Media around the world have been reporting on the conflict in Ukraine for more than a month. The virtually unlimited amount of information about the war quickly reached the universe of disinformation, and conspiracy theorists, who had focused on the Covid-19 pandemic for years, quickly seized the opportunity to reshape their communication channels. Suddenly they went from staunch anti-vax protesters to pro-Russian supporters.

Today, much of the disinformation about the war in Ukraine runs through the same accounts that, until just a few weeks ago, were spreading hoaxes and misleading news about Covid-19. This alarming trend has been noted by fact-checkers across Europe. We gathered information from seven organizations belonging to the European Digital Media Observatory (Edmo) to understand the close connection between Covid-19 and pro-Russian disinformation spreaders.

Pro-Russian: The same old people…

The shift from pandemic to war among disinformation spreaders has been observed by fact-checkers in several countries, e.g. B. in Spain , Italy , Poland , Denmark , Germany and France . In all cases, the change in focus occurred quickly and affected the vast majority of published content. The medium also remained the same: Telegram channels, as highlighted Maldita.es and Verificat social media, as depicted by Demagog and TjekDet , and even (misleading) news websites ( Facta ).

As highlighted in the recent Edmo briefing, the communities that were most affected by Covid-19 disinformation are now more likely to be the main recipients of pro-Russian disinformation. No-vax advocates and Covid skeptics are not necessarily pro-Putin, but this exposure could increase their chances of developing a distorted view of the ongoing conflict.

As we will see, false or misleading stories that were already circulating were adapted to the different contexts: while disinformation about the pandemic was primarily aimed at creating fear or skepticism among the general public, the stories related to The war in Ukraine was aimed at giving a voice to Kremlin supporters, downplaying Russia's responsibility in the attacks and portraying the war as either a legitimate or a fake operation.

“Part of the Covid-scientific conspiracy sphere has clearly shifted to reporting on Ukraine,” told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “This is not surprising, because the disinformation environment is a vast veil wrapped around the hot topics of the moment.”

…same old stories

Demagog's Polish fact-checkers found that the overlap between Covid-19 and pro-Russian disinformation can be found not only in the sources, but also in the reuse of the same mechanisms used to shape and spread fake news.

For example, many conspiracy theorists claim that the pandemic was staged and the people in the hospitals were just actors. The same theory is now being applied to the conflict in Ukraine, which is also fictitious. To support this apparently unfounded idea, conspiracy theorists used out-of-context videos of actors made up to look wounded or presented real images of deserted streets in Kiev to show that the situation was actually calm. This narrative can be stretched to the extreme by claiming that the war is being organized only to hide a larger "plan" or to distract from something else, e.g. B. from the side effects of vaccines.

Another popular narrative used in both the Covid-19 and Ukraine hoaxes exploits real events – such as the rare actual cases of vaccine side effects or the presence of some Middle Eastern refugees at the Polish border together with thousands of Ukrainians – and exaggerates their actual frequency in order to manipulate the overall picture.

A third deceptive maneuver, popular in both situations, is to use videos and images that, although real, have nothing to do with the context with which they are associated, to convey false and potentially dangerous messages. A popular example used in the context of both the pandemic and war is a video showing a journalist reporting in front of several rows of (fake) body bags spread out in a public square. During the video, some of the bags begin to move, clearly showing that the people inside them are still alive.

Conspiracy theorists initially claimed that the bags were hiding Covid-19 victims and that the video showed that the pandemic was staged. After the conflict broke out, they changed their minds and used the video as if it depicted victims of the conflict The truth is that the footage is not related to any of these incidents: it was taken during a demonstration against climate change in Austria .

Recommended reading:: From the pandemic to war. New circumstances, same old disinformation

AFP also noted that the characters in these hoaxes remained the same. Bill Gates and George Soros are striking examples, as they were first accused of plotting the pandemic and are now accused of financing the Ukraine conflict.

The “Great Reset” is back

In Denmark, TjekDet found the same trend: Facebook groups and Twitter users known for spreading disinformation about Covid-19 are now directing the same efforts toward the war in Ukraine. But even on the same topic, the false reports spread can be very different. According to Kasper Grotle Rasmussen, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, conspiracy theorists agree that there is something wrong with the conflict in Ukraine and believe that the official authorities and the mainstream media are not telling the truth, but they differ Opinion about what exactly is wrong.

So pro-Russian disinformation can take different forms. On the one hand, it is claimed that Vladimir Putin is actually a savior who wants to free the world from the “real enemy,” the Western elites. On the other hand, there are also conspiracy theorists who claim that the entire conflict is just a “false flag” operation to impose a new world order. Until a few weeks ago, this “Great Reset” theory was used in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which also served to obscure a number of underlying, darker machinations.

“Characteristic of many Covid-skeptical theories is a lack of trust in the authorities and those in power, an attitude that runs counter to traditional attitudes and the idea of ​​'political correctness',” said TjekDet Rikke Peters, an associate professor at University College Lillebaelt. Even those who spread disinformation about the war “do not want to side with Ukraine because all experts and politicians and in general the Western mainstream are united in condemning Russia for the invasion and occupation of the country.”

Pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda

While we are not always able to say who is responsible for creating and spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine, it is certain that many of these narratives support Russian interests and correspond to Russian propaganda.

Some analysts noticed that a particularly large number of Twitter accounts that normally “like” tweets from the Russian government or Russian embassies were set up around February 24th, right at the start of the war, a coincidence that casts doubt on their actual status identity emerges. Timothy Graham, senior lecturer in digital media at the University of Queensland (Australia) and author of the analysis, concluded that “there is clearly a vast bot network that artificially inflates (likes) tweets from the Russian government and Russian embassies ')".

Since the start of the war, Russian embassies have repeatedly used their social media accounts to spread false news, which also circulated on disinformation channels. , the Russian Embassy in Geneva posted an image pointing to “US-funded biolabs in Ukraine” – a popular hoax that debunked ; or she claimed that images of Ukrainian pregnant women desperately fleeing the bombed Mariupol hospital were fake. The latter tweets, which were completely unfounded and malicious, were removed from Twitter .

Fact-checkers found that false or misleading stories about both the war and the pandemic are typically tailored to the context, interests and biases of different countries and audiences and then spread across all possible channels: social media, websites and even traditional media. Let's look at two specific situations analyzed by fact-checkers in Spain and Italy.

The role of Telegram channels in Spain

The overlap between Covid-19 and Ukraine conspiracy theorists has been observed in several European countries. In Spain, Maldita.es fact-checkers analyzed popular Telegram groups known for spreading false news about the pandemic and found that their main focus shifted to the war about a month ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine . Some of these channels have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, from Noticias Rafapal (140,000 subscribers as of March 16, 2022) to Quinta Columna (240,000).

These channels were known to fact-checkers as breeding grounds for conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, they all supported the “Plandemic” theory that circulated around the world in the second half of 2020 and claimed , that the Covid-19 pandemic was planned , that the virus was artificially created and that masks were terribly harmful. However, once war broke out in Ukraine, the supposed side effects of the vaccines and the virus's staged victims gave way to theories supporting pro-Russian propaganda.

In many cases, former spreaders of Covid-19 hoaxes on Telegram claim that the war in Ukraine is not really happening but is being staged, that the wounded we see in the rubble of destroyed cities are just actors and that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Nazi, a drug addict or a coward who left the country as quickly as possible.

recently presented a video from a film set in Birmingham (UK) showing people running and screaming, following the instructions of a director, as if the video had been shot during the war, which is then a fake were. Additionally, a digitally manipulated image was published on the same channel showing Zelensky wearing (in reality it bore the number “95”). Maldita.es analysis shows that in many of these Telegram groups, messages containing the word “Ukraine” are already more numerous than those containing the word “Plandemic”.

The Spanish fact-checkers at Verificat analyzed the trend and showed, for example, that the Catalan website El Darrer Far has also taken this route. She began her activities in June 2020 with a podcast about "Pizzagate" (a conspiracy theory about a network of child traffickers and pedophiles linked to Hillary Clinton and the US Democratic Party), but quickly pivoted to Covid-19 - with the message that vaccines are dangerous - and in recent weeks on the war in Ukraine, for example by spreading the false news that several US-funded biolabs are located in the country.

Italy: the case of Mag.24

The connection between Covid-19 and Ukraine disinformation doesn't stop at Telegram. In Italy, Facta fact-checkers analyzed well-known super-spreader of Covid-19 fake news, quickly moved away from pandemic conspiracies and focused on pro-Russian propaganda.

Even though the topic changed, the methods used to spread misinformation remained the same. Mag24.com uses catchy images coupled with few words, presented with bold fonts and colors and an overall polemical and captivating tone. These posts are then distributed across a wide network of Facebook pages, likely managed by the same group of people.

For example, in November, Mag24 published an article in which Italian scientist Ilaria Capua claimed on national television that they should act "as test subjects" without "complaining about it" (of course, Capua never said anything of the sort ). A few months later, in March, the website promoted a completely misleading interpretation of the image of a Ukrainian pregnant woman who escaped from the bombed-out Mariupol hospital. While the photo went around the world and became a symbol of the inhumanity of the conflict, Mag24 portrayed it as a staged event simply because the woman was a social media influencer before the war.

Through the many Facebook pages it controls, reaches a large audience by Italian standards: according to researchers at Carlo Bo University in Urbino, between January 2020 and November 2021, its networks published 5,447 posts per month, resulting in almost 7 million interactions.

Not everyone fell into the trap

Although the shift from pandemic to pro-Russian war disinformation is a trend seen in several European countries, emphasized that this should not be viewed as a fixed transition. Sometimes users who were once eager to spread fake news about Covid-19 are now focused on the Ukraine conflict, but instead of spreading conspiracies, they have chosen to condemn Russia's actions.

An example of this is the website Reitschuster.de, whose operator Boris Reitschuster previously questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine and is now criticizing Putin's actions. His followers did not welcome his new position, and as of February 24, he lost more than 25,000 subscribers on his Telegram channel (which had almost 320,000 members). A comment on an anti-Putin article said: “The worst story about the war I have ever read! You are biased and angry, stop writing about Russia and go back to Covid.”

Pro-Russian: possible reasons

The shift from pandemic to war-related conspiracy theories may be due to a variety of factors. First of all, the potential audience offered by such a dramatic event as a war on European soil is certainly attractive to disinformation spreaders, who may see it as an opportunity to increase their popularity. In the online ecosystem, this popularity can translate into economic benefits, so the spread of disinformation can also be motivated by economic gain.

Another reason could be the mechanics of the news cycle, which tends to follow a topic closely for a period of time and then quickly move on to the next. This is what happened with Covid-19, which monopolized public attention for about two years and is now giving way to war reporting.

Ulrike Schiesser from the Austrian Federal Office for Sect Issues also noted in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Kurier that the epidemiological situation in Europe has improved overall in recent months and that many governments are gradually lifting their restrictions. The anti-government demonstrators are running out of reasons for their complaints: “The restrictions have been lifted, and now even the vaccination requirement has been suspended. It seems that new ammunition is needed,” said Schiesser. The Russian invasion of Ukraine delivered exactly that.

According to Andre Wolf - a fake news expert who works for the Austrian fact-checking project Mimikama - Covid-19's rapid shift to pro-Russian conspiracies adopted by several disinformation spreaders should come as no surprise. “Putin has been serving the extremes in Europe for years,” he told the Kurier. Exploiting major events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine – misleadingly described – was obvious to Moscow and quickly manipulated into its own interests Propaganda was appropriate.

Conclusion

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the mainstream news cycle quickly shifted from reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic to covering the war. The same trend can be observed in the disinformation environment: users and channels that for years focused on spreading false or misleading information about vaccines and lockdowns have now pivoted - in most cases - to supporting pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda.

The narratives have been adapted to the new context: according to conspiracy theorists, for example, both the pandemic and the war were staged to distract our attention from a larger plan driven by Western elites (the grand disinformation theory of the “Great Reset”). Sometimes the actors remained the same, and overnight Bill Gates and George Soros switched from developing the Sars-CoV-2 virus to financing the conflict.

As a result, communities that have been most exposed to Covid-19 disinformation are now more likely to be the primary recipients of pro-Russian disinformation.

Although we do not know who is primarily responsible for creating and spreading fake news about Ukraine, it is clear that most of them support Russia's interests and adopt the main elements of Russian propaganda.

This content was originally written by Laura Loguercio and Tommaso Canetta and represents research results from the European fact-checking network EDMO .


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