Russian embassy in Canada weaponizes its social media accounts to fuel support for Ukraine war
It attacks the Canadian government and news media for allegedly spreading lies.
Yet this is an ineffective measure given the way social media channels controlled by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa are spreading disinformation, and how fact-checking is being weaponized by the Russian government to twist reality and confuse people about the war in Ukraine.
As a researcher who studies disinformation, I first investigated the way Arabic tweets with such hashtags as #WeStandWithRussia and #RussiaHasAJustCause have been used since the beginning of this year.
In my ongoing research, I’ve collected 26,440 tweets posted by 10,544 unique users who supported Russia. Almost 70 per cent of those accounts were created in 2022, including 4,052 accounts (38.4 per cent) in just one day on Feb. 15, 2022, and 5,457 accounts (51.7 per cent) in the month of February alone.
The Russian Embassy in Ottawa runs its own Twitter account — @RussianEmbassyC — as well as a Telegram account and VK (Russia’s Facebook) public channels.
Instead of heavily relying on RT or Sputnik, Canada’s Russian Embassy mostly retweets messages from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other Russian embassies around the world. That includes tweets that attempt to discredit any factual reporting on the war.
The Russian embassy also frequently posts official statements attacking Canadian politicians as well as Canadian media for what it views as their biased positions about the war in Ukraine. That included an attack on the Canadian government and the news media for allegedly spreading lies.
The term “fake news” itself is weaponized to serve the interests of the Russian government, similar to the way Donald Trump frequently used the term fake news when he was president of the United States.
One of the most troubling features of this Russian disinformation campaign pertains to the weaponization of fact-checking practices. In a recent tweet, the embassy announced the launch of a new website called waronfakes.com, which attempts to lend credibility to official Russian propaganda.
The website allegedly provides fact-checking services on the war in Ukraine and is offered in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese). Ironically, no Ukrainian or Russian-language content is offered, revealing which foreign audiences are being targeted by the Russian government. Nonetheless Russian content is offered on a Telegram channel.
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