29 Mar 2024
Saturday 27 August 2022 - 19:02
Story Code : 399661

US ran disinformation campaign against Iran, Russia and China, research reveals

US ran disinformation campaign against Iran, Russia and China, research reveals
Recent research has revealed details of what appears to have been long-running US disinformation campaigns aimed at Iran, Russia, and China on social media platforms, as well as the use of dozens offake accounts to propagate pro-Western narratives.

According to a study carried out byresearchers from the Stanford Internet Observatory and the research company Graphika, the pro-US covert influence operations ran for almost five years and used deceptive tactics to shape public opinion in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The accounts behind the operations often posed as news outlets or took on the personas of people who didnt exist, posting content in at least seven languages, including Farsi, Russian, Arabic, and Urdu.

In some cases, the accounts shared news articles from Washington-funded media outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites run by the US military.



Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, said the country of origin of the accounts was the United States, while Twitter said the presumptive countries of origin for the accounts were the United States and Britain, according to the report.

The report added that Twitter and Meta removed dozens of fake accounts in July and August as they were pushing the deceptive pro-US influence campaign.

The other platforms that were used in the operations were Telegram, Googles YouTube, and the Russian social media networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.

YouTube said it had terminated several channels posting in Arabic, Farsi, and Russian to promote US foreign affairs, including channels linked to a US consulting firm.

The researchers said the accounts tailored their language and messaging to different regions.

A set of 21 Twitter accounts, six Instagram accounts, five Facebook profiles, and two Facebook pages targeted Iranian audiences between November 2020 and June 2022, according to the report.

It disclosed that some of the personas used profile pictures that were likely created using artificial intelligence.

Many tried to present themselves as real people by interspersing Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food between political messages.

On Facebook and Instagram, dozens of posts also negatively compared opportunities for Iranian women with those for women abroad.

Moreover, 12 Twitter accounts, 10 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook profiles, and 10 Instagram accounts were created between June 2020 and March 2022 to focus on Central Asia.

Those accounts then published posts in bitter criticism of Russias military campaign in Ukraine and cheered on pro-Ukrainian protests in Central Asian countries.

Another group of accounts focused on the Middle East, applaudingUS activities in Iraqand pointing to interactions between American troops and Syrian children to justify Washingtons occupation of Syrian territories and the looting of the Arab countrys natural resources.




According to the report, none of the propagandacampaigns reached a large audience.

Most of the posts and tweets received a handful of likes or retweets, researchers noted, and only 19 percent of the covert accounts that were identified had over 1,000 followers.

Shelby Grossman, a staffer at the Internet Observatory and a member of the research team that published the paper, said the study is one of the most intensive analyses yet of a covert, pro-US influence operation.









By PRESS TV
https://theiranproject.com/vdcd9n0sfyt0n96.em2y.html
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