How chaos is created: Russian media outlets and the notorious fake news machine

Rome. A disinformation campaign has been unleashed on social media regarding Ceuta, originating from a Telegram channel linked to Russian military intelligence. Whilst the source of the wave of migration that has swept through the territory has now been identified as this very spread of fake news, the question of who was behind it remains a matter of debate. Was it Morocco, seeking to exert pressure in support of its territorial claim? The government in Madrid denies this hypothesis. Trump and Israel, seeking to punish Sánchez for his critical stance on Israel and his lack of cooperation in the war against Iran? This type of manipulation on social media, however, is not typical of these actors. Organised crime networks of migrant smugglers, as claimed by both the Madrid and Rabat governments? But it remains to be seen what benefit they would have gained from this, given that the majority of the refugees were turned back almost immediately.

The Russian link is now emerging from a Guardian investigation, based on a sample of 4.5 million posts. This theory rests on two elements: on the one hand, a specific objective – to destabilise Europe and the West – and on the other, a now well-known precedent, namely Russia’s ability to carry out operations of this kind, particularly through the Internet Research Agency, the infamous ‘troll factory’ founded in 2013 in St Petersburg by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Analysis by 411, a group dedicated to countering disinformation, shows that accounts linked to the Russian military, which promote far-right messages, reached over 500,000 people in the days following the massive influx of people into Ceuta. The study also argues that Russian disinformation networks are now more organised and powerful than they were a few years ago. “We continue to observe this phenomenon across Europe and find it very interesting: there seems to be a sort of mechanism, a well-defined structure,” explained Saman Nazari, lead researcher at Alliance4Europe, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation.

The wave of migrants began on 1 August, the day after tens of thousands of people had attempted to cross the border. In the end, 72,000 were counted, the vast majority of whom were swiftly repatriated. Reports circulating online framed the events through a far-right lens, presenting them as a deliberately coordinated ‘assault’ and insinuating the authorities’ complicity. This narrative was soon supplemented by Islamophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which spread rapidly across seven languages and garnered over 720,000 views in just six hours. Other far-right accounts incited nationalists to gather in Ceuta to “patrol” shops and homes, in some cases openly coordinating their actions.

Reports suggest that social media played a significant role in the Ceuta crisis, both in encouraging people to cross the border and in fuelling the reaction that followed. Some online rumours had convinced many young Moroccans that the border was open, whilst others offered practical advice on how to reach the territory. 411’s analysis confirms a substantial exchange of logistical information amongst potential migrants on social media, specifically regarding how to cross the border. These exchanges took place largely in the comments sections beneath viral videos of Ceuta. This coordination amongst migrants appeared to be spontaneous, attributable “primarily to small, seemingly anonymous individual accounts, rather than to a single identifiable recruitment channel”.

As the crossings continued, a right-wing reaction also began to emerge on social media. One of the main sources of this wave of propaganda was Rybar, the aforementioned Telegram channel linked to Russian intelligence, whose content was amplified and reposted by a network of ‘relay’ accounts, many of which were connected to the Pravda network, an organisation that disseminates Kremlin propaganda worldwide. According to Nazari, the disinformation activities appeared to be coordinated. Ned Mendez, a senior researcher at 411, noted that this time, disinformation regarding the Ceuta crisis spread much more rapidly than in May 2021, when 8,000 migrants had crossed the same border between Morocco and Spain. The analysis warns: “The next time a border incident occurs anywhere in the Mediterranean, those same dissemination networks will already be up and running, ready to take control and start again.”