The Coronavirus Information War. How It All Started

Abstract

nalysing the Russian Disinformation War during the Coronavirus Pandemic, we will emphasise on seemingly harmless and “meaningless” nature of the first widely distributed information, mainly through unsourced messages, first on the Internet and then in mainstream media (e.g. television). It began seemingly innocent, with sensible medical advice. It has constantly struck the credibility of the authorities of any kind: medical, administrative, political. It continued in a crescendo with medical advice with potentially lethal effect: swallow substances and drugs! Then, countries like Russia and China encouraged “the blame game” between countries, multinational organizations and between politicians and ordinary people. The fake news camapign has been launched through conspiracy theories, sometimes supported by movies or audio recordings. And finally, it called for civic disobedience in the form of non-compliance with barrier gestures, the most serious form of accelerating the spread of the disease and increasing the number of deaths. The populists – local politicians gave a helping hand and became main disinformation vectors. Finally, we will try find an answer to the troubling metter of credibility. What interests us here is what favors this faith, this uncritical belief, this unwillingness to be led by scientific evidence. It is the mechanism at the heart of post-truth: people feel and don’t reason.