There are three basic ways to counter disinformation:

1. refuting disinformation claims before they can take hold, as is done in Lithuania
2. a “counter-allegation” approach, in which one tries to correct misperceptions after they have become established
3. a “counter-brand” approach, which emphasizes exposing the disinformer’s misdeeds rather than just trying to correct false claims.

When most people think about countering disinformation, the “counter-allegation” approach is what usually comes to mind.  But, as academic studies and experience show, correcting misperceptions after they have become established can be difficult, especially among those for whom a false claim reinforces important beliefs.  Approaches 1 and 3 offer other ways to counter disinformation.

As described in GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches #1, refuting disinformation claims before they can take hold, as data scientists, researchers, and journalists do in Lithuania, is ideal, but it is also very difficult to achieve.  It requires:

• sophisticated algorithms and constant monitoring to spot false claims very soon after they appear
• immediate, thorough research
• very close cooperation with professional journalists who can rapidly write articles exposing the allegations as false.

A “counter-brand” approach is useful when the capabilities to track, research, and debunk allegations quickly are not as fully developed and tightly integrated.  In addition to refuting specific claims, it seeks to discredit the “brand” – the credibility and reputation – of those making the false allegations.

The RESIST Counter-disinformation toolkit released by the British government recommends a “counter-brand” approach.  In the section “Counter-brand, not counter narrative,” it states:

Countering individual narratives can be ineffective and in many cases has the impact of amplifying or entrenching the falsehood.  …  a more nuanced and strategic approach than rebuttal is required. This can focus on framing the tactic of disinformation, contextualising and outwardly communicating the motives or errors of the actor/adversary and not replying directly to their message.  (p. 41)

A counter-brand approach includes the following key elements:

• highlighting false claims seen as absurd and particularly offensive and objectionable by target audiences
• changing the frame
• targeting mainstream public opinion
• creating moral outrage
• using expert spokespersons.

Russia badly damaged its “brand” in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and other countries in May 2015 when its state-owned television channel Rossiya-1 broadcast the film “Warsaw Pact: Declassified Pages,” which described events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, including the Soviet invasion.  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says the film:

described the invasion as “help” for the people of Czechoslovakia in preventing the “illegal armed overthrow of the government” by radical Czech groups linked to the West. The invasion, the documentary goes on to explain, took place as NATO troops were “ready to enter Czechoslovakia.”

These false claims were seen as ludicrous and highly offensive to Czech and Slovak citizens who had experienced or knew about the 1968 Soviet invasion, which cut short the reformist “Prague Spring” and its promise of “socialism with a human face,” restoring orthodox communist leaders to power. (Photo of a Soviet tank in Prague, 1968, credit: www.tresbohemes.com)

The Russian film was intended for a domestic Russian audience.  But Czech public television re-broadcast it with subtitles, thereby exposing Czech and Czech-speaking audiences to the distorted Russian portrayal of events in Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Taking propaganda or disinformation intended for an audience that may find it unobjectionable and showing it to a different audience that is likely to find it offensive is a very good way to damage the “brand” of those producing the propaganda or disinformation.  This technique can be described as “crossing their channels,” which can be very effective.

Soon after the film was broadcast in Russia, the Slovak Foreign Ministry issued a statement objecting to the film, stating it used “misrepresentations and old ideological clichés” and attempted “to rewrite history and to falsify historic truths about such a dark chapter of our history.”

Later, in December 2019, when the Russian government criticized Prague for designating the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet invasion as a memorial day, “commemorating the victims of the invasion and subsequent occupation by the Warsaw Pact armies,” Czech President Milos Zeman called Moscow’s comments “absolute insolence” and threatened to not attend the 75th anniversary of the World War II victory parade in Russia.

As the “RESIST toolkit” explains, a counter-brand approach seeks to make the misdeeds of the disinformer the central topic of discussion, changing the conversation to make this new story line the “frame” of debate, rather than the disinformer’s false claims.  This places the disinformers, not the victims of disinformation, on the defensive.

This is very important.  As University of California Professor Emeritus George Lakoff, an expert on cognitive science and linguistics, writes, “whoever frames the debate tends to win the debate.”

In general, when we expose the disinformer’s misdeeds and their most absurd, offensive false claims and actions, we set the frame and tend to win.  But, if we allow the disinformer’s false claims to set the topic of conversation and are constantly trying to respond to them, we are on the defensive and tend to lose.

Those who believe there is little or nothing that can be done once disinformation has spread typically assume the key target audience is those who believe the disinformation. 

These audiences are important and every reasonable effort should be made to educate them.  But they are typically the most difficult to convince. 

A counter-brand approach also takes mainstream public opinion as a very important target audience, if not the main one. 

Many people do not realize the vast extent to which the Kremlin and other malign actors are involved in manipulating audiences worldwide, using the most underhanded methods.  When such devious methods are exposed, many people are outraged and appalled.  No one likes to be manipulated or to have their sovereignty undermined. 

In addition, educating people about disinformation messages and techniques can make them more skeptical about such messages in the future, inoculating them to some degree against future false claims.

So, in the counter-brand approach, as in approach #1, most efforts are aimed at mainstream public opinion, typically via respected journalists and publications.  The goal is to educate mainstream public opinion about:

 •  the disinformer’s lack of trustworthiness and malign motives
 •  the false claims they typically spread
 •  the techniques and channels they use to spread false claims.

The effort to counter the USSR’s false claim that the U.S. government created the virus that causes AIDS (HIV) involved both counter-allegation and counter-brand messages.

Counter-allegation rebuttals showed the claim was false:

• The Soviets claimed the virus was created in the late 1970s, but the earliest known sample of the virus was from a man living in what is now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1959.
• Scientists have concluded the first appearance of the virus in humans “took place around 1920 in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” based on a “family tree” of the disease based on different samples.
• A mainstay of the disinformation, the so-called “Segal report,” claimed AIDS first appeared in New York City because it was the closest big city to Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the virus was supposedly created. But a glance at a map shows that the large cities of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia are all much closer, while New York is 400 km away.

Counter-brand messages highlighted Soviet involvement:

• The Soviet disinformation campaign was initially based on a false claim published in the Indian newspaper Patriot, which was “controlled by the KGB Residency in Delhi” as revealed by Vasili Mitrokhin, the former chief archivist for the KGB’s foreign intelligence service.
• In March 1992, then-Russian foreign intelligence chief Yevgeny Primakov admitted the AIDS disinformation stories in the Soviet press had been “fabricated in KGB offices.”
• In 2019, researchers discovered a September 1985 cable from the KGB to the Bulgarian foreign intelligence service stating they were about to launch a disinformation campaign falsely blaming the United States for creating the AIDS virus.  The campaign began the next month.

The counter-allegation rebuttals show the claim is false.  The counter-brand messages reveal who made the false claim, creating a new story line around this topic.  (The photo shows a cartoon from Pravda in which a medical researcher supposedly hands a vial of the HIV virus to a military officer.)

Exposing the misdeeds of the disinformer not only damages their “brand,” it also generates moral outrage against the use of despicable manipulative techniques. 

Truth is a sacred value.  Spreading vicious disinformation violates this sacred value and is a moral outrage.  Exposing those who systematically spread lies as a matter of state policy provokes revulsion in many, which goes far beyond a simple acknowledgement that a factual error needs to be corrected. 

Countering disinformation derives much of its power from this disgust at contemptible acts. 

Similarly, attempts by the Kremlin and others to covertly interfere in the internal affairs of other countries are rightly viewed as an unacceptable violation of sovereignty.

In a counter-brand system, it is essential to have public spokespersons who are also substantive experts steeped in the details of disinformation claims.  When one has immersed oneself totally in the substance of many phony accusations, patterns emerge, themes become clear, and one's command of the subject material enables one to provide examples that will win the respect of journalists and capture the attention of the public. 

The Lithuanian counter-allegation approach relies on a remarkable, highly effective division of labor among those who monitor and spot disinformation, research the allegations, and produce articles that expose and debunk the false claims.

In countries where there is not as close and cooperative a relationship between those who research false allegations and journalists, the best way to get corrective, debunking stories into the media is for the experts who research the false claims to speak directly to interested journalists and the public. 

Thorough, painstaking research is, of course, absolutely necessary in countering disinformation.  But writing articles is also enormously helpful.  The act of writing enables one to clarify one’s thinking and solidifies key examples and anecdotes in one’s mind.  When the camera is rolling or the microphone is on, the only information an expert can offer are the facts, examples, and anecdotes that are firmly implanted in his or her mind.  The act of writing produces such capabilities in a way that research alone does not.

Of course, in researching disinformation claims, one must always be thorough, meticulous, and scrupulously honest.  Only total immersion in the subject material and a thorough command of the facts can give people the level of expertise and mastery they need to be convincing and effective spokespersons on this issue.  There are no shortcuts.

Although it happened a long time ago, the U.S. government effort during the 1980s to expose Soviet disinformation provides an example of how the counter-brand approach can be enormously successful.

The U.S. government’s interagency Active Measures Working Group (AMWG) was created in 1981 and continued until the USSR’s collapse in 1991.  The group published many reports exposing Soviet disinformation and active measures (the KGB term for covert influence operations).  These reports illuminated operations the Soviets preferred remained hidden.  

In July 1987, the Department of State released a report on the USSR’s AIDS disinformation campaign.  In response to the robust U.S. government effort to expose their unsavory activities, Soviet officials assured the U.S. government in August 1987 that Soviet media would stop spreading the AIDS disinformation claim.  Despite some exceptions, AIDS disinformation charges diminished dramatically not only in Soviet media but worldwide.  The effort to expose Soviet wrongdoing achieved spectacular results.  (In the photo above, State Department official Kathleen Bailey exposes disinformation on AIDS at a press conference in 1987.)

It should be noted that the USSR was uniquely vulnerable to efforts to expose their misconduct at the time.  In the late 1980s, the Soviets realized they had lost the Cold War and switched from what Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze called the “politics of force” to the “force of politics.” 

A key part of this was an ultra-conciliatory policy toward the West.  As Georgi Arbatov, director of the Soviet Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, put it, “we have a ‘secret weapon’ that will work almost regardless of the American response - we would deprive America of The Enemy.”

While Soviet leaders claimed to have moved from confrontation to conciliation, they were still vigorously spreading anti-American disinformation.  They pursued conciliatory policies aimed at elites and mass publics in the West while simultaneously spreading crude, anti-American disinformation aimed at non-Western audiences and fringe audiences in the West.

Exposing unrelenting Soviet disinformation undermined their effort to “eliminate the enemy image.”  Soviet policymakers realized this was causing problems and in December 1987 pledged to stop disinformation, stating, “we have to have new thinking now.”  The counter-brand strategy of exposing Soviet disinformation had yielded spectacular results.

Obviously, today’s Kremlin leaders are not pursuing an ultra-conciliatory policy, so current efforts to expose Russian disinformation should not be expected to cause them to stop these activities.  But vigorously exposing the immoral nature of disinformation is essential to educate people and has yielded extraordinary results in the past.

For more, see:

• RESIST Counter-disinformation toolkit, Government Communication Service, United Kingdom
• “Russian Documentary On 'Helpful' 1968 Invasion Angers Czechs,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 1, 2015
• "Operation Infektion," Wikipedia
• Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986-87, U.S. Department of State (contains the paper on “The USSR’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign”)

Next issue: “The Myth that Debunking Doesn’t Work”

Past issues: #1: A Counter-Disinformation System That Works, Jan. 8, 2020

To contact us, email: GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov