The fake news pandemic in Latin America

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening if you’re in London, although as dark as it is, I have to say it’s been this dark since three o’clock today, it’s wintertime, in the UK. Thank you for all joining us. We’re going to discuss an important and underdiscussed topic, but one that’s getting a lot more attention lately, and that is the issue of dis and misinformation in Latin America. Now, obviously, this is a threat in the United States, mostly from social media, but increasingly in Latin America we see, in the case of China, the growth of a number of state media institutions like Xinhua or People’s Daily that also have Twitter accounts.

We also see, in the case of Russian state media, there’s Sputnik Mundo, there’s Russia Today, both of which have Spanish language services. Russia Today is actually, in fact, on your television in your cable package if you want to watch it when you get cable in most countries in Latin America. To what extent are the state media beginning to reinforce messages that promote state objectives in informing Latin American citizens? In what ways are they trying to soe division or promote a particular image of their countries, in particular, in the last two years, with the COVID pandemic and the response?

I’m delighted to say we have three great – four great panellists here to talk about it, three of them to talk about Latin America, and Orysia, my colleague, to talk about what’s being done and how what we see in Latin America compares to what is happening with Russian disinformation in her home country of the Ukraine. And let me introduce the panellists, and a little bit about some of the work they’ve done most recently.

Guy Mentel is the Executive Director of Global Americans. He just completed a report that worked with groups, universities and NGOs in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. Argentina also covered the countries of Chile and Peru, that looked at the issues of primarily Chinese media and its efforts at disinformation and state propaganda, primarily around the COVID-19 pandemic, but also included an analysis of Russian disinformation. Guy is also a graduate of Georgetown University and a graduate of Georgetown University Law School, and is a Former Adviser to Senator Tim Kaine in the US Senate.

Juan Pablo Cardenal is with CADAL. He is a Spanish Journalist, he served for ten years as a Journalist in China, covering China closely. He’s now an Associate Researcher at – in CADAL in Argentina and focuses primarily on Russian disinformation, but also on Chinese disinformation, and he’s the co-author of a report in the National Endowment for Democracy, he’s a co-author with Christopher Wilson called Sharp Power, an important report that’s worth looking at.

Mariana Palau is currently at Oxford University, she’s a Journalist. She’s been a Correspondent with The Economist, she’s written for foreign policy, and she just published an article with Americas Quarterly, looking at the issue of disinformation in Brazil. That article’s called Inside Brazil’s Disinformation and Battle Over Fake News.

And then Orysia Lutsevych is a Research Fellow, she’s a Director of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House. Before that, she was an Academy Fellow at Chatham House, and had come before that from Ukrainian civil society.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to run this a little bit more of a diverse style. I’m going to pose questions to all of the speakers about the specific reports and their analysis on the countries they examine, patterns they’ve noticed, both in terms of the messages as well as the way they target them, but in – across this, I’m going to bring in Orysia to talk a little bit about what she’s experienced and seen in the case of the Ukraine and Russia’s efforts at disinformation there.

What I’d like to say, too, is this is on the record, it’s being recorded, and when we will have a little bit of time, a fair amount of time I hope, for discussion at the end, I will ask all of you to put your questions in the Q&A box, and then I’ll call on you and you can unmute yourself and ask the question in person. If you don’t want to be called on, just let me know and I can read your question to you, but be ready to hit your unmute button at the right time. I try to save as much time in keeping the unmute button ready for when we call on people.

So, Guy, let me ask you the question first. You have this report, and let me also say, in terms of – in the interests of self-promotion and reading, all of these reports I’m referencing, Sharp Power, the report by Global Americans, the article by Mariana, and also Orysia’s examination of resilience in the Ukraine, are going to be available on the chat link, the chat box, with their links, and you can download them and read them for yourselves. Guy, give me a sense of what you’ve seen in this really pan-regional study on Chinese and Russian disinformation, the patterns and the messages that they were promoting, and what you’ve detected, any differences across those countries. Guy?

Guy Mentel

Yeah, so, many thanks, Chris, for the question and for the privilege of joining my distinguished co-panellists here, including our partner and friend, Juan Pablo Cardenal, who was such an important part of our newly released Global Americans report on disinformation. Juan Pablo was particularly instrumental in the Southern Cone element of that report.

So, our report was driven by research questions that we believed were largely unaddressed in the current literature, namely how misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda were disseminated in Latin America by foreign state media, and then how they were, in turn, consumed by Latin American audiences. And so, through this work, we have gained what we believe is a comparative regionwide perspective on disinformation and its impact on Latin America and the Caribbean, which we believe is actually the first of its kind by way of studies, in both depth and scope.

So, over the course of the past 16 months, Global Americans has formed across regional network to detect, monitor, and evaluate state media and the way in which foreign state media and their agents produce and spread misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. And, as Chris mentioned, we’ve worked with four local counterpart organisations, CADAL in Buenos Aires, Medianálisis in Caracas, Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, and Tec de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, to identify and report on traditional and social media agents engaged in disinformation and then to monitor their efforts to influence civil society, the media, and policymakers in Latin America. And so, we think, through this study, we have covered, to a great deal, the extent, nature, and objectives of foreign state media, and the targets of those disinformation campaigns as they exist, across population subgroups, including how information is spread, wittingly and unwittingly, across a number of topics of choice.

And so, I think getting quickly at a very high level, and I’m sure we’ll have time to unpack this later on, to some of the findings, I think one of the essential findings of our work is that the engines of mis and disinformation, rather than creating social dysfunction out of nothing, actually reflect and amplify pre-existing social fault lines. And I think actually that’s where misinformation’s biggest impact lies in the realm of public policy, because there’s no doubt we’ve seen a rising tide of misinformation and disinformation around the world in recent years as Chris alluded to, particularly as internet access and social media consumption have become all the more ubiquitous.

At Global Americans, we’ve seen it most pointedly in the context of the COVID pandemic where the surge of misinformation really intensified in the initial stages around the widespread use of scientifically unproven and potentially lethal remedies, and then again, kind of at a second level, to fuel the race for and impact of vaccine diplomacy. And so, the cost here as we saw it was real, it’s measured and measurable, and can be measured, at least in some cases, in human lives, and so two of the biggest culprits, if you will, in terms of what our study revealed, were China and Russia, and Chinese and Russian state media in particular.

And so, what we found across the entire hemisphere was that while the disinformation landscape varies throughout the hemisphere from country-to-country, based in part on the idiosyncrasies of the information environments in each country, there were clear similarities that transcended national borders. And I think the primary of that was a sustained effort by non-democratic governments, namely China and Russia, but also, to a lesser extent, Cuba and Venezuela, to seize control of major domestic and regional socio-political and economic trends, and then attempt to bend them in favour of their own geopolitical agenda. We found that China, Russia, and other undemocratic actors were active in promoting disinformation and propaganda throughout Latin America via their state sponsor and media channels, though the degree and scope of those efforts varied from country-to-country.

And then in terms of the outlets that were most active, our reviews showed that Russia Today, Telesur, Sputnik Mundo, and Xinhua Español were the most active state media platforms and they were most frequently engaging with their audiences via Twitter and Facebook outside of the traditional media. I’ll let Juan Pablo, I think, tackle the Sharp Power element, I’m sure he’ll touch upon it, but that was another big finding of our report which, again, as it turned out, Juan Pablo Cardenal has coined. We looked at Sharp Power in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, as well as Peru, and we broadly defined it as a phenomenon used by non-democratic regimes seeking to attract, distract, and manipulate audiences in democratic countries through communications outlets, cultural centres, and global learning institutes. And so, we found actually that many state-owned companies from China and Russia and other such undemocratic countries, because those outlets lack transparency as part of a – kind of, a central aspect of their communications strategy, that actually helps them to camouflage the full range of their activities.

Again, in terms of just really high-level findings before I pass it onto some of our colleagues here, we found that Chinese and Russian disinformation and propaganda efforts were disproportionately concentrated on the Matic targets that lie at the intersection of democratic fault lines, designed to inflame local political rifts, to promote likeminded and often non-democratic local forces. And then more broadly just to portray China and Russia as, sort of, benevolent partners and alternatives to the US throughout the region.

I think there was a slight distinction, we found, in terms of Chinese messaging and Russian messaging, which was Chinese messaging overwhelmingly focused on portraying itself as an alternative to the US and as a benevolent economic, if not ideological, partner in the hemisphere, whereas Russian messaging, in part because Russia lacks the means to properly court deeper commercial opportunities in Latin America, its disinformation strategy was overwhelmingly focused on broadly disrupting the social order and political stability at a national level, which we saw in Colombia and Chile, to known US allies. And in an effort to gain new friends that would preferably be disinclined to the US in the hope of expanding their geopolitical influence.

Again, that’s somewhat distinct from what we saw with China. Again, the world’s second largest economy, a major trading partner throughout the region, that was really not only looking at these social cleavages, but also promoting itself as an important foreign investor and as a benevolent hegemon, if you will, that conserves an alternative dominant international power in the current international system.

And I’ll close maybe by just saying that we saw – though COVID was our primary, kind of, thematic vehicle by which we understood the themes, the actors, and the tactics at play, I think the goal of disinformation campaigns broadly, we found, was to sow scepticism and distrust in institutions in a way that plays on divisiveness, anger, and longstanding distrust in democratic processes and institutions. So there is an attempt to effectively flood the system with so many narratives, though at times those narratives are deliberately promoting one thing or the other, but to flood the system with so many narratives that it becomes difficult to discern what is true and what is fiction, and in that way to sow distrust about democratic processes and institutions. So, with that…

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Great.

Guy Mentel

…I think I’ve talked ears off, so I’ll turn it over to you.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

That’s okay. It’s true, though. So you’re ready, ‘cause I’m going to ask you questions later, not now. One is to what extent those messages are having an impact, having resonance in certain populations, and to what extent we should be worried about it.

Mariana, you don’t – in your article, you don’t talk about Russia and Chinese media, you see the threat primarily as just disinformation generally. Give us a sense of what’s driving that in Brazil, and if – even in Brazil-focused or Brazil-generated disinformation, it follows among the same patterns that Guy discussed.

Mariana Palau

Yeah, absolutely, and I think – I actually think, from my reporting, that Brazil’s got probably the worst problem of disinformation in the whole of Latin America, and I think that this is a domestic issue. I think that, you know, any kind of Chinese or other foreign state campaigns of disinformation, any kind of impact that they have, actually gets flooded out by the insane amount of disinformation that is domestically produced in Brazil. And I must say that it is mostly Bolsonaro supporters, the Bolsonaristas, who are spreading fake news in Brazil, that’s what I found in my reporting.

Before I get exactly into how and what they are doing and the impact it’s having in the country, I, kind of, need – want you to understand two factors of why disinformation has taken off in Brazil, right? So, the first factor is that Brazil is a very polarised society, it’s had, kind of, a very traumatic decade, right? It saw an economic boom in the early 2000s, and in the early 2010s, it – that boom was gone, right? So Brazilians were poor, they were angry, we also saw the Dilma Rousseff impeachment trial and we saw the Lava Jato investigation, and those were hugely polarising events that kind of sowed an anti-establishment feeling among Brazilians, right? And I’m mentioning polarisation because it’s very important, I mean, without polarisation, disinformation does not thrive, it’s that one ingredient that disinformation needs.

The other thing that you need to take into account, the other factor, is that Brazil’s got very high levels of social media usage, right? So, only Filipinos spend more time on social media than Brazil and that is actually very important because, you know, as Brazilians started to take social media and to sign up for social media en masse, they also transferred that frustration that I just talked to online, so it migrated online, there was, like, this digital frustration, that’s what I call it.

And then to this scenario, this combination of these two things, comes Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, and he is the person who knows, and his supporters as well, including his sons, they really know how to stir up that digital frustration in their favour, so that he is elected, right? So one of my sources, for example, cites a quote that I think summarises really well this whole Jair Bolsonaro persona as, like, he knows exactly what words to say to play the algorithm,” right? He says the most outrageous things; he is loud. He has his own YouTube channel. He questions Brazilian politics all the time, you know, he insults women, he insults the LGBTQ community, he is – he knows how to get the attention, right?

It must be said that there’s reason to believe that the spread of disinformation that is pro-Bolsonaro and that is very damaging to the opponents of Bolsonaro, there’s reason to believe that it is not necessarily organic, right, because it most of the time happens in a very small timeframe. So, within minutes of Bolsonaro saying something, social media will explode with messages that have the same wording, the same images, the same kind of message, so this leads us to believe that there’s some kind of co-ordinated effort behind this.

Also, you know, there’s this rumour about this famous hate Cabinet going on, which basically is supposed to be a office full of some kind of figure of employees creating fake news and disseminating it, right, and that’s currently now being investigated. We don’t know for sure that it’s true, but there’s enough of a suspicion for some entities within the government to actually start an investigation.

I’d like to say that, for example, I think – once Bolsonaro took power, I think the worst of the fake news pandemic, as I called it, has started or basically, fake news and disinformation has become a worse phenomenon, has worsened, since the pandemic started, because that’s when, in my opinion, you saw the Brazilian authorities being more blatant about the lies that they spread. And so they were saying, for example, that ivermectin worked as a cure against COVID, and Bolsonaro himself posted videos online saying that there was this cure against COVID. He said, jokingly of course, but, you know, some people take this seriously, that vaccines could turn people into crocodiles, you know, he’s kind of insinuated that China purposefully created this vaccine. Eduardo Bolsonaro, his son, they’ve all contributed to these, you know, attacks on China, so I find it very interesting that, you know, this domestic production of fake news actually targets China, as well.

The other piece of disinformation that I find very worrying is that lately, as polls have come in showing that Bolsonaro has fallen behind his opponents in next year’s election, he’s come out to actually attack Brazil’s electoral system, and, you know, if there’s something that Brazilians are proud of, it’s their electoral system, it actually works really well. But he’s questioned the machines, the voter machines. He said that they can be rigged, they can be tampered with, and that if he loses, he will – and it’s basically because there’s been a fraud, and that’s sowing a lot of mistrust in the electoral system and Brazil’s institutions, and that is very worrying for a democracy.

But, yeah, in summary, you know, this is a very domestic phenomenon. I – from my reporting, I was actually shocked by how it is the authorities themselves are spreading some blatant and outrageous and just, you know, lies that go too far. In Brazil, the authorities seem to be behind that. I’m Colombian and I compare it to Colombia, of course, and while I do believe that President Iván Duque, for example, has lied in his speeches, he’s never gone this far. So, yeah, in conclusion, I think, you know, this is a very worrisome case, but it’s also a very domestically produced case and a very polarised society, and this is a very politicised subject, as well.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Okay. Mariana, I’m going to come back to you with a question in a little bit, but just to give you a, sort of, précis of the question, I raise this often with a certain amount of concern. I don’t want to sound like I’m some sort of character out of Dr Strangelove claiming that there are Russians behind everywhere and it’s fluoride in the drinking water, but to what extent does this, sort of, lay the groundwork for the, sort of, more insidious messages and efforts of Russia? But hold that thought, I want to turn to Juan Pablo Cardenal.

What are your thoughts, Juan Pablo, the study – you have a vast experience in this in many different capacities, but in this particular study with Global Americans, you looked at Argentina, Chile and Peru. Are there differences within those, that subset of countries, are there differences, and if so how and then how are they being received in those individual countries?

Juan Pablo Cardenal

Thank you, Chris, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my views with the audience. If you – if I may, I would like to add up on the remarks made by Guy on specifically what are the Chinese state media doing in Argentina, Chile, and Peru, and I would argue that also throughout the region, because I think it’s quite relevant what I’m going to explain.

I want to touch on the two key official narratives that have been passed along by the Chinese state media during the past 18 months or so, is a narrative of the vaccines on the one hand, and on the other, the narrative of the eradication of poverty in China, because both are based on data or on arguments that I myself consider either propaganda, if not clearly misinformation or fake information.

Let me explain. The vaccines. The vaccines. The – I mean, the state media has been very pushy in presenting the Chinese vaccines and that was in the past spring, when different countries were developing those vaccines, trying to portray or to present the Chinese vaccines as effective and safe. And to do that, the practices or the techniques that they use in their reporting coverage was for producing short information on that, cherry-picking on the information that would favour the kind of narrative that they want to pass along, using hundreds if not thousands of quotes and testimonies of international personalities that allegedly had showed some kind of support for those vaccines, and even criticising the effectiveness and the safety of the Western vaccines, also using very selective information.

But the truth is that the only evidence that would prove this effectiveness and safety of the Chinese vaccines was never mentioned, which is – what I’m talking about is the breakdown of the Phase III trials, that they never published and therefore they were not able to be scrutinised by the international scientific community. So, the – in my view, the key element that allowed them to build this narrative was – raises very clear doubts because of what I see this as information that we – that it’s not been contrasted and therefore I don’t think we can think it’s reliable information.

Despite that, they – this idea of effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines allowed China to pass along a narrative of China being a scientific and technological power, a generous and responsible country, offering the vaccine to a world in need, of course wrapped – all this idea wrapped up in this rhetoric of corporation, friendship, donations, help, very much focused in Latin America and generally speaking, in – I mean, focused for developing world audiences. And the Chinese coverage and the Chinese diplomacy builds this narrative of – I mean, relates all this effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine to the success of the Chinese model, you know, it’s the superior values of its model, the efficiency to manage the COVID-19 crisis, etc., and of course the credit of all of this goes to the CCP.

The second narrative, related to what I’ve just said, because it ends up in the same place, is the narrative to eradicate poverty in China, which is – when it was fading away the narrative of the developing of the vaccine, we started to see increasingly more and more this other narrative about the eradication of poverty. This is also a good example of how you can manipulate the data to reach conclusions that allow you to disseminate the narrative that you want, right? And, basically, what they did is they said, “Well, China has eradicated poverty because there’s no Chinese people living with less than $2.25 US a day.” And they said the poverty line for the World Bank is 1.9, and therefore, in China, nobody’s living under $2.25 a day, but this is a very manipulated data because this is the poverty line for low-income countries,. And World Bank considers China a medium to high income country, therefore the poverty line for those countries, for that category, should be 5.5. If we give credit to this criteria of the World Bank, then experts say that China would have at least 13% or over 200 million living under the poverty line.

But more than that, the – China’s Vice President, Li Keqiang, only a year and a half ago, declared that 600 million Chinese was living – are living with 1,000 yuan a month, that translates into $5.13 a day. If we take that figure, official figure, into account, then it would mean that almost half of the Chinese population would be living under the poverty line. However – so that’s, I think, a very good example of how you can build this narrative, using data that has been manipulated to show this achievement, and of course relate this achievement to the fact that the Chinese model is – has superior values and is more effective than democracies, okay?

I’m just finishing, Chris, but those two examples to say – I mean, so how is China disseminating those narratives in the three countries that I researched on, or I would say in the whole region? First, as you were saying, through the Spanish editions of the state-run media, second, through the network of allies or diffusers, both institutions and individuals, who disseminate Beijing’s official views in their networks. We’re talking about people and institution that are ‘outright voices’ because of their previous knowledge or exposure to China. Many of them have been part, in fact, of China’s elite capture programme, and most of them are Journalists, Scholars, Politicians, or former Diplomats.

The third way to disseminate those narratives are through the social networks of the Chinese embassies in Peru, Argentina and Chile, who were created by the way – the Twitter accounts were created in December, between December 2019 and March 2020. This is exactly in the precise moment that China launched a propaganda campaign to allude their responsibility because of the COVID crisis, and I have to say that during those months, according to what they publish in their accounts, they’ve been very active, and I would say very sharp in the wording, counteracting any criticism by public figures or by local media through their Twitter accounts.

The fourth channel is through the local media in Peru, Argentina, and Chile, that pick up on those narratives because they have some kind of ideological or political proximity to China, to the CCP, or to what China represents, or also media that have or have had past relationship with China, for instance, I’m talking about state news agencies who signed corporation agreements with Chinese media, for example, like med – content sharing agreements and things like that.

And finally, the – a surprising way in which I thought all these narratives are being disseminated are through the very famous inserts in local media, which seems something like, kind of, old because we’ve seen that for many years. But what I thought that it was different is that through this China media group, we’ve seen a lot of inserts in the websites of the most influential media in Chile, Argentina and Peru, but what is different now is that you cannot – unless you have the – you look properly and you have the experience, because the style and the format of the websites, those inserts look as if they were normal information. You know, so if you – unless you have the knowledge or you are used to read certain things related to China, it is very difficult for the audiences to discriminate if this is propaganda or paid insertions or if it’s news, and I thought that was relevant. Also with the fact that the most relevant media in those three countries that are also very relevant, very independent, and very influential in the whole region, they were all willing to publish those instructions. Thank you.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

But just saying, of course, in the United States, there are laws that require you to label the paid content as paid content, and also, you know, demonstrate in some way, in terms of a different style, different font, and the like, but, you know, I’m wondering if this is a reflection of the financial difficulties that a number of media are experiencing.

Orysia, how does this compare to what you see in Ukraine based on Russia, and, you know, what are the – I mean, really, Ukraine is at the frontlines of this, so what do you think is the risks, in some of these cases, or are there not? Is there – and what can – how – what can be done?

Orysia Lutsevych

Well, thanks, Chris, thanks for inviting me. I’m really interested in observing, you know, the key trends because in a way, Ukraine, like you say, is – on one hand, it’s a frontline, and the other it has been laboratory of testing these kinds of disinfo measures for Russia, since I would argue 2004/5. So, we have been exposed and radiated by the disinformation for now more than a decade. I think it’s important to understand that in case of Ukraine, in particular, Russia is not just a sharp power, it’s a diesel power, because as a result of the conflict, we have – you know, we’re 15,000 people who are dead and the country has been chopped and part – lost part of its territory and part of its, you know, nation.

So, in the – with the case of Russia, it’s involved in a full spectrum warfare, and I think it’s important to see disinformation as part of that warfare because it has been in a way ideologically conceptualised by people in the military, so it’s not benevolent information. Of course, the goals and targets vis-à-vis Ukraine and vis-à-vis Latin America, Argentina, or any other country, would vary, but you clearly see some similarities, for example, one is dissuade Western presence, US presence in particular. In Ukrainian case, the current war is portrayed as a proxy war by the United States against Russia. So, Ukraine has no agency in this narrative, and it’s simply anti-Russians as an American strategy, and we see some of these narratives in Latin America against the United States, so there’s one similarity.

But, of course, another similarity is what Guy was saying about deepening this cleavages. I mean, no society is free of conflict. We are not ants, right, speaking of Karl Popper. We do have conflicts and it’s normal. Democracy is here to mediate the conflict, while Russia, what it does is looks for these fault lines against conservative and liberal anti-vax, pro-vax, anti-US, pro-Russia, and it’s trying to cut the divisions deeper.

Also, it’s to turn people in the Russian narratives, in the interpretation of geopolitics and global affairs. If you look at narratives on MH17, for example, the tragedy of the downing of the civilian aircraft over Ukrainian territory, all this disinformation narratives are here to convince people of the Russian reading of the world and of the news. You also have very strong efforts to undermine trust in the authorities in general, in statehood, to say that these people are not capable of running the country. They would, you know, say, okay, they are corrupt, look, they would blame actually COVID now. The Ukraine has quite spiking rate, that they did not accept Russian vaccine because Russian vaccine, for example, is not licenced in Ukraine, so one of the narratives is, “Oh, it’s because they refused Russian vaccine.” And it’s – we see some of these narratives, they’re quite adaptive and they’re quite creative.

This is, you know, in a way why its danger is, so, for example, when you would see more people turning into Ukrainian language content, they would migrate into this content, not necessarily using Russian language, but masking it. Or they would say – they would overblow the issues of poverty and economic suffering, which, you know, in all – in many of our countries, people struggle economically, so they would exploit and they would create wrong connections between why there is economic suffering, actually. They would not talk that there is more of Russia in Ukraine and that’s why there is economic suffering, they would blame Soros, for example, or IMF for economic suffering, so they completely distort reality.

And maybe just to say a few words, what could be useful from Ukrainian experience encountering this malaise or this danger, it’s a real toxicity, you know, in the media environment. So, Ukraine tried different things. So one effort, when Russia invaded Crimean, annexed Crimean, there was open conflict, was actually to ban Russian state media. It was a controversial decision that some people criticised with the [inaudible – 38:59] freedom of media, and we had this discourse in Ukraine, but there was a list of specific state-run sites of CR1 and others that were banned from Ukrainian media space.

Then Ukrainians banned Russian-owned social media, three years after that. What we have seen after, that a lot of people migrated to Facebook. So now Facebook became more toxic than previously, but also, a lot of people use VPN to still access Russian social platforms, but the traffic to those platforms, such as VKontakte, for example, OdnoKlassniki, decreased.

The last step was taken actually this year and this is more related to Ukraine own registered Russian affiliated TV channels, and some of them were banned, and US, for example, supported this move, Europe was a bit more cautious. But the argument was that these new outlets, and there was track record of spreading not just propaganda or some Russian view, but blunt disinformation about vaccines, about IMF, about President Zelensky. And what we see that now they migrated into YouTube, but the audience is very small. If you go today to see how many people are watching them on YouTube, it’s in hundreds, it’s not in millions like it was before. So that’s one strategy. You can argue with it, but this is what Ukraine is doing.

Another one is, of course, the factchecking and debunking, and it is viewed to be effective on the kind of shaming and blaming, pointing to the source of disinformation, but obviously it’s not enough. And what we see now is a strong effort to build capacity of media, and this is where I think we should focus because, for example, only 59% Ukrainians believe that there is independent media. So this disinformation drives trust to media, all kind of media, fact-based media, propaganda media, disinformation media, and I think that one of the responses has to be to build a good independent media.

And just to mention one more thing, it’s explaining the dangers of disinformation and having discussions in public forums with citizens because, for example, in the South East of Ukraine, which is right next to the conflict line, 45% deny threat of Russian propaganda. So even in Ukraine you can imagine how people are losing trust because of the low trust society into everything and anything, and this is very dangerous for democracy. And that’s why I think, in the end, just to say, that non-consolidated democracies like Ukraine and imperfect democracies like some countries in Latin America, have to get their house in order, and that’s why, you know, I think co-operation between civil society, state, private sector, has to be about building resilience and that actually means critical thinking of our citizens. It’s some hygiene in media space, and it’s effective governance because why this disinformation thrives is because we cannot get good services to citizens, so that they find an enemy within to blame for all their evils. Thank you.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

That’s fantastic, Orysia, thank you very much, and that’s great, and it’s a good reminder, too, that, you know, the seeds of division, that disinformation, whether it’s homegrown or whether it’s coming from Russia or China, you know, that soil is often made more fertile because of existing divisions and failings of dem – of Politicians and corruption and that sense that, you know, people lose hope and so they’re willing to believe in anything. And so part of the answer lies in cleaning up your own institutions, your own practices, addressing issues of division within.

Now, I posed a number of questions to all of you, but we’re running out of time, we have a number of questions here, so what I’m going to do is pose those questions, and if we have time we’ll go back to mine. Brentley Nicholson, you want me to read your question, so I’m going to read that, and then afterwards, I’m going to go to John Paul Rosario, I’m going to have you ask your question on live, so get ready to unmute yourself, then Trisha, I’m going to have you read your question, as well. But let’s – I’m going to read Brentley’s first.

“Guy, you mentioned potential Chinese and Russian disinformational ties to Chile and Colombia in recent years. Do we have an account of links between China, Russia, and more regionally Venezuela and Cuba and the October 2019 protests? The frontrunner is in Chi – Sunday’s Chilean elections, but from the populist fringes, which is surprising for a country with a post-dictatorial tradition of centrism. Can we draw a straight line through all of this, Russia, China, October 2019, [inaudible – 43:53], and is there – and a potential, sort of, populist Presidential cycle or both?” So I’ll leave that – also, Juan Pablo, I’d like you to address that, as well, but Jua – before you answer that, let me see if, John Paul, are you off mute that you can ask your question [pause]? And an awkward silence. Let me go to Trisha. Trisha, do you have – are you off mute that you can ask your question [pause]? And another awkward silence. Oh, John Paul, I see you’re live here, so why don’t you go ahead and ask a question?

John Paul Rosario

Chris, can you hear me okay?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

I can hear you fine.

John Paul Rosario

Right. Hey, I know we’ve been talking about China and Russia here, but I’d also like to know how much the activities of Conservatives from the United States, and I use the word ‘Conservative’ guardedly, have further muddied the waters down there, particularly with respect to the upcoming elections in Brazil? There have been a number of articles in The New York Times about this recently, and I’d just like the – like to hear some comments about it.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

It’s a good question. I agree with you about you don’t want to really – I mean, they’re not really Conservatives, in many ways, they’re asking for state intervention, in a lot of ways, but, Mariana, I’ll go to you with that question and then, Trisha, you have a question, do you want to unmute yourself? There we go.

Trisha de Borchgrave

Yes, hi, can you hear me?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Yeah, yeah.

Trisha de Borchgrave

Yeah, okay, just to quickly say that when you ask us to unmute, sometimes we’re not given the tool, so we’re sitting here waiting for that unmute to happen so we can do it, but just a very quick aside there, sorry about that. We’re not actually trying not to talk.

So, for me, it was just – you know, I think it’s really fascinating what everybody is saying and the commonality between countries where this – these kinds of tactics are being employed for disinformation and everything else. My question is on Brazil because I – it’s very confusing, I think, for us outside Brazil and maybe for Brazilians themselves to wade through that – all that kind of in – disinformation, especially when it comes to things like corruption, and to try and understand, you know, just exactly how clean or corrupt were – for me personally just wanting to know how clean or corrupt were Lula and Dilma Rousseff. Because with Dilma Rousseff, I have read and I’ve talked to people saying that it was the, sort of, existing systems of corruption that targeted individuals through anticorruption narratives to bring someone like Rousseff down, perhaps, you know, and this is very – I don’t mean to be rude, but maybe it was her incompetence, but not her corruption. And I read a lot of people disagree with me on this, so I just wanted to ask how easy is it to know whether Lula was relatively clean, as was Rousseff, I read that he had an apartment given to him, but it wasn’t, I hate to say it, a big deal compared to all the other thievery that goes on. So, how easy is it for Brazilians to understand how clean or corrupt their leaders are? Thank you so much.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Great, thank you, Trisha. So, let’s go to that, and then let me reinforce the questions that I asked earlier, sort of, differences, and then the long-term effects on democracy. You know, Orysia, obviously Ukraine has a much more recent experience of this, but, you know, are these warning signs, and, Mariana, your sense of to what extent, you know, these could provide – what you see in Brazil could provide a good wipe opportunity for Russia, if you’re planning a – sort of, this sorts of things?

And then, again, the questions we heard, the Chilean protests, the Colombian protests, how much were Nicaragua and Venezuela involved, the issue of, you know, how do we suss out how corrupt some of these people are? You know, in – this is I think generally true, is that the mania over anticorruption has, sort of, lost a sense of perspective, is this being fuelled by mis and disinformation? Sort – well, I will say in the United States case that that certainly has been the case, as well, and then John Paul’s question about the United States. So, let’s go in somewhat reverse order. Orysia, I’m going to still end with you ‘cause you, sort of, have – you’re going to back clean up on this because I think Ukraine is, sort of, interesting as a comparison case, so Juan Pablo, I’m going to go to you first.

Juan Pablo Cardenal

Okay. I’m going to answer Brentley’s question, if that’s okay? Well, straight answer is, can we draw a straight line through all of this? My answer would be no. I think that on the one hand, regarding all these social tensions and conflicts and violence in Chile, I think we can make a big difference about the coverage of the Chinese and the Russian, you know. Even if there – I mean, the Russian – in the same way, the Russian state media, in the same way that the vaccines were a great opportunity to increase their influence in Latin America and to promote a strong Russia in a multipolar world, etc., they used what happened in Chile to pass along all those narratives that are in line with Moscow’s will to discredit the West and Western allies and Western institution and values.

So, it was an opportunity to highlight the political dysfunctionalities of a democratic country like Chile, it’s about highlighting the crisis of capitalism, episodes of racism, and – or even episodes related to the elites and to fire up all those local tensions. And in fact, it was, kind of, surprising to me to see that they were connecting things in that coverage of the tensions in Chile that not necessarily have to be connected, so at the same time, you would see the coverage of those social tensions and violence in Chile, that, of course, they were described as a social chaos and they put a lot of effort in highlighting the police violence in a similar way to what happened in the US, for instance. But also in – they would connect that to the protests and the conflict and the violence with the Mapuche Indians, for instance, which are – technically are not related, right? But they would also connect that to the national referendum on the new constitution and they would even connect that to the 47th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup d’état, right? So it’s kind of mixed, and it gave Russia’s state media the opportunity to use this – to use Chile as exactly the best example to make up a media coverage that would be in line with Russia’s geopolitical interests, basically.

But if – that’s one thing, but drawing the line on what Brentley was saying, that if we can connect – what was it, like if China and Russia would somehow had an impact in all this [inaudible – 51:49] and all of that, honestly, I wouldn’t go that far, but that’s only my opinion.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

I’ll just say Global Americans published a piece by a Doug Farrar that looked at the, sort of, Twitter messages coming from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, did seem to – there was a sense that some of the – those were repeated and retweeted by protesters in Chile and Colombia. But again, the issue, as we said before, is that this is – and that’s not to take away from the legitimacy of the protests. It may have added fuel to the fire, but people were legitimately and understandably upset with the lack of social mobility, the lack of effective social services, and that’s important to keep in mind. Mariana, your reactions both to the question from Trisha on corruption, how do we untangle that, but also other elements about your study and about our discussion.

Mariana Palau

Okay. So, Trisha, the really short answer is that it is really difficult because there is so much information about corruption in Brazil. Like, corruption has become a major issue in Brazil and everyone is talking about it and everyone is producing information about it, and so it’s very difficult to actually understand what is true or not. I think that something that further blurred reality, was this, kind of, celebrity status that the Lava Jato investigators, kind of, gained for some reason, because at the beginning, they actually did produce some very interesting results. Like, I think 170-something people were – Politicians, actually, were actually jailed in Brazil and they actually managed to recover money that was paid in bribes, and in contracts that were not fairly allocated.

So, at the beginning, it did have this really powerful role, but my understanding is that, you know, the main justice – or the main Judge in the investigation, Sergio Moro, wasn’t exactly as impartial as we thought he would be, right, and we saw that with the example that you were mentioning about Bolsonaro, or, sorry, Lula being jailed for 12 years for receiving an apartment that I understand he never really used. So, in a sense, you know, I believe that this glorified vision of Lava Jato has further blurred Brazilians’ view about the truth about corruption in their country, and, you know, there is a lot of corruption in Brazil, but I think Brazilians have a bit of a distorted idea of where the corruption is actually located and how it actually takes place.

But, look, my recommendation to actually, kind of, understand what’s happening here, of course because I’m a Journalist and because I write for these publications, you know, the – Americas Quarterly is really good at the analysis and telling you what is going on in Brazil, and so is The Economist. So, I’m recommending my own publications here, but I agree, it’s very, very difficult to actually know what corruption actually looks like in Brazil.

With respect to – hang on, let me – okay, so, John Paul, you mentioned – I’m guessing you’re referring to Donald Trump Junior’s visit to Brazil. Yeah, I think, you know, these meetings and these links with these American Conservative figures are very meaningful and have a very big impact in Brazil, and basically – so, some of you might know that, you know, the Bolsonaro family actually has ties with the Trump family, you know, it started with Steve Bannon, they’re actually apparently close. And Bolsonaro has actually taken some of the strategies from Trump’s playbook in disseminating fake news and lying and confusing people, especially when it comes to elections. And just to make it really clear, this is something that I find very worrying because what I believe is that the Americans’ visit to Brazil are actually amplifying these messages that Bolsonaro himself is coming out to say, that there’s reason to doubt the election outcomes next year.

That’s incredibly worrying because I think it comes in a very complicated time because Bolsonaro has said that the only thing that can remove him from power is God, right? And there’s actually a lot of talk in Brazil about Bolsonaro staging a coup, and, you know, this – I don’t want you to think that this is a coup, you know, the typical coup that we’re used to with army tanks out on the streets and soldiers taking over Congress and the courts. Nobody thinks that it’s going to happen that way. Rather what people suspect and experts in Brazil suspect is going to happen is Bolsonaro’s going to use social media and disinformation to, kind of, incite violence, and, you know – and then the question is what are the armed forces going to do about that, what is the army going to do? Are they going to support Bolsonaro? There’s – we don’t really know what’s happening within the army, if the Generals support Bolsonaro or not. There’s reason to believe that they would actually not support a coup, but then there’s a question about the police, especially, for example, Rio de Janeiro’s police, like, they’re really supportive of Bolsonaro, so we don’t know what will happen in this chaos that we think – I mean, I would be surprised if next year there isn’t any chaos should Bolsonaro lose the elections, I’m going to be honest with you. But the question is what will happen after that, and we’ll have to see how strong Brazilian institutions are in that case.

So, in conclusion…

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Let’s…

Mariana Palau

…I think – yeah?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

On that negative note, let’s leave it there ‘cause we’re running out of time and I want to – I’ll just say, Trisha, also to answer your question, Lava Jato exposed $2 billion worth of corruption. In comparison, the apartment that Lula had is small peanuts or is – given the country, small Brazil nuts.

Guy, couple of reactions, including about the way – in your report, you talk about how the Colombian protestors, a lot of them were – the Russian fake news were feeding them talking points, so if we touch on that very quickly, and then we’ll have Orysia, sort of, give her reflections on this.

Guy Mentel

Yeah, very happy to keep it relatively concise, and, Chris, start waving your arms if I’m going too long, but in response to Brentley’s question, our Colombia team, which was Universidad del Rosario, found an uptick in Russian state media activity during these social protests. And so they found that there was, in fact, a significant increase in posts in November of 2019 and September of 2020, during which time Russian state media exhibited these sorts of peaks of activity, which coincided with social protests, and a lot of the messaging there highlighted the shortcomings of Colombian democratic institutions, the Colombian economic model, citizen repression and violation of human rights by the public forces. And also Venezuelan and Cuban, the community found that the Venezuelan and Cuban messaging was more or less much the same, and there was this desire to improve the image of their governments and their respective revolutions on the international stage by discrediting democratic nations and by discrediting the Colombian model.

And one super quick point that I want to add before we close here is that I think part of the problem is that disinformation has by and large worked with little repercussions in the hemisphere and so we talked – I mentioned a little bit in my opening comments, and I know Orysia did as well, about the fact that these are – there are these underlying social cleavages that are very exploitable. But I think there’s also a lack of real repercussions, whether it’s in Mexico, where political parties use bots and fake accounts, ahead of the 2018 and 2021 elections, in Peru we saw a disinformation campaign by the runner-up of that recent election, we saw it in Nicaragua. And so I think what we’ve seen is that as political disinformation campaigns have become alarmingly commonplace in the region, the government officials benefiting from them and at times backing them have become all the more brazen. And so I think part of the conversation needs to touch upon the fact that major platforms are now de facto public squares of the national conversation, and, as they are entrenched in that role, they’re able to earn a profit on the basis of real-world social relationships and ought to be held accountable.

And so, one of the things that we callout in our reports and as we’ve engaged with Journalists and advocacy groups is that one of the best ways to do that is this process of naming and shaming, and when we say naming and shaming, we mean not just pointing to misinformation and disinformation as it exists, but also the public figures who are benefiting from it and who do nothing and thereby condone it. And so we have to increase collectively their cost of inaction and, as Orysia mentioned, it will take a whole of civil society effort from think tanks like ours, Chatham House, and all of the other people on this panel, to really educate and callout these trends because, sadly, they’re not going away anytime soon.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you, Guy, thank you for a very concise and very powerful thought. Orysia, and your thoughts, you know, what can we learn?

Orysia Lutsevych

Yes.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Resilience was your report, can we be more…

Orysia Lutsevych

Well…

Dr Christopher Sabatini

…resilient, how can we?

Orysia Lutsevych

…I think it’s, first of all, it’s important to acknowledge that this is the war for the heart and minds. This is what it is. Unfortunately, in the case of Ukraine, Russians had to also deploy artillery because it could not coerce Ukraine into its vision, but it’s still trying, it’s not giving up. So, these softer deployments in Latin America are here to get mind and hearts and this division that you all described on one hand autocracies, on the other hand, you have some consolidated democracies that are also feeling the strain, but in the middle, you have an array of countries that struggle to consolidate their democracy. So, the strand is very damaging, you know, I think our societies would be able to deal without internal conflict easier, I’m not saying it will be very easy, but if you have somebody putting oil to fire, that doesn’t help.

What also helps in the case of Ukraine is when you have state and civil society taking it seriously. I mean, at the beginning of the war, it was mostly civil society ringing alarm bells as they was disorganised. Now you have more and more understanding, that state and civil society has to work together around it and to work both on supply, you know, of this, and on demand, and on demand it’s very difficult work. It’s not the silver bullet, it’s about media literacy, it’s about critical thinking, and it’s about demystifying governments. I think a lot of people have mystified understanding of what the state is and it’s so easy to do disinformation, so these are some of the lessons from Ukraine, but I also think there was more growing interest of China in Ukraine, as well. We could learn also from you, so it’s been fascinating discussion.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you very much, that’s a great conclusion, and I think it’s a good way to point out, too, that, again, these are divisions and these are questions about the weaknesses of democracies and societies themselves that deserve attention, and not to always pin the blame on those who are fanning the flames, but recognise maybe these problems that they’re exploiting are homegrown.

So, thank you all very much, I hope we can continue this conversation. I hope we can deepen it into other countries, into other regions, as well, because I think it is a shared problem, again reflects common problems in democracies that even the United States is experiencing, that reflect even, sort of, issues of disinformation that are also homegrown, and augmented maybe by connections with the United States, in the case of Brazil, and so, you know, I think it’s a conversation that has to continue. So I want to thank all of you.

I want to thank Lauren Cornwall who helped pull this together. She also put all of the reports in the chatline, the links to them. I’d like to thank her for doing that on time ‘cause I remember when I used to teach at Columbia, if I posted my lecture notes before the class, my students would only read the lecture notes and never come to class. So I want to thank her for doing it in a very timely manner, so that no-one just took the links and ran off and didn’t pay attention. So, thank you all very much, let’s continue this conversation. Bye, bye everyone, have a good night.

Orysia Lutsevych

Thank you, bye.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Goodbye.

Mariana Palau

Bye.