Global Engagement Center: Kremlin exploits primal fears to push disinformation
In the latest issue of the Global Engagement Center Dispatch (GEC), it is highlighted how disinformation can be spread by “[shaping] it around what people fear most.” Citing the research of social scientist Dan Gardner, the GEC points out that there are 18 prominent “fears” that press our “risk perception button” and make us vulnerable to disinformation campaigns. These include fear of catastrophic potential or children being harmed.
These fear tactics have been used by the Kremlin to spread disinformation about the US and its allies.
According to the GEC, in July 2014, Russian state media broadcasted a horrifying false story about a toddler crucified in Slovyansk by Ukrainian officials and the child’s mother tied to a tank and dragged around the city’s Lenin Square.
The story was debunked as fake news by reporters. A Russian reporter sent to Slovyansk tweeted that no one he spoke within the city heard about the alleged brutality. The BBC reported that there was no Lenin Square in Slovyansk.
Another “fear” that the Kremlin has used to propagate misinformation is about biological weapons. The GEC notes that the Kremlin has falsely claimed that the US’s Cooperative Threat Reduction laboratories (CTR) are biological warfare facilities. The fear is easy to play on because US efforts to reduce biological and other threats have expanded.
However, this claim is false. The US renounced offensive biological weapons in 1969 under President Richard Nixon, who noted in his speech that biological warfare could “profoundly affect the health of future generations.”
In fact, the CTR and the American Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have among other things, helped destroy chemical weapons in Syria and Libya, develop a vaccine against Ebola and perform COVID-19 tests in Georgia to help prevent the spread of the virus.
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