#NieKarmTrolla (Don’t Feed the Troll): our campaign against Russian disinformation in Poland
Together with the Crazy Nauka blog, we have launched the social campaign #NieKarmTrolla (Don’t feed the troll), which is intended to help people notice and combat Kremlin disinformation in Poland. In this way we are not only supporting Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor, but also making Poles more resistant to the widespread presence of Kremlin trolls on the Polish-language internet.
One of the statutory aims of our Foundation is to promote scientific knowledge and reliable information and to prevent the spread of disinformation. Therefore, in the face of the intensification of the Kremlin’s disinformation activities on the Polish-language internet, which came with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, we decided to share with you what we do best, namely our knowledge of techniques for recognising and countering activities of this kind.
We hope that in this way we will limit the reach of the disinformation campaign run by Putin’s trolls and their bots, and eagerly spread by so-called useful idiots (this is not an insulting term, but the name of one of the disinformation techniques, known as “useful idiots”), that is, people who have seen in the venom trickled out by the Kremlin an emanation of their own phobias and prejudices, and who as a result serve as a tool of disinformation.
Putin’s trolls are stirring things up on the Polish internet in order to downplay the scale of their own aggression and of the war crimes being committed in Ukraine, and to make life as difficult as possible for millions of unfortunate refugees. They do this by cleverly exploiting historical Polish-Ukrainian animosities and by fuelling xenophobic sentiment, that is, fear of newcomers. This is part of a cyberwar in which we are both the target and the instrument of attack.
Webinar
We organised a webinar on Kremlin disinformation, whose guests were Sylwia Czubkowska, journalist and managing editor of Spider’s Web+, and Robert Król, deputy director of NASK responsible for countering disinformation online:
Educational materials
We have also created a series of educational materials that help people recognise and combat Russian disinformation on the Polish internet. So far, the first 3 parts of the #NieKarmTrolla campaign have been published:
How not to feed the troll?
The 7 main methods of Kremlin disinformation
Report disinformation!
