Ever since the Kremlin’s troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, targeted the American electorate during the 2016 U.S. presidential election with social media disinformation campaigns, nation-states across the globe have jumped into their own weaponized information campaigns to influence elections.
In 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a report addressing the rise of state-sponsored disinformation that looked at not only Russian influence campaigns but also Chinese, Iranian and North Korean disinformation efforts. According to the report, a growing number of nation-states, in pursuing geopolitical ends, “are leveraging digital tools and social media networks to spread narratives, distortions, and falsehoods to shape public perceptions and undermine trust in the truth.”