizing and consequently detecting influence operations is a multi-modal problem, where coordination is organized around different modalities like tweet , retweet , image and temporal . In this paper, we examine three case studies of prominent hashtag campaigns on Indian Twitter. Building on prior coordination detection methods, we identify communities of coordinated users across each of the four modalities. An in-depth analysis of the coordinated communities offers unique insights into the playbook of coordination strategies employed in the Indian context. We find that tweet coordination is used for hashtag trending, while retweet coordination aids in amplifying messaging from influential right-wing accounts. Moreover, we find distinct roles of users across modalities, where users that disseminate content through tweet and image coordination ( disseminators ) are independent of users that amplify content through retweet coordination ( amplifiers ), suggesting the existence of distinct coordination campaigns and objectives within influence operations. We conclude by highlighting the multi-modal approach to coordination for comprehensively characterizing influence operations, the drawbacks of temporal filtering in coordination, and the transferability and implications of our findings.

Red star over the Baltic: the sovietisation of representative assemblies in Poland's ‘Recovered Territories’ via the ‘three times “Yes”’ referendum of 1946

ABSTRACT Based on Polish-language archive material and personal testimony, this article is a case study concerning the Sovietisation of Poland's representative democratic institutions in its Baltic provinces, a region which witnessed sweeping changes regarding its borders and population as formerly German territory was incorporated into a re-constituted Polish state following the Second World War. Although under-populated and geographically peripheral, these ‘Recovered Territories’ were central to the raison d’être of the post-war Polish state. However, due to a common desire to reclaim these lands for Poland, the Polish communist regime's policies of rapid ‘degermanisation’ and ‘repolonisation’ were supported by both the London-based Polish government-in-exile, as well as the anti-communist underground. Despite the Red Army's looting of the region, the regime engendered the fear of German revanchism among the settlers to justify its ‘protection’ by Soviet forces and gain political support in new local ‘democratic’ assemblies. This article uses official, semi-official and ‘unofficial’ primary material sources aiming to show that, although the ‘Three Times ‘‘Yes’” referendum of 1946 was held at a national level with aim of assessing the true level of support for communism in Poland, in the Recovered Territories it was employed as a propaganda campaign aimed at creating Homo Sovieticus, a new society and Soviet-dominated ‘representative’ institutions.

Legitimising Occupation: The Quest for Popular Consent during the British Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949

This article explores the quest for legitimacy and popular consent during the British occupation of north-western Germany between 1945 and 1949. It does so through an analysis of two major propaganda campaigns that sought to publicly legitimise the British occupation at home and in Germany: ‘Germany under Control’, a large-scale exhibition put on display in London in 1946; and ‘Operation Stress’, the largest propaganda campaign in the British Zone, run in 1948 to legitimise food policies. Through an investigation of the internal rationale amongst British policymakers, the objectives behind the campaigns, the popular reception, and the broader outcomes, the article shows that both campaigns ended in failure and did not succeed in convincing the population of the need to maintain British rule in Germany. Propaganda was an ineffective tool to generate popular legitimacy at a time of austerity at home and severe material suffering in the British zone of occupation. As such, the British authorities encountered populations whose ‘moral economy’ and expectations from government were fundamentally opposed to the maintenance of the occupation. Both campaigns, therefore, epitomise the pitfalls of propaganda campaigns when facing bitter social realities and demonstrate the intricacies of the quest for legitimacy during military occupations.

Reproduction propaganda: The state hails, citizens responds—A case study of Vietnamese governmental Facebook

Since the turn of the 21st century, aging populations and low fertility rates have alarmed governments across Europe and East Asia. The Communist state of Vietnam is now experiencing the same situation. The government has recently started a propaganda campaign to encourage its citizens to not postpone marriage and having children. This article explores one recent attempt—a viral post published on the government's Facebook page in November 2023 urging young citizens to marry before 30, attracting hundreds of thousands of reactions and comments. The article examines this heteronormative message and netizens’ comments, which show humor, resistance, and critiques of the government's welfare system. Using the concepts of (counter-) interpellation, it reveals the nuances of the power relations between the state and its people in this case study where biopolitics and personal choice intersect, illuminating how social networks provide a discursive space for mundane political engagement.

The Political Economics of Non-democracy

We survey recent theoretical and empirical literature on political economics of non-democracies. Nondemocratic regimes face multiple challenges to their rule, both internal, such as palace coups or breakdown of their support coalition, and external, such as mass protests or revolutions. We analyze strategic decisions made by dictators from the standpoint of maximizing the chances of regime survival in the light of these challenges, and show how it explains multiple common patterns, from hiring political loyalists to positions that require competence, to restricting media freedom at the cost of sacrificing bureaucratic efficiency, to running propaganda campaigns, organizing election fraud, purging opponents and associates, and repressing citizens. (JEL D72, D73, D82, D83, L82, O17)

Botlitica: A generative AI-based tool to assist journalists in navigating political propaganda campaigns

The hype on generative AI has raised concerns about the spread of disinformation but also opened up new opportunities for hybrid journalism. The proliferation of political propaganda campaigns spread across digital media during election periods constitutes a challenge for journalists who struggle to exercise information gatekeeping. AI-based tools can in principle help, but journalists are resistant to using them since they are sceptical about their compliance with news values and their scarce user-friendliness. To cope with such issues, we present Botlitica, a GPT3-based chatbot able to answer users’ questions according to the information shared on different social media by a given political party which is, thus, embodied by the AI agent in the conversation. The back-end and front-design of the chatbot are devised to privilege transparency. We report the results of a preliminary evaluation of Botlitica which show that the tool fastens journalists’ capabilities to navigate propaganda campaigns inducing them to exercise critical thinking.

Features of Atheistic Discourse in the Cinema of ‘‘Militant Atheism’’ of the 1920s

The article examines the specific features of Soviet anti-religious films of the 1920s from the first propaganda campaigns to full-length feature films. The real persecution of the Church and believers was beyond the attention of filmmakers. The core purpose of such films was a full-scale defamation of the Russian Orthodox Church, its ministers and parishioners. This kind of cinema was the mainstream of militant atheism, aimed at exterminating Christianity. The author focuses primarily on little-studied films from the collection of the National Film Archive.