Cybersecurity Firm Claims Russia Runs Campaign in Social Media to Affect EU Election

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2019) Russia is carrying out a misinformation campaign in social media in order to affect EU citizens' perception ahead of the upcoming European election, SafeGuard Cyber company that mainly aims at digital risk protection said.

"With this report, we set out to cast light on the framework that Russia is employing for social media misinformation operations in the European Union," the organization said in its report published on Tuesday stressing that Russia's activity is closely tied to EU Parliament elections that are to take place from May 23-26.

The report claimed that Russia is using such misinformation tactic as creating "bad actors" that include bots (fully automated entities), trolls (human actors with an aim to contort perception of certain content) and hybrids (also human actors that are using different accounts at the same time). The report stressed that Russia's main strategy is based on "amplifying existing content that is being created organically" instead of creating its own one. By doing so, Russia allegedly aims at deepening divisions in local societies and playing on social sore spots.

In addition, there is no common tactics against all the EU countries, Russia is tackling each member separately with an emphasis on inner socio-political tensions, the report claimed. For example, in Germany, the main weak points are immigration policy in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis and the rise of the AfD party.

As for France, it is the "yellow vest" protests. In case of the United Kingdom, it is, of course, Brexit.

The report examined 3.5 million posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube conducted from November 2018 to March 2019. The firm also used 155 fact-checking sites in 53 different languages. However, the data published included only a snapshot of 1-10 March 2019.

This month, Europe is bracing for the landmark European Union's parliamentary elections that will take place on May 23-26. All EU adult citizens are due to select those who are to represent them in the European Parliament.

Information warfare against Russia has become a popular theme in Western society in past years. In 2016, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution based on a report called "EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties" that specifically referred to Russian media outlets. The resolution claimed that Russia was allegedly providing opposition political parties and organizations in the EU member states with financial support, using bilateral interstate relations to divide the bloc.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that this resolution indicated an apparent degradation of the concept of democracy in Western society.