The diplomatic spat between the Czech Republic and Russia has caused a massive surge in pro-Russian disinformation on Czech social media, according to experts monitoring fake news.
The dispute centres on accusations from the Czech Republic that Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was behind a 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot that killed two people.
Semantic Visions, a company that identifies potential disinformation based on the use of language patterns online, said pro-Kremlin propaganda and false narratives about the incident have replaced Covid-19 as the number one fake news target.
Czech authorities announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats on Saturday and Moscow retaliated the next day by expelling 20 Czechs, including the deputy ambassador.
By Sunday “the number of disinformation articles published about the GRU attack was more than three times greater than about Covid-19,” Semantic Visions said in a report.
The company, whose clients include the US State Department, monitors about 5,000 disinformation sources in the Czech Republic alone, and over a million worldwide.
The false narratives suddenly flooding the Czech online environment have ranged from conspiracy theories to fake quotes from Russian President Vladimir Putin debunked years ago.
One viral post claims that the Czechs blew up the depot themselves to cover up their arms shipments to the Islamic State group in Syria.
Others quote various “security experts” as saying that the Czech authorities have no proof that Russian secret services were involved.
Still others claim that Putin accused the United States and Europe of conspiring to reduce the world population and threatened retaliation.
The shift “indicates the emergence of an aggressive pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign aimed at deflecting blame from Russia and obscuring the truth about what really happened” with the arms depot, Semantic Visions said. (AFP)
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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