69 Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, “‘An Eye For an Eye’: Hong Kong Protests Get Figurehead in Woman Injured by Police,” The Guardian, August 16, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/an-eye-for-an-eye-hong-kong-protests-get-figurehead-in-woman-injured-by-police.
70 Renée DiResta et al., “Telling China’s Story: The Chinese Communist Party’s Campaign to Shape Global Narratives,” Stanford Internet Observatory, July 20, 2020, https://fsi.stanford.edu/publication/telling-chinas-story.
71 Jessica Brandt and Bret Schafer, “How China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomats Use and Abuse Twitter,” Brookings, October 28, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-chinas-wolf-warrior-diplomats-use-and-abuse-twitter.
72 Erika Kinetz, “Army of Fake Fans Boosts China’s Wolf Warriors on Social Media,” Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, 2021, https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/army-of-fake-fans-boosts-china-s-wolf-warriors-on-social-media-20210513-p57rfo.html.
73 A passage in the book LikeWar summarizes the phenomenon of dubious followers on Chinese state media accounts: “In 2016, internet users had a collective chuckle when People’s Daily, the main Chinese propaganda outlet, launched a Facebook page that swiftly attracted 18 million ‘likes,’ despite Facebook being banned in China. This included more than a million ‘fans’ in Myanmar (out of the then 7 million Facebook users in that country), who instantly decided to ‘like’ China.” A high follower count is perceived as a way to establish credibility by signaling to potential readers that the content has many other existing readers, which is required for making a dent in the crowded social media ecosystem. P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Boston: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 139.
74 Renée DiResta, Josh A. Goldstein, and Shelby Grossman, “Middle East Influence Operations: Observations Across Social Media Takedowns,” Project on Middle East Political Science, August 2021, https://pomeps.org/middle-east-influence-operations-observations-across-social-media-takedowns.
75 Nicolas Six, “TikTok Used to Promote Russian Mercenary Group Wagner,” Le Monde, December 1, 2022, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2022/12/01/tiktok-used-to-promote-russian-mercenary-group-wagner_6006282_13.html.
76 Morgan Meaker, “How Ukraine Is Winning the Propaganda War,” Wired, May 13, 2022, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ukraine-propaganda-war.
77 Valerie Hopkins, “In Video a Defiant Zelensky Says, ‘We Are Here,’” New York Times, February 25, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/world/europe/zelensky-speech-video.html.
78 Steve Inskeep and Odette Yousef, “Russia Claims U.S. Labs Across Ukraine Are Secretly Developing Biological Weapons,” NPR, March 22, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/03/22/1087991730/russia-claims-u-s-labs-across-ukraine-are-secretly-developing-biological-weapons.
79 Feng Qingyin, “US Owes World an Explanation on Bio-Labs,” Global Times, March 10, 2022, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254588.shtml.
80 Hua Chunying (@SpokespersonCHN), “US’ Bio-Web,” Twitter, March 17, 2022, 3:25 a.m., https://twitter.com/SpokespersonCHN/status/1504358120461635587?s=20.
81 Deng Zijun, “What Is the US Hiding in the Biolabs Discovered in Ukraine?,” Global Times, March 17, 2022, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1255164.shtml.
82 Linda Qiu, “Theory About U.S.-Funded Bioweapons Labs in Ukraine Is Unfounded,” New York Times, March 11, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/politics/us-bioweapons-ukraine-misinformation.html.
83 Mara Hvistendahl and Alexey Kovalev, “Hacked Russian Files Reveal Propaganda Agreement with China,” The Intercept, December 30, 2022, https://theintercept.com/2022/12/30/russia-china-news-media-agreement.
84 Zeba Siddiqui and Christopher Bing, “Latin American Election Influence Operation Linked to Miami Marketing Firm,” Reuters, May 4, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/latin-american-election-influence-operation-linked-miami-marketing-firm-2023-05-04.
85 News Wires, “Israeli Firm ‘Boasted’ of Meddling in More Than 30 Elections Worldwide,” France 24, January 15, 2023, https://www.france24.com/en/technology/20230215-israeli-firm-boasted-of-meddling-in-more-than-30-elections-worldwide.
86 Maurice Jakesch et al., “Trend Alert: A Cross-Platform Organization Manipulated Twitter Trends in the Indian General Election,” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, no. CSCW2 (October 18, 2021): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1145/3479523.
87 Pranav Dixit, “Modi’s Political Party Creates Abusive Social Media Campaigns and Breeds Internet Trolls, Claims New Book,” BuzzFeed News, December 27, 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/bjp-trolled-indians; Karnika Kohli, “Congress vs BJP: The Curious Case of Trolls and Politics,” Times of India, October 11, 2013, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/congress-vs-bjp-the-curious-case-of-trolls-and-politics/articleshow/23970818.cms.
