Since the Soviet era, Moscow has been using “Western media” for propaganda purposes, which it uses to increase the credibility of its own lies among its citizens or to influence foreign audiences.
Often, propagandists use similar names: for example, Les Echos de la France is a fake publication to spread the news about Zelenskyy’s purchase of a hotel in Courchevel, while Les Echos is a real French media outlet founded in 1908.
Some tips on how to distinguish a fake website from a real publication:
- Check the information about the resource. If you see a suspicious news item referring to a foreign media outlet you know nothing about, try to search the web for information about the outlet: when was it founded? Who are its owners? What are the topics of their materials? Very often, there may be no information about this resource at all, and this is a reason to doubt it.
- Analyze the website content. Does this outlet look like a real Western media outlet or does it look suspicious? For example, if a media outlet allegedly based in Colombia reports suspiciously much about the Russian-Ukrainian war, while also supporting Russian narratives, it is likely either a fake news site or a Kremlin-funded outlet. In any case, you should not trust the news they spread. By the way, such resources often contain conspiracy theories: for example, about black transplantation, a global conspiracy, etc.
- Ask your native speaker friends. If you have friends who are native speakers or citizens of the countries where the publication is allegedly based, this is another great way to check out the resource. Ask them if they have heard of the media outlet. Are the texts on the website written naturally, or do they look more like an automatic translation from Russian? If there is a video on the site, do the speakers sound natural – perhaps they speak with an accent, or is their voice generated by artificial intelligence?
- Check the history of the site. Usually, such sites are one-offs: they are created to spread a specific fake, and then stop publishing new materials or disappear from the network altogether. So, follow such a publication for a few weeks – it will help you find out if the resource you are looking at is genuine.
- Use resources to recognize the domain. Use domain recognition resources such as whois.com – they allow you to search for information about the domain owner and IP address, as well as check a number of other statistics. It is important to establish the date of the domain’s foundation and the server hosting the website. First, it is obvious that, for example, “French Media”, founded two weeks ago and registered in Lithuania, is a product of Russian propaganda. And secondly, some servers have repeatedly become platforms for spreading Russian fakes.
By following these rules, you will be able to recognize fake web resources and avoid falling for Russian propaganda. However, Russians are constantly inventing new ways to deceive their audience and promote their criminal narratives.
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