Case Studies

Using the Life Cycle of Media Manipulation, each case study features a chronological description of a media manipulation event, which is filtered along specific variables such as tactics, targets, mitigation, outcomes, and keywords.

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Keyword

Tactic

Target

Mitigation

Manipulator Adaptation

Network Terrain

Attribution

Outcome

Vulnerabilities

Strategy

Dueling Information Campaigns: The War Over the Narrative in Tigray

After military conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in November, 2020, two contesting narratives designed to influence international understanding of the conflict emerged, playing out largely on Twitter. Based on several months of data collection and mixed methods research, we trace the tactics of the two key online communities participating in these outward-facing advocacy campaigns: the Ethiopian government and its supporters, and Tigrayan activists and their supporters.

Copypasta

Impersonation

Viral sloganeering

Astroturfing: How Hijacked Accounts and Dark Public Relations Faked Support for China's Response to COVID-19

In 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a network of Twitter accounts that had previously posted narratives friendly to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) switched their messaging to focus on the pandemic, attempting to portray government actions in response to the pandemic in a more positive light. The accounts, many of which exhibited the hallmarks of automation and inauthenticity, were also linked to a public relations firm in China.

Bots

Copypasta

Hijacked accounts