User:Deanapol/Sputnik (news agency)

My Annotated Bibliography

1. Missiroli, Antonio, et al. STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE EAST. European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), 2016, pp. 7–24, Strategic Communications: East and South, www.jstor.org/stable/resrep07092.5. Accessed 30 Apr. 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep07092.5?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=Sputnik&searchText=news&searchText=agency&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DSputnik%2Bnews%2Bagency&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-5152%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A84189aeb6aa52bce4544192a5f65c121&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents This article provided me detailed information on how Sputnik was created; I used it in the "Foundation" section for Sputnik (news agency). I added a detail that it was funded by the Russian government, in addition to it being owned and operated by the Russian government.
2. "Measuring the reach of "fake news" and online disinformation in Europe". Digital News Report. Retrieved 2020-04-29. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/publications/2018/measuring-reach-fake-news-online-disinformation-europe/ This article was important source that allowed me to write the extra sentence in the "International bans and restrictions" section. I wrote how Sputnik and RT were caught by the East StratCom Task Force caught them for publishing disinformation.
3. Benková, Lívia. "The Rise of Russian Disinformation in Europe." (2018). https://www.aies.at/download/2018/AIES-Fokus_2018-03.pdf This article provided me with additional information on what Facebook and Google had done to reduce the increase of disinformation on their platforms due to Russian disinformation campaigns. I added to the designated section for "Twitter and Facebook", though I would be interested in changing the heading title to "Social Media".
4. Yoldas, Deniz. (2019). EU -Russia Information War, Human Right, and Democracy -Fake news, Fact-checking, Conspiracy Theories and Hate-speech in post-Truth and Illiberal Democracies Age. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Deniz_Yoldas/publication/336148909_EU_-Russia_Information_War_Human_Right_and_Democracy_-Fake_news_Fact-checking_Conspiracy_Theories_and_Hate-speech_in_post-Truth_and_Illiberal_Democracies_Age/links/5d9306d7299bf10cff1cd98a/EU-Russia-Information-War-Human-Right-and-Democracy-Fake-news-Fact-checking-Conspiracy-Theories-and-Hate-speech-in-post-Truth-and-Illiberal-Democracies-Age.pdf This publication and #5, provided me additional information to added to the end of "European coverages and responses". I added a section for how the East StratCom Task Force was created and how it was in particular to stop Russian disinformation campaigns throughout the EU.
5. "About". EU vs DISINFORMATION. Retrieved 2020-04-30. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/about/ I retrieved the date on when the East StratCom Task Force was established and to confirm that their efforts were indeed to reduce the spread disinformation by Russian campaigns.
6. Kragh, Martin; Åsberg, Sebastian (2017-09-19). "Russia's strategy for influence through public diplomacy and active measures: the Swedish case". Journal of Strategic Studies. 40 (6): 773–816. doi:10.1080/01402390.2016.1273830. ISSN 0140-2390. This source provided me additional information on the Swedish Sputnik and what it did in the past. I used it for the section "European coverage and responses".
7. Watanabe, Kohei. "Conspiracist propaganda: How Russia promotes anti-establishment sentiment online." ECPR General Conference, Hamburg. 2018. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7a3e/be6eef4da1d31a1f73abd4aa89fc9196743f.pdf This source provided me a little bit of information on how Swedish Sputnik was trying to influence its public's perception against its government and the EU. I included it in "European coverage and responses"
8. Jensen, Donald N. "11. Russia in the Middle East: A New Front in the Information War?." RUSSIA IN THE (2018): 265. https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Russia-in-the-Middle-East-online.pdf?x75907#page=278. This source was used to build and write the section for Sputnik in the Middle East, and Sputniks involvement in the Syrian regime attacks that were occurring.
9. Czuperski, Maksymilian, et al. Disinformation. Atlantic Council, 2017, pp. 54–61, Breaking Aleppo, www.jstor.org/stable/resrep03700.14. Accessed 15 May 2020. This source was used for Middle East Coverage to add information about Sputnik publishing unreliable sources in the Middle East and what they published about the White Helmets.
10. Godzimirski, Jakub M., and Malin Østevik. "How to understand and deal with Russian strategic communication measures?." https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b971/0543074e31d71fb8b3323f4faaa5bfc93d74.pdf.

Sputnik (news agency)

... Sputnik is frequently described as a Russian propaganda outlet. In 2016, Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times wrote: "The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis." The Russian government rejects the validity of such assertions. In early 2019, CNN Business reported that Facebook had taken down hundreds of pages on its social media platform passing as independent news sites but were actually under the control of Sputnik employees. Sputnik called the move "clearly political in its nature and...practically censorship.

Sputnik operates news websites, featuring reporting and commentary, in over 30 31 languages including English, Spanish, Polish and Serbian. The websites house over 800 hours of radio broadcasting material each day, and its newswire service runs a 24/7 service.
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Foundation

RIA Novosti was Russia's international news agency until 9 December 2013 when it became known as Rossiya Segodnya. Dmitry Kiselev, an anchorman of the Russia-1 channel was appointed to be the first president of the reorganized agency. He soon announced that Margarita Simonyan was to be editor-in-chief. Simonyan told The New York Times in 2017 that she choose Sputnik as the new name "because I thought that’s the only Russian word that has a positive connotation, and the whole world knows it."

Sputnik was launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, which is itself owned, funded (through RT(Russia Today)), and operated by the Russian government, and was created via an Executive Order of the President of Russia on 9 December 2013. As well as the RIA Novosti news agency, Sputnik replaced the Voice of Russia (which was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 9 November 2014) on an international stage. Agency According to its editor-in-chief Dmitry Kiselyov, Sputnik was intended to "provide alternative interpretations that are, undoubtedly, in demand around the world". The station claims it "tells the untold". However, President Vladimir Putin, while visiting the Moscow base of the RT television network in 2013, said the objective behind both the then forthcoming Sputnik agency and RT was to "break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon global information streams." .

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European coverage and responses

Ben Nimmo, in a paper for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), wrote that Sputnik invitations concentrate on a select group of politicians for their east European services, especially those known for their pro-Russian (Tatjana Ždanoka in Latvia) or anti-EU opinions (Janusz Korwin-Mikke in Poland). These two political figures have limited support in their countries; Korwin-Mikke gained slightly more than 3% in Poland's presidential election in May 2015, while Ždanoka is barred from holding public office for her opposition to Latvia's independence from Russia. Sputnik has spread a false claim about Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, who was wrongly said to have posed for a selfie with an ISIS suspect.

In the opinion of Kevin Rothrock, Russia editor for Global Voices, Sputnik "acts as a spoiler to try and disrupt or blur information unfriendly to Russia, such as Russian troops' alleged involvement in the war in Ukraine". Historical comparisons have been made to Pravda, the former official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in particular Sputnik's alleged apologia for Joseph Stalin and denial of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine known as the Holodomor.

German journalist and author Michael Thumann describes Sputnik as being part of what he calls Russia's "digital information war against the West". Peter Pomerantsev, in an article for the London Sunday Times, wrote that in the 2017 German elections the Sputnik news agency was negative or neutral about the country's political parties, with the exception of the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian journalist who works for Radio France Internationale (part of French Government's France Médias Monde) and the Radio Liberty (supervised by Broadcasting Board of Governors, an Independent agency of the U.S. Federal government) has accused Sputnik of disseminating Russian state propaganda abroad. In a vote urging for the European Union (EU) to "respond to information warfare by Russia", the European Parliament accused broadcasting channels Sputnik and RT of "information warfare", and placed Russian media organisations along terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State. The federal agency of Rossotrudnichestvo and the Russkiy Mir Foundation were also seen as tools for Russian propaganda. According to a study by Masaryk University, Sputnik is one of the major sources of Russian propaganda in the Czech Republic.

In August 2016, Sputnik opened offices in Edinburgh, Scotland, its headquarters in the UK. The agency established its radio studio and bureau in the city. Alexander Mercouris, a British barrister debarred for falsely claiming to have been kidnapped and for attempting bribery, was described in Sputnik coverage as a "London-based expert on international affairs".

A January 2017 report by The Swedish Institute of International Affairs found that a Swedish-language version of Sputnik News website was one of the main tools used by the Russian government to spread false information in Sweden including publicizing documents posted on little-known Swedish and Russian websites which were found to be forgeries. According to the report, Sputnik News [frequently] focused on highly negative stories about NATO and the EU, consistent with Russia's foreign policy interest of minimising minimizing NATO's role in the Baltic region and keeping Sweden out of NATO. A research analysis done by Martin Kragh and Sebestian Asberg at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, found that Swedish Sputnik focused on depicting Russia as under attack by aggressive Western governments, describing EU as being in "terminal decline", and NATO as a dangerous military threat. These efforts were believed to try to change how the public in Sweden viewed its government and the EU. The Swedish-language version ran for a year from April 2015 to spring of 2016, where it was forced to shut down and removed from the internet in that year.

In April 2017, Emmanuel Macron's campaign team banned both RT and Sputnik from campaign events. A Macron spokesperson said the two broadcasting outlets showed a "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information". A report claiming the pro-Russian candidate, François Fillon, had returned to the lead prior to the election was the subject of a reprimand from the country's election commission. Sputnik had falsely attributed the result to an opinion poll, whereas the assertion had actually originated from Brand Analytics, a Moscow-based company. A few weeks after Macron won the presidential election, President Putin visited the Versailles Palace. During a joint press conference with the Russian leader, Macron himself accused Sputnik and RT of having "produced slanderous countertruths".

In June 2019, it was found that Serbian language outlet of Sputnik has infiltrated a disinformation hub in Bosnia And Herzegovina. These findings were published by internationally recognized fact-checking platform Raskrinkavanje, which wrote reports about Sputnik bias towards spreading disinformation, in a 106-page document.

To protect democratic values and combat Russian disinformation campaigns, that utilized RT and Sputnik, the European Union established The East StratCom Task Force in 2015.

Sputnik in the Middle East

In the Middle East, Russia utilized Sputnik and RT Arabic to promote their foreign policy goals through "informational warfare". Russia tried to increase its power and presence in the Middle East as well as reduce United States influence in the region, fight terrorism, and establish allies in Syria with Bashir al-Assad.

In April 2017, Sputnik and RT reported little to no information on the Khan Shaykhun chemcial attack in Syria. During the attacks, Sputnik and RT did not report on the incident; there was no coverage provided on the survivors or their testimonies, and the history of violence in the area such as massacres, bombings, and chemical attacks that have occurred in the Syrian regime were not recorded. After the massacre, Sputnik and RT widely questioned the cause and the history of the massacre through daily reports; false and missing information was frequently cited as the identities of the claimed "experts" were not shared, and alternative versions of the event were falsely reported as they claimed that the attacks were done by the White Helmets, a Syrian civil volunteer organization. These statements were shared by Sputnik and RT throughout social media platforms as well as other news outlets that supported the Syrian regime.

International bans and restrictions

In March 2016, access to Sputnik's online content was blocked by Turkish authorities, as well as denying the Turkish bureau chief Tural Kerimov access to the country. The development is thought to have been in response to comments by the Russian leadership that were critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding the Turkish administration's record on human rights and freedom of speech. The website was subsequently unblocked later that same year. In 2018, the agency shut down its website in the Kurdish language without mentioning any particular reason for the decision. Former employees of Sputnik said that the news agency decided to shut it down at Turkey’s request.

In July 2019, the UK Foreign Office banned both RT and Sputnik from attending the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London for "their active role in spreading disinformation". The Russian Embassy called the decision "direct politically motivated discrimination". European Union External Action East StratCom Task Force and separate fact-checkers have discerned reoccurences of Sputnik and RT publishing false information.

In January 2020, the Estonian offices of Sputnik were closed after police warned its journalists about potential criminal charges. The action taken by the Estonian government was a result of European Union sanctions imposed on Dmitry Kiselyov. Banks in Estonia suspended Sputnik related accounts in October 2019.

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Twitter and Facebook

In October 2017, Twitter banned both RT and Sputnik from advertising on their social networking service following the conclusions of the U.S. national intelligence report the previous January that both Sputnik and RT had been used as vehicles for Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election. It prompted a stern response from spokeswoman Maria Zakharova of the Russian foreign ministry. It said the ban was a “gross violation” by the United States of the guarantees of free speech. “Retaliatory measures, naturally, will follow,”. In November, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt announced that Google will be "deranking" stories from RT and Sputnik in response to "weaponised" content and allegations about election meddling by President Putin's government, provoking claims of censorship from both outlets.

To reduce the spread of disinformation, Facebook and Google implemented fact-checking tools throughout their platforms. In January 2019, Facebook removed 289 pages and 75 accounts that the company said were used by Sputnik for misinformation on Facebook. The removed pages posed as independent news sites in eastern Europe and elsewhere but were actually run by employees at Sputnik. It was another in a series of actions taken by Facebook against Russian disinformation.