文章基本信息

标题：Connectivity Between Russian Information Sources and Extremist Communities Across Social Media Platforms
本地全文：下载
作者：Rhys Leahy ; Nicholas Johnson Restrepo ; Richard Sear 等
期刊名称：Frontiers in Political Science
电子版ISSN：2673-3145
出版年度：2022
卷号：4
DOI：10.3389/fpos.2022.885362
语种：English
出版社：Frontiers Media S.A.
摘要：The current military conflict between Russia and Ukraine is accompanied by disinformation and propaganda within the digital ecosystem of social media platforms and online news sources. One month prior to the conflict's February 2022 start, a Special Report by the U.S. Department of State had already highlighted concern about the extent to which Kremlin-funded media were feeding the online disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. Here we address a closely related issue: how Russian information sources feed into online extremist communities. Specifically, we present a preliminary study of how the sector of the online ecosystem involving extremist communities interconnects within and across social media platforms, and how it connects into such official information sources. Our focus here is on Russian domains, European Nationalists, and American White Supremacists. Though necessarily very limited in scope, our study goes beyond many existing works that focus on Twitter, by instead considering platforms such as VKontakte, Telegram, and Gab. Our findings can help shed light on the scope and impact of state-sponsored foreign influence operations. Our study also highlights the need to develop a detailed map of the full multi-platform ecosystem in order to better inform discussions aimed at countering violent extremism.