April 8, 2019

Fighting Disinformation: Disclose Stories, Scenarios, Tools, and Identify Targets

In the ‘global village’, we are facing industrial scale lying, toxic narratives to produce serials of fake news, originating from Russia. However, debunking fake news doesn’t help in the long run although it is essential to check facts. It’s important to disclose false stories, scenarios, tools, and identify targets. Putting more effort into media literacy is also part of the solution.

These are some of key takeaways from the presentation of the white book “Special Information Operations against Ukraine 2014-2018” that ICDS organised together with Estonian Center of Eastern Partnership on 5 April 2019. Kremlin information operations, the narratives and ways of spreading them was introduced by Dmytro Zolotukhin, Deputy Minister, Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy, and Alexander Demchenko, international journalist from Kyiv. Estonian media experts Ilmar Raag and Raul Rebane joined the discussion after presentation.

According to the experts, making people believe that fake is fake, demands at least as much resources as was invested to make a fake seem as true. But as always, in disinformation, there is not just supply, but also a strong demand side. Therefore no one in world can afford this level of investment. Specially designed massive info-ops are not only for journalists and media experts to disclose and solve – it’s a job for intelligence services, was said.