The study identified 12 relatively common advertised topics, but four or five could be considered key.
Researchers have identified twelve topics that the Russians are spreading through paid advertising on Facebook with the aim of destabilizing the situation in Ukraine. They spoke about it at a press conference, writing Ukrinform.
The results of the research were reported by the analyst of the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security Sergei Zhukov, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and the Rule of Law, chief expert on media law and content moderation in social networks who Igor Raskladai, media expert , author of the anti-fake project NoteRaccoon Alena Romanyuk, researcher at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) Roman Osadchuk and deputy head of the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security Nikolai Balaban.
Zhukov said that the study of Russian advertising messages on the social network Facebook was conducted from March to November last year and aimed to identify the most common Russian narratives about Ukraine.
They reportedly processed 400 Facebook pages and discovered 600 Russian advertising messages.
“As a result, we discovered 12 topics that they work on regularly,” Zhukov said.
In his opinion, four or five topics related to the situation at the front, discrediting the West and international cooperation of Ukraine, the topic of mobilization and corruption of the Ukrainian government can be considered key.
According to the expert, the Russians also actively paid for the messages that “Ukrainian society is moving in the wrong direction.”
Alena Romanyuk added that the Russians are still using the narrative launched by their political strategists in 2004 about Ukrainians of the first, second and third class, only slightly modified.
Igor Raskladai said that a common method of disinformation in social networks is the creation of clone pages of famous people. The most popular are the pages of the President, First Lady and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Fake clone pages are regularly closed, but the Russians immediately create new ones.
In addition, clone pages of famous military personnel and volunteers often appear on Facebook: messages about fundraising are published there. Russian disinformers also create fake Ukrainian popular media.
But, as Raskladai emphasized, the main points of application for the enemy’s disinformation efforts were and remain the situation at the front.
It was previously reported that the Russians were spreading fake news about the attack in the Sumy region.
Source: korrespondent
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