- Source: List of political disinformation website campaigns
The following is a list of websites, separated by country and sub-categorized by region or disinformation campaign, that have both been considered by journalists and researchers as distributing false news - or otherwise participating in disinformation - and have been designated by journalists and researchers as likely being linked to political actors.
List
= Algeria
=The following websites are linked to an Algerian marketing/public relations firm, Ayam Agency. They are related to a network of Facebook pages and accounts removed in 2021 for coordinated inauthentic behavior, which was part of a campaign that Graphika described as "a multi-year cross-platform effort to advance the interests of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune".
= Argentina
== Austria
== Bosnia and Herzegovina
== Brazil
== Canada
== Central African Republic
=The following websites are related to a network of Facebook pages and accounts removed in 2021 for coordinated inauthentic behavior. They are linked to a pseudonymous individual that is suspected of being sponsored by the government of Faustin-Archange Touadéra and/or advisors from Russia.
= Denmark
== Ecuador
== Egypt
== France
== Germany
== Guinea
== India
=Indian Chronicles
Indian Chronicles, dubbed by the EU Disinfo Lab, is an influence operation initiated by Srivastava Group starting in 2005 and enabled by Asian News International in order to promote Indian interests and disparage Pakistan and China. The operation created a network of at least 500 fake news websites and had targeted 116 countries. Srivastava Group had co-sponsored a trip of 27 Members of European Parliament to visit Kashmir and meet with Narendra Modi in 2019.
Other campaigns
= Iran
=Endless Mayfly
Endless Mayfly, dubbed by Citizen Lab, is an Iran-affiliated disinformation campaign of inauthentic social media accounts and fake news websites that, according to Citizen Lab, "spreads falsehoods and amplifies narratives critical of Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel." It is notable for using a technique that Citizen Lab described as "ephemeral disinformation": When an article from the campaign received significant engagement on social media, it was deleted and URLs were linked to the website that the article was falsely portraying.
International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM)
The International Union of Virtual Media is described by the Atlantic Council as "a cluster of ostensibly independent websites that aggressively repackaged and re-broadcast Iranian state media", without citation. The network has been taken down by Facebook, Twitter, and Google for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Storm-2035
Storm-2035, dubbed by Microsoft Threat Analysis Center in August 2024, is attributed by Microsoft researchers to "an Iranian network" and described by them as a collection of fake news websites that has been active since at least 2020 and has targeted both conservative and liberal audiences in the United States. At least some of their content has been alleged by Microsoft to be created by generative artificial intelligence models to repost content from United States-based news outlets without attribution. Such outlets include The Guardian, The Week, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times. An investigation from OpenAI found that the network used ChatGPT to generate articles and social media comments. A network of social media accounts that promoted one of the sites was taken down in 2022 by Twitter for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Other campaigns
= Israel
=Zeno Zeno
Starting in October 2023, the Israeli government via the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs supported what the New York Times and Haaretz described as an "influence campaign" that primarily targeted Black lawmakers in the Democratic Party, as well as young left-leaning residents of the United States and Canada. The ministry hired Stoic, an Israeli political marketing firm, to conduct the operation, dubbed Zeno Zeno by OpenAI. Social media accounts and pages linked to the campaign were taken down by Meta in 2024 for coordinated inauthentic behavior, including the use of profile pictures created by generative adversarial networks and possibly hijacked accounts. Many social media posts from the campaign were created by ChatGPT.
= Italy
== Mexico
== Myanmar
== Nigeria
== Pakistan
== People's Republic of China
=HaiEnergy
Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd (上海海讯社科技有限公司), a Chinese public relations firm, is linked to an influence campaign (titled "HaiEnergy" by Mandiant) to promote positive energy, which Mandiant defines as "messages positively portraying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Chinese Government, and its policies." Mandiant alleged that the firm had possibly staged protests in Washington D.C. in 2022 involving religious freedom and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
PAPERWALL
Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co., Ltd., a Chinese public relations firm, is linked to an influence campaign (titled "PAPERWALL" by Citizen Lab) to "[disseminate] pro-Beijing disinformation and ad hominem attacks". Citizen Lab concludes that their analysis "[confirms] the increasingly important role private firms play in the realm of digital influence operations and the propensity of the Chinese government to make use of them."
Happytify network (歡享網)
= Philippines
=Fake news sites have become rampant for Philippine audiences, especially being shared on social media. Politicians have started filing laws to combat fake news and three Senate hearings have been held on the topic.
The Catholic Church in the Philippines has also released a missive speaking out against it.
Vera Files research at the end of 2017 and 2018 show that the most shared fake news in the Philippines appeared to benefit 2 people the most: Former President Rodrigo Duterte (as well as his allies) and President Bongbong Marcos, with the most viral news driven by shares on networks of Facebook pages. Most Philippine audience Facebook pages and groups spreading online disinformation also bear "Duterte", "Marcos" or "News" in their names and are pro-Duterte. Online disinformation in the Philippines is overwhelmingly political as well, with most attacking groups or individuals critical of the Duterte administration. Many Philippine-audience fake news websites also appear to be controlled by the same operators as they share common Google AdSense and Google Analytics IDs.
According to media scholar Jonathan Corpus Ong, Duterte's presidential campaign is regarded as the patient zero in the current era of disinformation, having preceded widespread global coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Russian trolls. Fake news is so established and severe in the Philippines that Facebook's Global Politics and Government Outreach Director Katie Harbath also calls it "patient zero" in the global misinformation epidemic, having happened before Brexit, the Donald Trump nomination and the 2016 United States elections.
= Republic of China
=Mission (密訊)
Mission is a content farm that has repeatedly published false information and republished or rephrased stories from other outlets, especially the China Times. It is connected to Lin Cheng-kuo (林正國), a former assistant for Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠), a spokesperson for the New Party. The network uses "link wheeling" to manipulate search engine rankings by Google and Bing, and repeatedly switched domain names to get ahead of bans by Facebook (including the use of beeper.live, a content farm in Malaysia). Mission has promoted content from The Reacher (觸極者), a site also run by Lin, and both sites in turn promoted a China-Taiwan exchange program jointly managed by the Taiwan Affairs Office, several state-run media outlets in China (China Media Group, iTaiwan News Network (海峽飛虹中文網), Huaxia.net (華夏經緯網), Sichuan Daily New Media Centre (四川日報新媒體中心)), and a private media company based in Taiwan.
= Russia
== South Africa
=Radical Economic Transformation media network
A network of websites, dubbed the Radical Economic Transformation media network by the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting and described by journalists as "disinformation" and "propaganda", promoted the concept of white monopoly capital and repeatedly and anonymously attacked Cyril Ramaphosa, journalists, opposition politicians and other critics of the Gupta family, Jacob Zuma and their associates. The sites were registered by CNET Infosystem, an Indian reputation management firm that is linked to the Gupta family, who had close ties with Zuma. As of 2017, they received nearly all of their web traffic from users in India, and were linked to pro-Gupta and pro-Zuma Twitter accounts whose posts were retweeted by bot accounts. This network of websites and social media assets also included media outlets owned by the Gupta family: ANN7 and The New Age. The overall social media strategy was analyzed by Bell Pottinger, who was contracted by the Gupta family. The New York Times noted that, due to the disinformation campaign, "racial tensions [in South Africa] rose to levels that had not been felt since apartheid" and asserted that the campaign significantly damaged the cause of advancing economic equality for Black South Africans.
= Spain
== Sweden
== Tanzania
=Between 2020 and 2021, a network of Twitter accounts was used by "[Tanzanian-]government aligned individuals" supportive of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party to harass activists, journalists, and Tanzanian opposition politicians. The campaign was possibly "partially outsourced to a Russian-speaking country", and involved false copyright campaigns: Twitter content that criticized the CCM party was added to blog sites (listed below) and back dated, and then the original content was reported to Twitter under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This network was suspended by Twitter in 2021 for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
= Tunisia
=Operation Carthage
An influence operation, dubbed Operation Carthage by the Digital Forensics Research Lab, was conducted in an attempt to influence the 2019 Tunisian presidential election. The operation was conducted by UReputation, a Tunisian public relations firm linked to Lotfi Bel Hadj. The campaign had also attempted to influence politics in Comoros (2019 Comorian presidential election), Côte D'Ivoire (2020 Ivorian presidential election), and Togo (2020 Togolese presidential election). The company also had assets in Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Madagascar, Niger, and Senegal. Related social media accounts and pages were taken down by Facebook in 2020 for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
= Ukraine
=Luhansk
The following websites are part of a network that has been alleged to have links to NewsFront, Borotba, and individuals in Russian-occupied Luhansk. Related social media accounts were taken down by Facebook in 2021 for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
= United Arab Emirates
== United Kingdom
== United States
=Prominent networks of sites by political campaigns in the United States include Courier, Local Report (connected to The American Independent), Metric Media (run by Brian Timpone), and Star News Digital Media (co-founded by Tea Party-affiliated activists.)
= Multinational
=Qiqi News Network
Qiqi News Network is a content farm based in Malaysia, owned by Yee Kok Wai (余國威) and Evan Lee, that has been accused by researchers of publishing disinformation that favored the Chinese Communist Party prior to the 2020 Taiwanese general election, often spread over Line. It spread a false story that COVID-19 originated in the United States. The network was noted in a joint report by Graphika, Institute for the Future and the International Republican Institute to "[push] a worldview closely aligned with the CCP, frequently [use] mainland Chinese phrasings, and [recycle] articles from other news outlets, often Chinese state-owned media." Several stories and website domains promoted by the network have been alleged, by Twitter and Audrey Tang of Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs to be linked directly to the government of the People's Republic of China. At least one member of the Chinese Unification Promotion Party, Chang Dong-nan (張東南), joined Yee's Facebook group, Global Chinese Alliance (全球華人聯盟), in 2014.
= Unknown
=Operation Red Card
Operation Red Card, dubbed by Graphika, is part of a network that was taken down by Facebook in 2020 for coordinated inauthentic behavior. It was attributed by Facebook to aRep Global, a digital marketing firm in India. The campaign was asserted by Graphika to be "a case of online influence for hire, conducted at the behest of a geopolitical actor with concerns in the [Persian Gulf]."
References
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- List of political disinformation website campaigns
- List of political disinformation website campaigns in Russia
- List of political disinformation website campaigns in the United States
- List of corporate disinformation website campaigns
- List of miscellaneous fake news websites
- Fake news websites in the United States
- Disinformation
- ChinaAngVirus disinformation campaign
- Russian disinformation
- Center for Countering Disinformation
