Disinformation

With growing efforts to curb climate change and the introduction of new environmental requirements for agriculture, misinformation about these issues is also on the rise. Both social media disinformers and populist politicians are exploiting the topic, mainly by spreading fear that farmers will be unable to meet these requirements, supposedly leading to food shortages. Why are such messages becoming increasingly widespread?

Russian-speaking Latvians should be pitted against Ukrainian refugees, while convincing others that confrontation with Russia leads to poverty. These plans were revealed in recently leaked documents from the Social Design Agency (SDA) — one of the commercialised “troll factories” that worked on behalf of the Kremlin. Latvia is the only Baltic state for which documents are found in this dataset. The planners of the information operations expressed disappointment in Latvia’s Russian speakers for being too negative in their reaction to Russia’s invasion. They called for using social media to build momentum, eventually leading to real-life action.