Information laundering

Propaganda tactic

This article is about the propaganda tactic. For the adversarial machine learning strategy, see Adversarial machine learning § Defenses.

Information laundering, narrative laundering[1] or disinformation laundering[2] is the surfacing of news, false or otherwise, from unverified sources into the mainstream.[3][4][5] By advancing disinformation to make it accepted as ostensibly legitimate information, information laundering resembles money laundering—the transforming of illicit funds into ostensibly legitimate funds.[6][7]

## Descriptions

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Information laundering, as summarized by American comedian and commentator Jon Stewart, can happen when relatively reputable news organizations report on something that a blog or platform of unknown credibility has written. These news organizations may attribute the assertion, but another publication may omit its original source. "That piece of information [on where the news came from] has now been laundered," Stewart says, and the original assertion, whether or not its source was credible, gains credibility, especially if it is used by outlets known for high standards.[4]

Pace University's Adam Klein, who developed the theory, argues that information laundering is similar to how criminals launder illegal funds into financial institutions.[8] In the case of information laundering, illegitimate exchanges of information flow through social networks, political blogs, and search engines, where they intermix with mainstream ideas, and gradually become washed of their radical origins. According to Klein, "[c]onspiracies grow in communities like Reddit or Twitter, which can act as incubators. Then they graduate onto more respected websites and political blogs, until sometimes, they're picked up by mainstream news outlets as 'trusted information'."[5]

Digital platforms can be especially vulnerable to information laundering efforts; faked videos (deepfakes) and images (photograph manipulation), for instance, can create media moments and spread disinformation.[9] According to Karen Kornbluh, director of the German Marshall Fund's Digital Innovation Democracy initiative, and Ellen Goodman, director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law, bots, fake accounts and click farms "pretend to be people they're not and create a false sense of consensus", and commercial platforms, "designed to keep users online to be served ads, end up privileging engagement over truth or the public interest. What drives engagement is often outrage and disgust, so this is what the algorithm rewards."[10]

According to a report by NATO in 2020, state actors that engage in information laundering, particularly Russia, "are generally supported by cyber capabilities that enhance the spread and amplification of a laundered piece, e.g. through the creation of fake personas and burner accounts, and sophisticated for manipulation of information, e.g. through the distribution of forged letters."[11]

## Examples

[edit]

In 2013, WikiLeaks, which publishes secret information from anonymous sources, was said in a commentary by Jonathan Holmes on ABC Australia to be information laundering.[12]

Information laundering was alleged in the spreading of false news by social media in the 2018 Mexican election.[13]

American intelligence officials say China and Russia have used information laundering to spread disinformation in the West about the COVID-19 pandemic[14] and the 2020 elections in the United States.[15][16][17][18] The Russian effort has included a network of fake accounts on social media.[16] Russian propaganda using information laundering is also suspected in stoking fears about 5G technology.[19] The Alliance for Securing Democracy, an American group that opposes Russian efforts to undermine Western elections, cites maskirovka, a Soviet-era military doctrine that translates as 'mask' or 'masquerade', as a precursor to Russian information laundering.[6] Despite bans in multiple countries, content from Russian state media outlets such as RT and Sputnik continues to be laundered through third-party sites.[20]

Local "Save the Children" rallies in 2020 by supporters of QAnon, an American far-right conspiracy theory, were an example of information laundering, as QAnon hijacked a unifying cause in attempts to attract credulous local television news coverage, according to Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News.[21]

According to The Economist, the Independent Online of South Africa "often engages in 'information laundering' designed to make sentiment appear homegrown, says Herman Wasserman at the University of Cape Town. For instance, it will run a Chinese news-agency story on the biolab conspiracy, then get a left-wing student leader to write an article expressing concern about the supposed biolabs. Chinese news agencies will use that to write about how South Africans are worried, thus manufacturing a 'story' out of nothing at all."[22]

In 2023, the United States Department of State accused the Chinese government of information laundering by using "manufactured personas" such as a fictitious opinion columnist named "Yi Fan" to present state narratives as "organic sentiment".[23][24][25]

## Detection

[edit]

In 2024, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the University of Amsterdam, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue jointly released an open-source tool for uncovering websites republishing content from Russian state media.[26]

## Similar phrases

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A similar phrase, idea laundering, has described how academicians may advance non-scientific ideas as knowledge or fact.[27][28][29][30] A 2020 paper used the phrase idea laundering to describe plagiarism "in which ideas are plagiarized and then the plagiarism is hidden in plain sight".[29]

Similarly, citation laundering is a colloquial term used to refer to a number of practices including:[31][32][33]

* Hiding a self-citation by citing someone who has referenced one's own work. (Sometimes also called "stealth citation".[34] Individual self-citation is not to be confused with journal self-citation, commonly known as coercive citation.[35][36])
* Citing a number of more recent works that ultimately all pull their information from one flawed source. This can be intentional disinformation or an accidental lack of rigor.

Self-citation practices are usually done with the intent of increasing a scholar's research impact in terms of metrics such as the h-index; groups of scholars can form "citation farms" or "citation cartels" to aggrandize each other's work.[37][38] Self- or co-citation in this way can also contribute to information laundering as it increases the seeming authority of a claim without rigorously investigating its source.

## Machine learning definition

[edit]

In adversarial machine learning, information laundering refers to a general strategy that purposely alters the information released to adversaries, with the goal of alleviating model stealing attacks.[39]

## See also

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* Trading up the chain
* Astroturfing
* Circular reporting or "citogenesis"
* Wikipedia:List of citogenesis incidents

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "China and Russia are deploying powerful new weapons: ideas". The Economist. May 15, 2025. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
2. ^ Toucas, Boris (August 31, 2017). "Exploring the Information-Laundering Ecosystem: The Russian Case". CSIS. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
3. ^ Klein, Adam G. (2017). "A theory of information laundering". Fanaticism, racism, and rage online: corrupting the digital sphere. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-51423-9.
4. ^ a b Merelli, Annalisa (December 1, 2016). "Fake news: Jon Stewart says the media has become an 'information-laundering scheme'". Quartz. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
5. ^ a b Ellis, Emma Grey (May 31, 2017). "To Make Your Conspiracy Theory Legit, Just Find an 'Expert'". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 27, 2017. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
6. ^ a b Meleshevich, Kirill; Schafer, Bret (January 9, 2018). "Online Information Laundering: The Role of Social Media". Alliance For Securing Democracy. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
7. ^ Gelbart, Hannah (April 4, 2023). "The UK Company Spreading Russian Fake News to Millions". BBC (website). Retrieved October 4, 2024. ""information laundering" ... pumping out propaganda through a third party ..."
8. ^ Klein, Adam (2012). "Slipping Racism into the Mainstream: A Theory of Information Laundering". Communication Theory. 22 (4): 427–448\. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2012.01415.x.
9. ^ Smith, Hannah; Mansted, Katherine (2020). Weaponised deep fakes (PDF) (Report). Australian Strategic Policy Institute. JSTOR resrep25129. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 18, 2023. Retrieved June 16, 2024.
10. ^ Kornbluh, Karen; Goodman, Ellen (June 13, 2019). "To Fight Online Disinformation, Reinvigorate Media Policy". Government Executive. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 6, 2020.
11. ^ "Information Laundering in Germany". NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. October 2020. Archived from the original on March 18, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
12. ^ Holmes, Jonathan (December 14, 2010). "WikiLeaks, journalists and that elusive public interest". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
13. ^ "In Mexico, fake news creators up their game ahead of election". Reuters. June 29, 2018. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
14. ^ Barnes, Julian E.; Sanger, David E. (July 28, 2020). "Russian Intelligence Agencies Push Disinformation on Pandemic". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 21, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
15. ^ Kinetz, Erika (February 15, 2021). "Anatomy of a conspiracy: With COVID, China took leading role". Associated Press. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
16. ^ a b Frenkel, Sheera; Barnes, Julian E. (September 1, 2020). "Russians Again Targeting Americans With Disinformation, Facebook and Twitter Say". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 29, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
17. ^ Harris, Shane; Nakashima, Ellen (August 21, 2020). "With a mix of covert disinformation and blatant propaganda, foreign adversaries bear down on final phase of presidential campaign". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 27, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
18. ^ Jankowicz, Nina (February 21, 2020). "How Russia And Other Foreign Actors Sow Disinformation In Elections". All Things Considered (Interview). Interviewed by Audie Cornish. NPR. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
19. ^ Zappone, Chris (September 16, 2019). "Russian propaganda 'very likely' stoking 5G health fears in Australia: expert claims". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
20. ^ Bond, Shannon (June 6, 2024). "This is what Russian propaganda looks like in 2024". NPR. Archived from the original on June 15, 2024. Retrieved June 15, 2024.
21. ^ "With #SaveTheChildren Rallies, QAnon Sneaks Into The Offline World | On the Media". WNYC Studios. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
22. ^ "How Russia is trying to win over the global south". The Economist. September 22, 2022. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on September 24, 2022. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
23. ^ "How the People's Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment". United States Department of State. September 28, 2023. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023. "PRC officials sometimes attribute relevant content to specific authors under false names, likely to conceal the PRC's role in producing it and falsely purporting to represent legitimate, organic sentiment in a given region. In addition, PRC officials are known in some cases to attribute such manufactured commentaries to "international affairs commentators" and then use other individual, non-official accounts to promote these commentaries. As one example, the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) uses a manufactured persona named Yi Fan, often credited as a "Beijing-based international affairs commentator," to deceptively promote pro-Beijing views on a wide variety of topics and regions."
24. ^ Myers, Steven Lee (September 28, 2023). "China Uses 'Deceptive' Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 29, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
25. ^ Willemyns, Alex (September 28, 2023). "US diplomat: 'We're in an undeclared information war'". Radio Free Asia. Archived from the original on September 30, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
26. ^ "The Russian Propaganda Nesting Doll: How RT is Layered Into the Digital Information Environment". German Marshall Fund. May 30, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024.
27. ^ R., John (September 21, 2019). "The national security implications of idea laundering". SOFREP. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved April 8, 2021.
28. ^ Boghossian, Peter (November 24, 2019). "'Idea Laundering' in Academia". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on February 21, 2023. Retrieved April 8, 2021.
29. ^ a b Dutta, Shiladitya; Uhegbu, Kelechi; Nori, Sathvik; Mashkoor, Sohyb; Taswell, S. Koby; Taswell, Carl (February 2020). "DREAM Principles from the PORTAL-DOORS Project and NPDS Cyberinfrastructure". 2020 IEEE 14th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC). pp. 211–216\. doi:10.1109/ICSC.2020.00044. ISBN 978-1-7281-6332-1. S2CID 212705263. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 30, 2023.
30. ^ Taswell, S. Koby; Triggle, Christopher; Vayo, June; Dutta, Shiladitya; Taswell, Carl (October 2020). "The hitchhiker's guide to scholarly research integrity". Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 57 (1). doi:10.1002/pra2.223. ISSN 2373-9231. S2CID 225042076. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved September 30, 2023.
31. ^ Cranford, Steve (June 3, 2020). "C.R.E.A.M: Citations Rule Everything Around Me". Matter. 2 (6): 1343–1347\. doi:10.1016/j.matt.2020.04.025. ISSN 2590-2393. S2CID 219915364.
32. ^ "Calculating Body Counts". WNYC Studios. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
33. ^ Roth, Françoise; Guberek, Tamy; Green, Amelia Hoover (March 22, 2011). "Using Quantitative Data to Assess Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Colombia: Challenges and Opportunities" (PDF). Benetech Human Rights Program and Corporación Punto de Vista. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 19, 2023.
34. ^ Roach, Joseph (2017). "The Serendipity Tango: "Volume 1, Number 1"". Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. 31 (2): 141–152\. doi:10.1353/dtc.2017.0007. ISSN 2165-2686. S2CID 201777959.
35. ^ Van Noorden, Richard; Singh Chawla, Dalmeet (August 19, 2019). "Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database". Nature. 572 (7771): 578–579\. Bibcode:2019Natur.572..578V. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02479-7. PMID 31455906. S2CID 201704279.
36. ^ Szomszor, Martin; Pendlebury, David A.; Adams, Jonathan (May 1, 2020). "How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess". Scientometrics. 123 (2): 1119–1147\. doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5. ISSN 1588-2861. S2CID 215574614.
37. ^ Hill, Sarah (March 19, 2020). "Citation Farms and Circles of Self-citation". The Big Idea. University of Houston. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
38. ^ Hyland, Ken (February 1, 2003). "Self-citation and self-reference: Credibility and promotion in academic publication". Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 54 (3): 251–259\. doi:10.1002/asi.10204. ISSN 1532-2882.
39. ^ Wang, Xinran; Xiang, Yu; Gao, Jun; Ding, Jie (2020). "Information Laundering for Model Privacy". arXiv:2009.06112 [cs.CR].

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Media manipulation

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