CV information war -- China's propaganda machine (in high gear)

Coronavirus information war: China's propaganda machine launched new Twitter accounts, publishes 90,000 messages

China is ramping up its coronavirus propaganda war against the U.S. by using a growing number of Twitter accounts to push out tens of thousands of inflammatory messages, a report says.

Since the beginning of April, 200 of the communist country’s diplomatic and state-run media accounts have published around 90,000 tweets as part of an offensive – with many recently spreading a conspiracy theory that the deadly virus originated in a U.S. lab, not China -- the Alliance for Securing Democracy advocacy group told NBC News.

"The primary goal of this rhetoric is to demonstrate to Chinese domestic constituencies that the Communist Party is not lying prostrate before American accusations," added Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Jonathan Walkerin said:

I don’t think there is any chance that China has been giving reliable information

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Proven once again
not the place to go for reliable information.
M

fewme said:

American stats are dire, regardless, getting closer and close to 5000 infected per million, with no sign of stopping yet.

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Virus straight from China.
Made In China.
M

How China Built a Twitter Propaganda Machine Then Let It Loose on Coronavirus — ProPublica

ProPublica analyzed thousands of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts to understand how covert Chinese propaganda spreads around the globe.

Kalen Keegan, a college student at the University of Nebraska Omaha, immediately noticed when her Twitter account unleashed a torrent of posts in Chinese. “My other account got hacked,” the soccer player posted on a replacement account. The new author tweeting as @Kalenkayyy had strong views on geopolitics — all aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. It was obsessed with the protests in Hong Kong, offered uncritical praise of the Hong Kong police and accused demonstrators of fomenting a “color revolution” backed by an “anti-Chinese American conspiracy.”

Since August 2019, ProPublica has tracked more than 10,000 suspected fake Twitter accounts involved in a coordinated influence campaign with ties to the Chinese government. Among those are the hacked accounts of users from around the world that now post propaganda and disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, the Hong Kong protests and other topics of state interest. They included a professor in North Carolina; a graphic artist and a mother in Massachusetts; a web designer in the U.K.; and a business analyst in Australia. (It is unclear whether the current fake account holders hacked the accounts themselves or purchased them from elsewhere.) Suspected Chinese operatives have stepped up their efforts in recent days, according to private messages shared with ProPublica, offering influential Chinese-speaking Twitter users cash for favorable posts.

With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate

Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show,” has won praise on the Chinese internet for his searing criticism of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. So has Jerry Kowal, an American who makes Chinese-language videos chronicling the dire situation in New York.

China’s response to the virus has its own sharp-eyed critics at home, and they have found a vastly different reception. One resident of the virus-struck city of Wuhan who writes under the name Fang Fang documented despair, misery and everyday life in an online diary, and has endured withering attacks on social media. Three citizen journalists who posted videos from Wuhan in the first weeks of the outbreak disappeared and are widely believed to be in government custody.