Warfakes (Война с фейками) is the title of a well-liked Russian Telegram channel on the centre of a whole community of associated channels that emerged within the opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Together with its English language web site, these channels current themselves as a community that debunks pretend information, in a well-known model of fact-checking web sites akin to PolitiFact.
They produce two dozen posts per day on common, the place the strategies of open-source intelligence (OSINT) are sometimes used to show the supposed untruths in media protection of the struggle. These posts are circulated broadly on Telegram in addition to different social media networks, particularly VKontakte. Warfakes symbolize a brand new sort of disinformation that we discuss with as participatory propaganda the place customers flow into weaponized OSINT, most notably together with the Russian state operatives. Right here’s how authors current themselves:
Welcome to the Warfare on Fakes venture. We’re the house owners and directors of a number of Russian non-political telegram channels. We don’t do politics. However we think about it essential to supply unbiased details about what is occurring in Ukraine and on the territories of Donbas, as a result of we see indicators of an data struggle launched towards Russia. Our mission is to make it possible for there are solely goal publications within the data house. We don’t want atypical individuals to really feel anxious and panicked due to data wars. We’re going to look into each pretend and provides hyperlinks to the actual refutations. Be secure, be at peace, be with us.
Contained in the Russian media bubble, debunking websites are simply as probably, or much more probably, to ‘bunk’ information that’s true as they’re to debunk pretend information. Whereas this additionally occurs continuously in broadcast tv, Telegram is the preferred pretend debunking medium, with the Warfakes channel with over 700k subscribers as its prime instance. Whereas the group behind Warfakes is unknown, its content material is systematically promoted by the Russian state through the Fb pages of overseas embassies and different Kremlin-sponsored cultural establishments. An in depth studying of the channels reveals them to constantly promote a lot of pro-Kremlin narratives below the guise of questioning sources and exposing obvious discrepancies in reporting.
Warfakes is the most important Russian Telegram channel in a complete style of different channels that ‘debunk’ struggle protection. In comparison with different social media, Telegram usually has a softer contact in the case of censoring content material – though this has begun to vary not too long ago. Telegram was developed by Pavel Durov after the Kremlin took over his earlier social community VKontakte. Telegram’s servers are situated within the Persian Gulf (after the KGB tried to take it over). Telegram has been known as a ‘darkish nook’ of the web (Rogers) resulting from its mild contact method to moderation. Finally, Telegram is an enormous platform (with a person base of 400M), which makes it laborious to generalize, because it helps all types of communities.
On Telegram there are a number of channels with comparable names, descriptions and content material, which make up a Warfakes community. The channels seem localized to audiences in particular areas together with Ukraine and Belarus and plenty of different smaller Russian-dominated cities and areas (akin to Rostov, Belgorod, Cuban, annexed Crimea, Voronizh, Samara, Republic of Kalmykia, Kirov, Khabarovsk area, Zabaykalie, Bashkotorstan and Republic of Sakha). With the primary Warfakes channel as its core, we recognized comparable channels as core clones. When itemizing these channels we seen two outstanding teams with the identical date of creation: 26 February 2022 and 1 March 2022.
Three ranges of fakeness
When conceptualizing participatory propaganda, the Warfakes Telegram community has three ranges of fakeness.
The primary stage is rhetorical, the place the positioning makes use of the rhetoric of fact-checking to establish ‘pretend’ data that’s normally not misinformation. This system is just not distinctive to Warfakes. The truth is, this can be a well-liked format on Russian TV as effectively and was utilized in a program referred to as Antifake as effectively. On Warfakes, the everyday rhetorical construction for ‘debunking’ is to flag information as pretend and to then counter it with the (pretend) fact, accompanied by an evidence and a visible. Since Telegram is a extra participatory medium than TV, Warfakes propaganda has a participatory flavour.
As such, the second stage of fakeness is aesthetic. A lot content material on Warfakes has a particular ‘investigative aesthetic’, the place pink circles are used to establish a picture as a supposed deep pretend, for instance. On Warfakes, the vernacular time period for utilizing investigative aesthetics to debunk pictures is named ‘creo’.
Eyal Weisman and Matthew Fuller talk about investigative aesthetics as a collective apply of utilizing open sources to provide actionable intelligence. They describe investigative aesthetics as ‘scraps of knowledge … compiled into methods, together with narrative constructions, that permit for his or her cross-checking and public presentation’. Warfakes appropriates the authority of investigative aesthetics to fabricate misinformation. One of the outstanding ‘investigative aesthetics’ operations, Bellingcat, entails a community of 60+ collaborators who’ve produced essential intelligence in the previous few years (the Russian involvement in 2018 Skripal poisoning, for instance). Judging from its model and excessive quantity of posts, Warfakes seems like it’s being produced by a decentralized community of open-source investigators. Nevertheless, we merely have no idea if that is so. It is also produced in a single workplace, akin to Saint Petersburg’s notorious Web Analysis Company. Both method, one factor is obvious: the content material produced right here promotes a pro-Kremin model of the struggle.
The third stage of fakeness at work within the case of Warfakes is the narrative. Via a means of qualitative information evaluation by educated coders, the highest 8% of essentially the most engaged with content material (141 of a complete of 1,731 posts) of the Warfakes core channel have been chosen (from the 24 February to the 20 March 2022). An in depth studying revealed 9 narratives (so as of highest frequency):
Denial of struggle crimes: towards civilians and civilian infrastructure
Blaming and accusing Ukrainians fakes/discrediting
Denial of failures and distress of the Russian military
Blaming and accusing of constructing up sanctions towards Russia
Denying mobilization of Russian individuals
Denying victories of the Ukrainian military
Discrediting President Vladymyr Zelenskij
Blaming and accusing Ukrainians of Nazism
Biolaboratories in Ukraine
We discovered that the preferred ‘debunked’ narratives have been concerning the Russian military’s worst atrocities in that interval: 1.) the missile assaults on a maternity home and kids’s hospital in Mariupol; 2.) the assault on a drama theatre in Mariupol; and three.) the killing of journalist Brent Renaud.
Three months after the primary evaluation we carried out the identical shut studying of a wider scope of 10% of essentially the most engaged content material and located 9 new narratives:
Deterioration of life on the planet due to Ukraine
Discrediting the Armed Forces of Ukraine
NATO help is ineffective and results in an even bigger struggle
Russians have an interest within the subject of ‘particular operations’ and/or assist it
Denial of assist for Ukraine by different nations or initiatives
Life below occupation is sweet and peaceable
European nations can’t be trusted
Russia is pleasant to refugees and residents of the occupied territories
Recognition of ‘LDNR’ as a authorized territory
In the course of the first three months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, denying struggle crimes and blaming Ukrainians for creating fakes have been the narratives that have been used most continuously. The debunking of the worst atrocities, such because the Bucha bloodbath, have been additionally the preferred.
State-sponsored propaganda
In the midst of analysing who reposted Warfakes content material, we discovered that from the 24 February till the 28 March, the director of the Data and Press Division of the MFA RF, Maria Zakharova, reposted Warfakes content material from her personal verified Telegram channel. The primary publish promoted waronfakes.com and the second was a repost of their ‘debunking’ of the Russian military’s bombing of the Mariupol maternity ward. Later we noticed that the Telegram channel of the Ministry of Defence of Russia made 264 mentions of Warfakes (as of 30 July 2022). Utilizing the Meta analysis software Crowdtangle, we investigated all mentions of the Warfakes Telegram channel on Fb. We discovered that the primary promoters of Warfakes content material have been Russian embassies and Russian homes of tradition, each of that are below the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of International Affairs. Every of those Fb pages had 9,800 subscribers on common, and every publish had an engagement charge from 1,482 to five.
Monitoring the Warfakes channel on Fb on the 22 March 2022 revealed that Russian households unfold posts to the next cities (so as of highest transference first): Sofia, Belgrade, Chisinau, Ankara, Beirut, Prague, Cairo, Athens, Zagreb, Romania, Skopje, Bishkek, Amman, New Delhi, Yerevan, Bratislava, Tunisia, Alexandria, Chennai, Podgorica, Vein, Brest and Dar es Salaam.
On the identical date, Russian embassies unfold the Warfakes channel on Fb to Bulgaria, Sweden, Macedonia, România, Slovenia, Laos, Denmark and Israel (highest transference first).
Participatory propaganda
Warfakes is a brand new type of propaganda that’s participatory, versus ‘conventional’ propaganda, which normally operates top-down. By definition, participatory propaganda is co-produced by customers to some extent. Whereas we have no idea who makes the content material on Telegram, a vital affordance of the medium is sharing. As such, a part of what makes this propaganda so profitable is the way it spreads, together with customers sharing the content material who might not agree with it.
Warfakes ought to be thought of within the broader context of the Russian disinformation technique. This may be traced again to Putin’s response to the UN-backed struggle in Libya and Maidan protests. With a view to keep away from his personal rebellion, state-sponsored affect operations have developed these new types of participatory propaganda.
Their technique is to create epistemological confusion that causes individuals to query the thought of goal fact. This advantages reactionary nationalistic narratives. Since Maidan, Russia’s army has developed a brand new ‘Gerasimov doctrine’ through which future wars would happen principally within the data house. Due to this fact, it appears cheap to take a position that Warfakes might in reality be a Russian army operation. Telegram’s possession tried to withstand state management previously, however the platform is being utilized by the Kremlin. We consider they need to take duty and take away the channels.
This text was based mostly on the findings of a venture executed through the Digital Strategies Winter Faculty, Amsterdam, 2022, and was first printed in Dispatches from Ukraine: Tactical media reflections and responses by the Institute of Community Cultures (INC).
Undertaking individuals embrace: Karyna Lazaruk and Marc Tuters (venture leaders), Borka Balogh, Marta Ceccarelli, Emillie de Keulenaar, Kiara Khorram, Devin Mitter, Son Nguyen, Stijn Peeters, Emilie Schwantzer, Cemal Tahir, Alexander Teggin, Yana Mashkova and Anton Mishchuk.
