Second narrative report

The report argues that in the context of the Moldovan elections, interference aimed less at communicative persuasion and more at acting as a geopolitical spatial strategy routed through digital infrastructures to achieve participatory deterrence. For Ukraine, the narratives persistently contested President Zelensky's legitimacy and framed the conflict as a proxy struggle or a domestic economic burden. Anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns, meanwhile, relied on narratives framing the community as a threat to "pure" societies or the "natural family structure".

The findings highlight that disinformation campaigns are tightly coordinated and exploit platform-specific dynamics. For example, Telegram served frequently as a primary channel for initial dissemination and an operational coordination hub, while TikTok showed a disproportionately high capacity for engagement and rapid mobilization, notably in the Moldovan election case. Across all topics, disinformation utilized strong emotional triggers, employing persuasion techniques such as name-calling, casting doubt, false equivalencies, and exaggeration to amplify the message and simulate public outrage or consensus. This approach ensures that narratives are hybrid, blending themes of sovereignty, security, and identity for maximum adaptability and reach.

Insights gathered from fact-checkers confirmed that these shared narratives—election distrust, culture wars, and the war reframed as a domestic cost—are localized through specific national levers. Journalists observed that the spread of disinformation often relies on disinfotainment (memes, humor, satire) to lower the social and reputational cost of sharing, while Russian-linked narratives are localized and amplified by domestic political actors, influencers, and diaspora communities. The report concludes that, despite advances in monitoring capabilities, the asynchronous nature of disinformation—exploiting gaps between state policy, platform enforcement, and local defenses—creates a structural vulnerability, arguing that integrated responses must elevate and empower local, grassroots defenses.

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