Cyber influence links: Identifying Erdogan’s bodyguards, Arctic selfies, attention hacking and more

• An examination of how Russia has weaponised social media in Crimea. Ukraine has since banned a number of Russian sites and platforms, including the country’s largest social network (VKontakte), over growing fears of Russian influence.
  
• The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has tapped into social media selfies to map Russia’s two newest Arctic bases.
  
• Researchers claim they have found conclusive ties that link cyber espionage actor APT3 (responsible for hacking two Hong Kong Government departments last year) directly to China’s Ministry of State Security (via a Guangzhou-based technology contractor).
  
• A report from New York’s Data & Society research institute analyses how radicalised online groups ‘attention hack’ to increase the visibility of their ideas through the strategic social media, meme and bot use.
  
• This new app, which takes advantage of a censorship loophole, lets Iranians swipe left or right on policy proposals so they can match with their perfect political candidate.
  
• There is an online crowdsourcing campaign to use open-source intelligence to identify the President of Turkey’s bodyguards who took part in this week’s astonishing violence in Washington DC.
  
• In a 15 May Twitter Q&A, China’s Deputy Chief of Mission to Pakistan Lijian Zhao received 22,000 questions via #asklijianzhao. Such initiatives (this one focused on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) are an attempt to engage while countering misinformation. But it didn’t go down well with everybody.
  
• Canadian news is reporting Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan has been targeted by a Russian cyber campaign in an apparent attempt to undermine NATO’s presence in the Baltic states. In a far more sophisticated campaign, this essay examines how Russia used a two-year old video and an ‘alternative’ Swedish group to discredit reports of Syria’s April gas attack.
  
• The Finnish government is again investing in emoji diplomacy, this time to signal its new role in Arctic geopolitics.
  
• Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which always scores highly on digital diplomacy rankings, has reached one million followers on its Arabic Facebook page. The page, which is staffed by full-time officials, focuses on engaging in open discussion while locating and deflecting trolls.
  
• Thailand’s Government has backed down on threats to block Facebook after the social media company, which opened an office in Bangkok in 2015, cooperated with the government’s demands to remove content it considers offensive to the monarchy.
  
• The Chinese Government took its digital diplomacy to a new level this month in order to promote One Belt One Road. To project its global trade narrative online the government turned to Twitter, Facebook and a never-ending stream of video productions. There were bedtime stories, a travelling bottle of British Whiskey, a play doh-inspired jingle, history and song animations, painting foreigners, a humble salad, and some great rap and dance choreography. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but here’s mine, courtesy of Fuxing Road Studios:

Danielle Cave