A Nation Must Think Before it Acts
Russia, Iran and China’s Candidate Preferences Before Election Day 2020
A nation must think before it acts.
Preferences for one candidate or the other in 2020 have been critical to understanding any foreign interference efforts in the lead-up to November—and for understanding potential influence efforts post-Election Day.
The first U.S. 2020 presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was filled with shouting, interruption and general on-stage chaos. RT and Sputnik News took the opportunity to highlight it as such.
China may be a larger influence concern for the U.S. in 2021 and in the longer term, but Russia’s overt content points to a larger effort to influence the vote in November.
With Election Day just roughly three months out, the 2020 race has seen renewed attention in RT, Sputnik News, PressTV and the Global Times.
In the past decade, Twitter has transformed from simply a social media platform to a key access point for news for millions of people in the U.S. and around the world. State-sponsored media outlets have also used the platform to speak with American audiences. FIE 2020 discusses RT, Sputnik, PressTV and Global Times Twitter activity surrounding U.S. election integrity.
Foreign state-sponsored media outlets published a number of stories mentioning Senator Kamala Harris in light of former Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement on August 11 that the senator would be his running mate in the 2020 election, many of them painting Harris negatively.
Foreign influence: What America should worry about this year and next
FIE 2020 examines Russian state-sponsored media’s narratives about mail-in voting in the 2020 election.
While China’s state-sponsored media outlet the Global Times appears to have little interest in supporting one candidate versus another in the 2020 election, its coverage instead seeks to criticize American democracy as a whole.
FIE 2020 discusses anti-democracy and anti-capitalism narratives employed by foreign state-sponsored media in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.