Recent DOJ Action Targets Russian Information Operation at Centre of ISD Research

04/09/2024

Today, the US Justice Department announced that it has disrupted a Russian influence campaign known as Doppelgänger, which the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has researched extensively since 2022, for interfering in the upcoming US election. 

The US alleges that in the information operation — Doppelganger — Russia used influencers, AI-generated content, advertisements, and social media to drive people to domains that impersonated legitimate news outlets to promote pro-Kremlin narratives. In total, the DOJ seized 32 domains, while the Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on 10 individuals and two entities for their role in “Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 US presidential election.” 

“While the impact of individual pieces of propaganda is usually minimal, the overall objective for these state-backed actors and others is to deepen divisions around issues that could be decisive in November’s election,” said Melanie Smith, ISD’s Director of Research for Information Operations. 

ISD has long followed pro-Kremlin influence operations. We were among the first to publish findings on Doppelganger with our 2022 report on the network and have continually investigated and researched this campaign. Just a few months ago, following US sanctions of companies involved in the campaign, we published a report that tied a fringe advertising company to the campaign. This tangled web of actors highlights how state operations are increasingly outsourced to third party contractors. In 2022, we investigated how Russian state media RT was able to disseminate its propaganda despite an EU-wide ban and also found that the website’s content was still widely available, oftentimes word for word, on other sites. 

It is no secret Russia has been actively exploiting the murky information environments in many countries. Their campaigns often seize on polarizing issues and news events in attempts to portray Western democracies as unstable, hypocritical and chaotic. We saw information operations intensify in the lead-up to the German elections, with Russia amplifying far-left, far-right, and pro-Kremlin voices to discredit democratic institutions. Russia’s actions are part of a broader trend of foreign information manipulation, seen not just in the US but globally, with efforts from countries like Iran and China as well.  

For more ISD research on these topics, visit our disinformation hub on our website. If you are a journalist and want to speak to one of our experts on this subject, please do not hesitate to reach out to [email protected]. 

 

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