Tag Archive for: Pandemic

After Covid-19 Volume 3: Voices from federal parliament

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For this volume of ASPI’s After Covid-19 series, we asked Australia’s federal parliamentarians to consider the world after the crisis and discuss policy and solutions that could drive Australian prosperity through one of the most difficult periods in living memory. The 49 contributions in this volume are the authentic voices of our elected representatives.

For policymakers, this volume offers a window into thinking from all sides of the House of Representatives and Senate, providing insights to inform their work in creating further policy in service of the Australian public. For the broader public, this is an opportunity to see policy fleshed out by politicians on their own terms and engage with policy thinking that isn’t often seen on the front pages of major news outlets.

Covid-19 Disinformation & Social Media Manipulation

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Arange of actors are manipulating the information environment to exploit the COVID-19 crisis for strategic gain. ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre is tracking many of these state and non-state actors online, and will occasionally publish investigative, data-driven reporting that will focus on the use of disinformation, propaganda, extremist narratives and conspiracy theories by these actors.

The bulk of ASPI’s data analysis uses our in-house Influence Tracker tool – a machine learning and data analytics capability that draws out insights from multi-language social media datasets. This new tool can ingest data in multiple languages and auto-translate, producing insights on topics, sentiment, shared content, influential accounts, metrics of impact and posting patterns.

The reports are listed in chronological order:

#10: Attempted influence in disguise

This report builds from a Twitter network take-down announced on 8 October 2020 and attributed by Twitter as an Iranian state-linked information operation. Just over 100 accounts were suspended for violations of Twitter’s platform manipulation policies. This case study provides an overview of how to extrapolate from Twitter’s take-down dataset to identify persistent accounts on the periphery of the network. It provides observations on the operating mechanisms and impact of the cluster of accounts, characterising their traits as activist, media and hobbyist personas. The purpose of the case study is to provide a guide on how to use transparency datasets as a means of identifying ongoing inauthentic activity.

#9: Covid-19 and the reach of pro-Kremlin messaging

This research investigation examines Russia’s efforts to manipulate the information environment during the coronavirus crisis. It leverages data from the European External Action Service’s East StratCom Task Force, which, through its EUvsDisinfo project, tracks pro-Kremlin messages spreading in the EU and Eastern Partnership countries. Using this open-source repository of pro-Kremlin disinformation, in combination with OSINT investigative techniques that track links between online entities, we analyse the narratives being seeded about COVID-19 and map the social media accounts spreading those messages.

We found that the key subjects of the Kremlin’s messaging focused on the EU, NATO, Bill Gates, George Soros, the World Health Organization (WHO), the US and Ukraine. Narratives included well-trodden conspiracies about the source of the coronavirus, the development and testing of a potential vaccine, the impact on the EU’s institutions, the EU’s slow response to the virus and Ukraine’s new president. We also found that Facebook groups were a powerful hub for the spread of some of those messages.

27 Oct 2020

#8: Viral videos: Covid-19, China and inauthentic influence on Facebook

For the latest report in our series on Covid-19 disinformation, we’ve investigated ongoing inauthentic activity on Facebook and YouTube. This activity uses both English and Chinese language content to present narratives that support the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These narratives span a range of topics, including assertions of corruption and incompetence in the Trump administration, the US Government’s decision to ban TikTok, the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, and the ongoing tensions in the US–China relationship. A major theme, and the focus of this report, is criticism of how the US broadly, and the Trump administration in particular, are handling the Covid-19 crisis on both the domestic and the global levels.

29 Sept 2020

#7: Possible inauthentic activity promoting the Epoch Times and Truth Media targets Australians on Facebook

This ASPI ICPC report investigates a Facebook page which appears to be using coordinated, inauthentic tactics to target Australian users with content linked to The Epoch Times and other media groups. This includes running paid advertisements, as well as systematically seeding content into Australian Facebook groups for minority communities, hobbyists and conspiracy theories. Inauthentic and covert efforts to shape political opinions have no place in an open democratic society.

This report has been edited to delete references to a Facebook page entitled ‘May the Truth Be With You’. ASPI advises that, to the best of the Institute’s knowledge, the Facebook page has no connection with the other entities mentioned in this edited report.

Revised: 10 Dec 2021

#6: Pro-Russian vaccine politics drives new disinformation narratives

This latest report in our series on COVID-19 disinformation and social media manipulation investigates vaccine disinformation emerging – the day after Russia announced plans to mass-produce its own vaccine – from Eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russian media ecosystem.

We identify how a false narrative about a vaccination trial that never happened was seeded into the information environment by a pro-Russian militia media outlet, laundered through pro-Russian English language alternative news websites, and permeated anti-vaccination social media groups in multiple languages, ultimately completely decontextualised from its origins.

The report provides a case study of how these narratives ripple across international social media networks, including into a prominent Australian anti-vaccination Facebook group.

The successful transfer of this completely fictional narrative reflects a broader shift across the disinformation space. As international focus moves from the initial response to the pandemic towards the race for a vaccine, with all of the complex geopolitical interests that entails, political disinformation is moving on from the origins of the virus to vaccine politics.

24 Aug 2020

#5 Automating influence operations on Covid-19: Chinese speaking actors targeting US audiences

Automating influence on Covid-19 looks at how Chinese-speaking actors are attempting to target US-based audiences on Facebook and Twitter across key narratives including amplifying criticisms of the US’s handling of Covid-19, emphasising racial divisions, and political and personal scandals linked to President Donald Trump.

This new report investigates a campaign of cross-platform inauthentic activity that relies on a high-degree of automation and is broadly in alignment with the political goal of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to denigrate the standing of the US. The campaign appears to be targeted primarily at Western and US-based audiences by artificially boosting legitimate media and social media content in order to amplify divisive or negative narratives about the US.

04 Aug 2020

#4 ID2020, Bill Gates and the Mark of the Beast: how Covid-19 catalyses existing online conspiracy movements

Against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 pandemic, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has become the subject of a diverse and rapidly expanding universe of conspiracy theories. This report takes a close look at a particular variant of the Gates conspiracy theories, which is referred to here as the ID2020 conspiracy (named after the non-profit ID2020 Alliance, which the conspiracy theorists claim has a role in the narrative), as a case study for examining the dynamics of online conspiracy theories on Covid-19. Like many conspiracy theories, that narrative builds on legitimate concerns, in this case about privacy and surveillance in the context of digital identity systems, and distorts them in extreme and unfounded ways. Among the many conspiracy theories now surrounding Gates, this one is particularly worthy of attention because it highlights the way emergent events catalyse existing online conspiracy substrates. In times of crisis, these digital structures—the online communities, the content, the shaping of recommendation algorithms—serve to channel anxious, uncertain individuals towards conspiratorial beliefs. This report focuses primarily on the role and use of those digital structures in proliferating the ID2020 conspiracy.

25 June 2020

#3 Retweeting through the Great Firewall: A persistent and undeterred threat actor

This report analyses a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook.

This activity largely targeted Chinese-speaking audiences outside of the Chinese mainland (where Twitter is blocked) with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues, including the Hong Kong protests, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and, to a lesser extent Covid-19 and Taiwan. Extrapolating from the takedown dataset, to which we had advanced access, given to us by Twitter, we have identified that this operation continues and has pivoted to try to weaponise the US Government’s response to current domestic protests and create the perception of a moral equivalence with the suppression of protests in Hong Kong.

11 June 2020

#2. Covid-19 attracts patriotic troll campaigns in support of China’s geopolitical interests

This new research highlights the growing significance and impact of Chinese non-state actors on western social media platforms. Across March and April 2020, this loosely coordinated pro-China trolling campaign on Twitter has:

  • Harassed and mimicked western media outlets
  • Impersonated Taiwanese users in an effort to undermine Taiwan’s position with the World Health Organisation (WHO
  • Spread false information about the Covid-19 outbreak
  • Joined in pre-existing inauthentic social media campaigns

23 April 2020

#1. Covid-19 disinformation and social media manipulation trends

Includes case studies on:

  • Chinese state-sponsored messaging on Twitter
  • Coordinated anti-Taiwan trolling: WHO & #saysrytoTedros
  • Russian Covid-19 disinformation in Africa

8-15 April 2020

After Covid-19: Australia and the world rebuild (Volume 1)

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This Strategy report offers policy-focused analysis of the world we will face once the pandemic has passed. At a time when all our assumptions about the shape of Australian society and the broader global order are being challenged, we need to take stock of likely future directions.

The report analyses 26 key topics, countries and themes, ranging from Australia’s domestic situation through to the global balance of power, climate and technology issues. In each case we asked the authors to consider four questions. What impact did Covid-19 have on their research topic? What will recovery mean? Will there be differences in future? What policy prescriptions would you recommend for the Australian government?

Webinar

Some of the report authors discussing their chapters here…

After COVID 19. Chapter summary

Tag Archive for: Pandemic

Policy, Guns and Money: Continuity and change in warfare and lessons from the pandemic

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In this week’s episode, ASPI’s Ulas Yildirim speaks with Professor Beatrice Heuser, chair of international relations at the University of Glasgow, about continuity and change in war. Heuser this week delivered the 2022 J.G. Grey Oration at the Australian War College. She and Yildirim discuss her oration message, that we need to rethink many of our longstanding beliefs about warfare.

Next, it’s a cardinal question: what have we actually learned from two and a half years of the Covid-19 pandemic? Everyone agrees that the next biothreat is a matter of when, not if, but what are the future dangers and how prepared are we to face them? To explore these questions and more, ASPI’s Jasmine Latimore speaks with Associate Professor David Heslop from the University of New South Wales’ School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

Editors’ picks for 2020: ‘Australian call for Covid-19 inquiry like Brutus knifing Caesar: China’s deputy ambassador’

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Originally published 26 August 2020.

China’s deputy ambassador says Australia’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 was like a knife in the feelings of the Chinese people.

In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Wang Xining made clear the depth of frustration in Beijing that Australia had pushed for an inquiry into the virus, linking it to the parlous state of bilateral relations and the trade spat between the two countries.

Asked about the accusations of economic coercion levelled at China after Ambassador Cheng Jingye said that Chinese consumers may lose their taste for Australian wine and beef, among other things, Wang maintained the position that anti-dumping inquiries were purely technical.

Unprompted, Wang said Australia’s push for an inquiry was ‘approximately identical to Julius Caesar in his final day when he saw Brutus approaching him. “Et tu, Brute?”’

China, Wang said, was ‘singled out’ in late April by Australia at a time when the US was trying to put pressure on China to hide the US’s own failings—indicating there is at least a suspicion in Beijing that Australia and the US acted in concert.

‘We believe this proposal was targeted against China alone, because during that time Australian ministers claimed that the virus originated from Wuhan, from China. And they did not pinpoint any other places as a possible origin, possible source …

‘The Australian government never consulted the Chinese government in whatever way before the proposal came out. We don’t think it conforms to the spirit of comprehensive strategic partnership and it lacks the least courtesy and diplomacy …

‘More importantly, it hurts the feelings of the Chinese people … All of a sudden, they heard this shocking news of a proposal coming from Australia, which is supposed to be a good friend of China.’

Australia, however, was not under any obligation to consult China on the proposed investigation, which came about in cabinet discussions and was announced by Foreign Minister Marise Payne on 19 April.

Wang was emphatic that the inquiry that was ultimately agreed to by World Health Organization members bears no resemblance to the investigation proposed by Australia because it ‘is not targeted exclusively against any country, not guided towards the origin of the virus only’.

And while the virus may have first been detected in Wuhan, the deputy ambassador said ‘patient zero is not necessarily found among the first cluster of coronavirus cases’.

China has been working on nine vaccine candidates, Wang said. But there have been reports that it will seek to tie access to any vaccine it develops for the disease to reciprocal action, such as diplomatic recognition of its claims in the South China Sea. After noting there had already been cases of ‘emergency’ use of vaccine candidates in China, Wang said that while his government had committed to making any successful vaccine available globally, ‘we need to negotiate and have consultations with other countries to see how this public good will be applied to people around the world’.

In his prepared remarks, Wang was keen to emphasise the potential for continued expansion in Australia–China trade, which has grown from $10 billion to $235 billion a year in the past two decades.

He outlined the huge growth in bilateral investment and in the tourism and higher education markets, two sectors that have been under huge pressure from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic—but that were also put in the spotlight by Wang’s boss in Canberra when he said Chinese tourists and students might have ‘second thoughts’ about coming to Australia.

A vow that China would open up further to foreign investment also came with a warning that hinted at Beijing’s ongoing displeasure with Australia’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G network and again indicated that Beijing thinks there are external influences driving Australian policy.

‘I also hope Australia will remain high on the list [of country rankings for business openness], not to be dragged down for pushing foreign business or investment away on account of ill-founded and in many cases imported assertions of security breach, IP infringement and forced technology transfer.’

Wang denied that Australian ministers have been given the cold shoulder when trying to resolve the trade issues on barley, beef and wine that have come up since Canberra’s call for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

While Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has said that he has made multiple requests to speak with his Chinese counterpart, as recently as last week, Wang said that no such request had been received.

On the broader trends that have also caused tension in the bilateral relationship, Wang said several times that China does not interfere in the affairs of other countries, distinguishing between interference and influence.

He added that maintaining a good relationship means showing ‘respect’ for a country’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and legal systems—not-so-subtle nods to Australia’s recent rejection of China’s claims in the South China Sea, criticism of Beijing’s imposition of its national security law in Hong Kong, and suspension (along with a number of other countries) of the Australia–Hong Kong extradition treaty.

Wang may not have directly answered questions about exactly how Australia can make its way out of the diplomatic deep-freeze with China, but in describing what he called shadows over the bilateral relationship, he left less than a shadow of doubt as to why it’s ended up there.

On top of the compounding decisions that have irked Beijing on foreign interference legislation, 5G networks, Hong Kong, the US alliance and more, Australia’s push for an independent inquiry to establish the origin of the worst pandemic in a century is what’s riled China the most.

Tag Archive for: Pandemic

Michael Shoebridge on the end of lockdown in Wuhan

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After 76 days, the lockdown of Wuhan in China has come to an end.

ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge discusses the ramifications of this decision with Tim Lester on 7 News.