China used social media to spread misinformation to discredit Western media during pandemic, report finds – ABC News

At the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, China'sglobal media influence was in full swing, using social media to discredit Western media outlets and spread propaganda, a new report finds.

As the pandemic started to spread in 2020, Beijing used its media infrastructure globally to seed positive narratives about China in national media, as well as mobilisingdisinformation, a report by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) found.

The report, based on an original survey that polled 54 journalist unions from 50 different countries and territories, foundthat China had been usingthe pandemic to boost its image in global media coverage.

"The types of things that [Beijing] ispushing, it's not just messages on China but exploiting messages on the west," one of the authors of the report, researcher Julia Berginsaid during a roundtable discussion.

She said China has used free social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter as a "reverse tactic" to discredit Western media, like the BBC when it reportson themistreatment of Uyghur peoplein theXinjiang region.

Reuters: Thomas Peter

Twitter is banned in Chinabut many Chinese nationalistsuse the platform to entice heated discussion in support of China's detention camps in Xinjiang or use propaganda videos to switch thenarrative.

China denies they are detention camps and describes them as boarding schools.

Data from the report shows growing concerns over the use of both disinformation and misinformation as tactics, not just in China but across South and North America,with an overall 82 per centrise indisinformation reported.

Fake news arrives even more rapidly than the virus itself,"Italian journalistLuca RIgion said to the discussion panel.

Michael Keane, an academic from the Queensland University of Technology, saidthere is a "negative light"in which Chinese media is often portrayed in Western democracies such as Australia.

"At least in [Australia] we have pluralistic media but in China you don't have a pluralistic media and that's a fact," he told thepanel.

Beijing hasstepped up its news offerings, providing domestic and international content tailored for each country in "non-Anglophone languages", the report found.

The China Cables leak of highly classified documents reveals the scale of Beijing's repressive control over Xinjiang, where more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups are detained.

"At the same time, Beijing has weaponised foreign journalist visas, forcing resident journalists out of China."

"The vacuum in coverage is increasingly being filled by state-approved content, which is sometimes offered for free, to these countries," the report read.

Many journalists and media companiesaround the world have been censored or arrested by China, including many of Hong Kong's pro-democracy activists and influencers.

Australian Cheng Lei,ahigh-profiletelevision anchor for the Chinese government's English news channel, CGTN, was detained in Beijing in 2020.

Ms Cheng was thesecond Australian to be detained in Beijing in recent years. Writer and former Chinese government employee Yang Hengjun was taken by authorities in January 2019.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersonHua Chunying responded to comments made in the report and defended China's media strategy, saying itdeserves a place in the international media landscape.

"In the face of lies and rumours to smear and attack China, it is only natural to make our own voices heard," Ms Hua said.

"China explained truth and facts on many important issues including COVID-19 to leave an objective and right collective narrative and memory for mankind. This is what we call a responsible attitude from a responsible country."

China's mass internment of its ethnic Uyghur population appears to be the largest imprisonment of people on the basis of religion since the Holocaust.

This report, whichbuilds on the IFJ's previous report The China Story: Reshaping the World's Media found that globally, 56 per cent of all countries surveyed reported that coverage of China in their country had become more positive overall since the COVID-19 outbreak, while only 24 per cent said coverage of China had become more negative.

China uses the lack of Western media coverage in the region to its advantage, pushing out digestible content that's available to major news organisations who don't have eyes in the region, the report suggests.

"China is using a multi-pronged approach to redraw the information landscape to benefit its own global image, " it read.

In a panicked phone call from China's far-western region of Xinjiang, this qualified nurse reveals how she has been arrested and forced to work in a factory.

In 2020, Beijing effectively shut down journalistic access to Chinathrough visa denials and freezes, partly driven by international border closures.

The shutdown createda vacuum in China coverage, where there was a high demand for stories from China, which China filled with state-sponsored content already available through content-sharing agreements, it found.

The research found that content offered to global journalists hasbecomemore tailoredwith efforts being made to translate Chinese propaganda into different languages, even those that are not widely spoken such as Italian and Serbian.

"The media is quite robust but we need to think about the vulnerability of Western media. [Their]vulnerability is economic," report researcherLouisa Lim said.

The IFJ recommends more engagement in the region, with a strategy to reach out to and create relationships with Chinese journalists inside and outside China.

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China used social media to spread misinformation to discredit Western media during pandemic, report finds - ABC News