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Belarus military trucks on road

Article

Aug 25, 2020

Tracking military movements inside and outside Belarus

By Lukas Andriukaitis

Columns of Belarusian military equipment have been recorded heading toward Baltic states as Belarus witnesses peaceful protests throughout the country.

Belarus Disinformation
BelarusFlag

Article

Aug 24, 2020

Activists use Telegram to coordinate Belarus protests

By Nika Aleksejeva

Amid ongoing economic integration talks between Russia and Belarus, eight channels attacked opponents of integration and spread pro-Kremlin narratives.

Belarus Disinformation

Issue briefs and reports

Jun 5, 2020

Operation Carthage: How a Tunisian company conducted influence operations in African presidential elections

By Andy Carvin, Luiza Bandeira, Graham Brookie, Iain Robertson, Nika Aleksejeva, Alyssa Kann, Kanishk Karan, Ayushman Kaul, Tessa Knight, Jean le Roux, Roman Osadchik, Esteban Ponce de Leon

A Tunisia-based company operated a sophisticated digital campaign involving multiple social media platforms and websites in an attempt to influence the country’s 2019 presidential election, as well as other recent elections in Africa. In an exclusive investigation that began in September 2019, the DFRLab uncovered dozens of online assets with connections to Tunisian digital communications firm UReputation. On June 5, 2020, after conducting its own investigation, Facebook announced it had taken down more than 900 assets affiliated with the UReputation operation, including 182 user accounts, 446 pages, and 96 groups, as well as 209 Instagram accounts. The operation also involved the publication of multiple Francophone websites, some going back more than five years.

Africa Disinformation

Nika Aleksejeva is resident fellow for the Baltics at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) based in Latvia.

Nika’s specific research interest is identifying, exposing and explaining disinformation on digital engagement spaces in the Baltic states and beyond. She has monitored Zapad 2017 military exercize and European elections in 2019. Nika has also lead the development of The News Hero, a media literacy game on Facebook, at the NATO Strategic Communication Center of Excellence (NATO Stratcom COE).

Nika comes from a journalism background – her work involved writing on business topics and making data-driven stories about energetics, global economic trends and education. Prior to joining NATO Stratcom COE she has been working with Infogram, a popular data visualization service.

Seeing the future in digital journalism, Nika works to improve quality journalism and build resilience to disinformation online. In her free time she works to empower Latvian journalists with data journalism skills by curating School of Data branch in Latvia.