Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
108 lines (80 loc) · 12.7 KB

I00005.md

File metadata and controls

108 lines (80 loc) · 12.7 KB
Raw

Incident I00005: Brexit vote

  • Summary: In early 2014, then UK PM David Cameron outlined the changes he aimed to bring about in the EU and in the UK's relationship with it. These were: additional immigration controls, especially for citizens of new EU member states; tougher immigration rules for present EU citizens; new powers for national parliaments collectively to veto proposed EU laws; new free-trade agreements and a reduction in bureaucracy for businesses; a lessening of the influence of the European Court of Human Rights on British police and courts; more power for individual member states, and less for the central EU; and abandonment of the EU notion of "ever closer union".He intended to bring these about during a series of negotiations with other EU leaders and then, if re-elected, to announce a referendum. European Union Referendum Act was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It extended to include and take legislative effect in Gibraltar,and received royal assent on 17 December 2015.

Conservative-led Department for Culture, Media and Sport select committee concluded (2018) Russia engaged in ‘unconventional warfare’ during the Brexit campaign. This included ‘156,252 Russian accounts tweeting about #Brexit’ and posting ‘over 45,000 Brexit messages in the last 48 hours of the campaign.’ As it said, Kremlin-controlled media, ‘RT and Sputnik had more reach on Twitter for anti-EU content than either Vote Leave or Leave.EU, during the referendum campaign’.

The report by Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee, titled Putin’s asymmetric assault on democracy in Russia and Europe: implications for US national security, pinpoints the way in which UK campaign finance laws do not require disclosure of political donations if they are from “the beneficial owners of non-British companies that are incorporated in the EU and carry out business in the UK”.

The senators point out that Ukip and its then-leader, Nigel Farage, did not just fan anti-EU sentiment but also “criticised European sanctions on Russia, and provided flattering assessments of Russian President Putin”.

The report adds that although officially the Russian government asserted its neutrality on Brexit, its English-language media outlets RT and Sputnik covered the referendum campaign extensively and offered ‘’systematically one-sided coverage’’.

  • incident type: campaign

  • Year started: 2016

  • Countries: Russia , UK

  • Found via:

  • Date added: 2019-02-24

Technique Description given for this incident
T0007 Create fake Social Media Profiles / Pages / Groups IT00000011 Fake FB groups + dark content
T0010 Cultivate ignorant agents IT00000016 cultivate, manipulate, exploit useful idiots
T0018 Paid targeted ads IT00000010 Targeted FB paid ads
T0019 Generate information pollution IT00000014 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution
T0021 Memes IT00000023 Memes... anti-immigration; euroskepticism; fear, outrage, conspiracy narratives
T0029 Manipulate online polls IT00000013 manipulate social media "online polls"?
T0030 Backstop personas IT00000024 Backstop personas
T0031 YouTube IT00000017 YouTube; Reddit; LinkedIn; Pinterest; WhatsApp?
T0032 Reddit IT00000018 YouTube; Reddit; LinkedIn; Pinterest; WhatsApp?
T0034 LinkedIn IT00000019 YouTube; Reddit; LinkedIn; Pinterest; WhatsApp?
T0035 Pinterest IT00000020 YouTube; Reddit; LinkedIn; Pinterest; WhatsApp?
T0036 WhatsApp IT00000021 YouTube; Reddit; LinkedIn; Pinterest; WhatsApp?
T0046 Search Engine Optimization IT00000022 SEO optimisation/manipulation ("key words")
T0053 Twitter trolls amplify and manipulate IT00000009 Twitter trolls amplify & manipulate
T0054 Twitter bots amplify IT00000008 Twitter bots amplify & manipulate
T0056 Dedicated channels disseminate information pollution IT00000015 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution
T0057 Organise remote rallies and events IT00000012 Digital to physical "organize+promote" rallies & events?

DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW

Actor: Russia/ Internet Research Agency (IRA)

Timeframe: December 2015 - ongoing

Date: June 23, 2016

Presumed goals: Change Brexit vote to ‘leave’; continue to divide/undermine EU; drive Eurosceptic narrative/agenda

Method:

  • (From The European Values Think-Tank)
  • Before Brexit, Russia Today and Sputnik released more anti-EU articles than the official Vote Leave website and Leave.EU website. The British version of Sputnik has an annual budget of £ 1.8 million from the Russian government. Kremlin-owned channels potentially influenced 134 million impressions during the Brexit campaign
  • Method: The data that was used by 89up was derived from the Twitter Search API, Buzzsumo, the Facebook API and other scraping methods. In the timeframe from January 2016 to the day of the British referendum, analysts identified and analysed 261 of the most shared and popular articles that were clearly anti-European. The two main media outlets were RT and Sputnik. Costs: The total value of Kremlin media for the Leave campaign in the six months before the EU referendum was £1,353,000. The PR value for the Leave campaign, based on the 261 heavily pro-Leave articles published by RT and Sputnik, is estimated at nearly £1,500,000based on figures from a leading media monitoring tool. This excludes the significant social media value of these news articles. Estimated value of Russian media Facebook impressions is around $102,000 and the estimated value of Russian media’s potential impressions on Twitter is between $47,000 - $100,000.
  • Content: The analysis also shows that the overwhelming majority of articles published by RT and Sputnik (131 of the 200 most shared) were clearly for Leave; 59 articles were Neutral and only 10 were set to Remain. When the neutral articles are filtered out, numbers show that the negative articles of RT/Sputnik, together, elicited nearly the same number of engagements as the official Vote Leave website.
  • Social reach: The report shows the social reach of these anti-EU articles published by the Kremlin-owned channels was 134 million potential impressions, in comparison with a total social reach of just 33 million and 11 million potential impressions for all content shared from the Vote Leave website and Leave.EU website respectively.
  • (Jane Mayer, staff writer at The New Yorker, via NPR) Role of - Cambridge Analytica, which is a big data company that worked for the Trump campaign in the end - and it was owned principally by one of Trump's largest backers, Robert Mercer - was also involved in helping the early stages of the Brexit campaign in England. And the man who spanned both countries and pushed for both, really, was Steve Bannon, it seems there was actually a lot of Russian money offered to Arron Banks, who was one of the major political figures leading the Brexit campaign. The Russian money was offered to him in the form of business opportunities and gold mines and diamond mines by the Russian ambassador to England. So there seems to be financial incentives that were dangled.
  • There are bots and trolls and posts that are coming from the same Russian Internet agency in St. Petersburg. So in both countries, we see pushing Brexit and pushing Trump at the same time by the same trolls and bots. research conducted by a joint team of experts from the University of California at Berkeley and Swansea University reportedly identified 150,000 Twitter accounts with various Russian ties that disseminated messages about Brexit.
  • A cache of posts from 2016, seen by WIRED, shows how a coordinated network of Russian-based Twitter accounts spread racial hatred in an attempt to disrupt politics in the UK and Europe. A network of accounts posted pro and anti-Brexit, anti-immigration and racist tweets around the EU referendum vote while also targeting posts in response to terrorist attacks across the continent.
  • More broadly, a Russian espionage operation funneling money into a political campaign aimed at unwinding European integration would be entirely consistent with the Kremlin’s perceived political interests and tactics of hybrid warfare. Covert financial infiltration is part of a toolkit Moscow uses to interfere in European and American politics. Another tool deployed ahead of the 2016 referendum was pro-Brexit messaging pumped out by RT, Sputnik, and the Internet Research Agency.
  • From 1 to 8 February 2016, Sputnik ran 14 stories on the “Brexit” issue. Eight of them had negative headlines, either featuring criticism of the deal or focusing on the difficulties Cameron faces; five headlines were broadly factual; one reported a positive comment that the Bank of England had “not yet seen” an impact on investor sentiment, but gave it a negative slant by headlining, “Bank of England on Brexit: No need to panic, yet.” (The word “panic” did not appear in the story.) Not one headline reported reactions supporting the deal. Both Sputnik and RT quoted a disproportionate number of reactions from “Out” campaigners. RT, for example, quoted five “Out” partisans: MP Liam Fox; the founder of Leave.EU; London Mayor Boris Johnson; MEP Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party; and UKIP member Paul Nuttall.
  • anti-immigrant adverts were targeted at Facebook users in the UK and the US. One – headlined “You’re not the only one to despise immigration”, which cost 4,884 roubles (£58) and received 4,055 views – was placed in January 2016. Another, which accused immigrants of stealing jobs, cost 5,514 roubles and received 14,396 impressions
  • A study of social media during the Brexit campaign by 89Up, a consultancy, found that Russian bots delivered 10m potential Twitter impressions—about a third of the number generated by the Vote Leave campaign’s Twitter account. Such echoing amplifies the effect of RT and Sputnik stories, which are in general not much watched.

Counters: FB & Twitter content take-downs

Related incidents:

  • 2016 US Election… pick ‘em

References: