2016 Jakarta World Forum on Media Development

From October 2015 to July 2016, a watchdog named “Disinformation Review” reported 1,649 disinformation stories that they noticed in their local pro-Kremlin outlets. This sample represents 18 different languages - which means even more countries were targeted by the campaign. Top of the list comes disinformation in Russian, with 936 examples. This targets also the audience in the Baltic States (during the ten months, we have not been told of any stories in Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian), in the Caucasus, in Belarus and in Ukraine (there are only five stories in the Ukrainian language in the master-table). The pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign in the Russian language targets also Russian-speaking minorities in many countries further from Russia's borders. This session will engage with the pervasiveness of Cold War era propaganda in contemporary Eastern Europe. Roman Shutov will draw from his extensive experience in disinformation impact assessment of ​pro-Kremlin propaganda in Ukraine to unpack the metrics of monitoring and evaluation of propaganda and disinformation impact.

Rapporteur for the session: Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach, Programme Coordinator, Free Press Unlimited.