New Eastern Outlook (NEO) is an internet journal published by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to its website, this journal looks at world events "as they relate to the Orient."[1] According to a 2020 report from the US State Department, NEO is "a pseudo-academic publication ... that promotes disinformation and propaganda focused primarily on the Middle East, Asia, and Africa." According to the United States Department of the Treasury, NEO is run by SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence agency. NEO is included in the EUvsDisinfo project, which tracks online disinformation.[2]

Background

The Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS), formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is a Russian research institution affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).[3] In 2013, the Russian government transferred control of the IOS, together with all other RAS academic institutes, to a government agency Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FASO).[4][5]

The IOS publishes both popular and scholarly journals about the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa.[3] According to its page on the IOS website, "NEO editorial staff appreciates viewpoints of any reader or contributor ready to share and defend his convictions and approaches, whether commonplace or unconventional."[6] The earliest (January 25, 2014) archived version of NEO's website describes it as "primarily interested in processes taking place at the broad expanse that stretches from Japan and the remote coasts of Africa ... We also look at political events happening in other areas of the world as they relate to the Orient."[7]

Collaboration with Veterans Today

In 2013, New Eastern Outlook sought a partnership with Veterans Today, an American website founded in 2003 in opposition to the US invasion of Iraq.[8][9] Veterans Today publishes conspiracy theories and has ties with Iran's state-backed media outlet, PressTV.[9]

In 2017, Politico quoted University of Washington professor Kate Starbird describing Veterans Today is "a fake news site actively pushing the Kremlin party line."[9] Titles of NEO articles re-published by Veterans Today included:[9]

  • "Ukraine’s Ku Klux Klan — NATO’s New Ally."
  • If NATO wants peace and stability it should stay home" and
  • "Brussels, NATO and the Globalists in Total Disarray."

Researchers at Oxford University's Internet Institute noted that NEO is not the only Russian source for Veterans Today, which also republishes content from Strategic Culture Foundation and SouthFront.[10]

Facebook removal in 2019

In 2019, New Eastern Outlook was one of several outlets whose pages were banned from Facebook for what Facebook called "coordinated inauthentic behavior."[11][12] Kevin Poulsen, writing about the event in The Daily Beast called NEO "one of Russia’s less-concealed outlets for propaganda and disinformation."[13]

The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, analyzing the NEO Facebook takedown, said:[14]

Most of the page’s posts linked to stories on its external website, Journal-neo.org, that primarily posted biased articles on a range of geopolitical, economic, and social issues. The Journal-neo.org website is a publication of the Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences (IVRAN), a geopolitical think tank chartered by the Russian government.

Alexander Reid Ross, also writing in 2019, described New Eastern Outlook as an example of "Russian state systems percolating into the alternative media ecosystem," saying it "produces conspiracy theories about Rothschilds and George Soros and Islamophobic material."[15]

2020 State Department report

In 2020, the United States Department of State (DOS) described New Eastern Outlook as part of "Russia's disinformation and propaganda system", where Russian state actors teamed with others whose connection to Russia was less clear, in order to get wide attention for their ideas. According to the 2020 DOS report:[8]

New Eastern Outlook is a pseudo-academic publication of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Oriental Studies that promotes disinformation and propaganda focused primarily on the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. It combines pro-Kremlin views of Russian academics with anti U.S. views of Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists.

The report cites several articles published by NEO including "The Skripal Incident-Another Anti-Russian Provocation" and includes text from a NEO article on COVID that states, "What western media do not talk about is that with high probability the virus was man-made in one or several bio-warfare laboratories of which the Pentagon and CIA have about 400 around the world ... Western media also are silent about the fact that the virus is directed specifically at the Chinese race, meaning, it targets specifically Chinese DNA."[8]

2021 reports on vaccine disinformation

In 2021, the US State Department's Global Engagement Center reported that sources linked to the Russian government had campaigned to question the development and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, promoting vaccine hesitancy. New Eastern Outlook was one of four websites said to have been "used by the Russian government to mislead international opinion on a range of issues."[16] Politifact, following up on a Wall Street Journal article, fact-checked two claims published in NEO, ranking one "False" and the other "Mostly False."[17]

The aim of vaccine disinformation changed over time. At first, the goal seemed to be promoting Russia's Sputnik vaccine by criticizing Pfizer, but later focus shifted to pushing "culture war debates over vaccine and mask mandates."[18]

A State Department source told the Wall Street Journal that Russia’s foreign intelligence service directly controls content at two of the four disinformation outlets (NEO and Oriental Review). Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described reports of Russian interference as "nonsense," saying "If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media."[16]

2022 sanctions

In March, 2022, the United States Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against several Russian individuals and organizations, including three said to be "disinformation outlets" controlled by Russia's SVR: New Eastern Outlook, Oriental Review, and Strategic Culture Foundation.[19] Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen described the March 3 sanctions as "demonstrating our commitment to impose massive costs on Putin’s closest confidants and their family members and freeze their assets in response to the brutal attack on Ukraine. We also continue to target Russia’s destabilizing disinformation efforts."[19]

NEO was also one of twelve Russian outlets sanctioned in March, 2022 by the British Foreign Office.[20]

References

  1. ↑ "About | New Eastern Outlook". journal-neo.org. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  2. ↑ Hoyle, Aiden; Powell, Thomas; Cadet, Beatrice; van de Kuijt, Judith (2022), Gill, Ritu; Goolsby, Rebecca (eds.), "Web of Lies: Mapping the Narratives, Effects, and Amplifiers of Russian Covid-19 Disinformation", COVID-19 Disinformation: A Multi-National, Whole of Society Perspective, Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications, Cham: Springer International Publishing, p. 122, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-94825-2_5, ISBN 978-3-030-94824-5, retrieved 2022-05-21
  3. 1 2 Dubrovskaya, Dina D. "200 years Oriental Studies in Russia. The Institute of Oriental Studies against the background of Russian history". International Institute for Asian Studies. Retrieved April 29, 2022. In order to survive the October 1918 turmoil, 'Oriental Studies', in part, followed the new Soviet government to Moscow, where the Moscow Institute of the Orient (МИВ) was established. In Saint Petersburg, Oriental Studies embarked on a new chapter in 1930 under its present name of 'Institute of Oriental Studies' at the then Soviet Academy of Sciences (IOS/SAS)
  4. ↑ "Russian Academy of Sciences awaits reform". Russia Direct. 5 July 2013. Archived from the original on 9 May 2022. Retrieved 9 May 2022. Putin also called to Fortov's attention that the reform asks for "the establishment of an agency managing Academy assets and essentially performing one of its main functions - the appointment of academic institute directors and, to a considerable degree, the evaluation of their performance."
  5. ↑ "Head of controversial agency becomes Russian minister for science and higher education". Science. 18 May 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2022. In a major restructuring, the Russian government has decided to split its Ministry of Education and Science here into two new departments: the Ministry of Education, responsible for primary and secondary education, and a new, separate Ministry for Science and Higher Education. Heading the latter will be Mikhail Kotyukov, a former head of the controversial Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FASO), which until now managed property and real estate of research institutions within the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and effectively had control over the academy.
  6. ↑ "New Eastern Outlook". IOS/RAS. Retrieved April 30, 2022. We are committed to develop NEO into a notable international networking platform offering unbiased expert opinions and open dialogue among all thinking people worldwide regardless of their nationality, race or religion. NEO editorial staff appreciates viewpoints of any reader or contributor ready to share and defend his convictions and approaches, whether commonplace or unconventional.
  7. ↑ "New Eastern Outlook: About (archived)". Archived from the original on 25 January 2014. Retrieved January 25, 2014. Our journal is called the New Eastern Outlook, so we are primarily interested in processes taking place at the broad expanse that stretches from Japan and the remote coasts of Africa. However, we do not limit ourselves geographically. We also look at political events happening in other areas of the world as they relate to the Orient.
  8. 1 2 3 "GEC Special Report: August 2020: Pillars of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem" (PDF). United States Department of State. 2020. Retrieved February 23, 2022. New Eastern Outlook is a pseudo-academic publication of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Oriental Studies that promotes disinformation and propaganda focused primarily on the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. It combines pro-Kremlin views of Russian academics with anti U.S. views of Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists. New Eastern Outlook's English language website does not clearly state that it is a product of the Institute. The site appears to want to benefit from the veneer of respectability offered by the Russian academics it features, while also obscuring its links to state-funded institutions.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Schreckinger, Ben (June 12, 2017). "How Russia Targets the U.S. Military". Politico. Retrieved March 10, 2022. In October 2013, at the same time that Veterans Today began publishing content from New Eastern Outlook, its sister site Veterans News Now began publishing content from the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Moscow think tank run by Yuri Profokiev, a former head of Moscow's Communist Party and member of the Soviet Politburo. In October 2015, Veterans Today also partnered with a slickly designed, anonymously authored military affairs website called South Front that had been registered in Moscow that April.
  10. ↑ "Junk News on Military Affairs and National Security: Social Media Disinformation Campaigns Against US Military Personnel and Veterans" (PDF). Oxford Democracy and Technology Programme. October 9, 2017. Retrieved March 10, 2022. We use the term "junk news" to include various forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyperpartisan, or conspiratorial political news and information. Much of this content is deliberately produced false reporting. It seeks to persuade readers about the moral virtues or failings of organizations, causes or people and presents commentary as a news product. This content is produced by organizations that do not employ professional journalists, and the content uses attention grabbing techniques, lots of pictures, moving images, excessive capitalization, ad hominem attacks, emotionally charged words and pictures, unsafe generalizations and other logical fallacies.
  11. ↑ "Facebook removes 'fake' Russian-linked accounts in Ukraine, Thailand". BBC. July 27, 2019. Retrieved April 29, 2022. Nathaniel Gleicher, head of the social media giant's cyber-security policy, said in a blog post that all the accounts were removed for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behaviour", rather than their content. Facebook defines "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" as "when groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they are doing".
  12. ↑ "Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior in Thailand, Russia, Ukraine and Honduras". Meta. July 25, 2019. Retrieved April 29, 2022. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that some of this activity was linked to an individual based in Thailand associated with New Eastern Outlook, a Russian government-funded journal based in Moscow.
  13. ↑ Poulsen, Kevin (30 July 2019). "Accused Russian Troll Uses a Novel Argument to Fire Back at Facebook". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 29 August 2019. NEO is one of Russia's less-concealed outlets for propaganda and disinformation. One notorious 2016 article headlined "Top USA National Security Officials Admit Turkey Coup," was an entirely made-up story that enjoyed wide pickup on Turkish social media, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. A 2018 Senate report found the site has also successfully sowed Russian propaganda in Hungary.
  14. ↑ "Facebook Takes Down Inauthentic Pages with Connections to Thailand". DFR Lab. July 25, 2019. Retrieved May 10, 2022. The Journal-neo.org website is a publication of the Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences (IVRAN), a geopolitical think tank chartered by the Russian government ... New Eastern Outlook is a clear affiliate of the Russian government, so the anti-Western sentiment conveyed by the content spread by its network is therefore not surprising.
  15. ↑ Alexander Reid Ross (November 8, 2019). "Alexander Reid Ross — Fooling the Nation: Extremism and the Pro-Russia Disinformation Ecosystem". Boundary 2. Retrieved May 10, 2022. Additional fascinating examples of Russian state systems percolating into the alternative media ecosystem are Redfish, the New Eastern Outlook (or Journal-NEO), and Strategic Culture ... New Eastern Outlook produces conspiracy theories about Rothschilds and George Soros and Islamophobic material, and hosts articles by Duginist Catherine Shakhdam and conspiracy theorist Vanessa Beeley, among others.
  16. 1 2 Gordon, Michael R.; Volz, Dustin (March 7, 2021). "Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 28, 2022. New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, the official said, are directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia's foreign intelligence service. They present themselves as academic publications and are aimed at the Middle East, Asia and Africa, offering comment on the U.S.'s role in the world.
  17. ↑ "Fact-checking vaccine claims in alleged disinformation campaign by Russian intelligence". Politifact. March 9, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2022. New Eastern Outlook: The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are "explicitly experimental" and "untested." This is False.
  18. ↑ Barnes, Julian E. (August 5, 2021). "Russian Disinformation Targets Vaccines and the Biden Administration". New York Times. Retrieved March 1, 2022. Earlier, forums like RT, a Kremlin-backed English-language site, were focused on promoting Russia's vaccine and denigrating Western vaccines. But more recently, Russia's state-run media has been 'really leaning into the culture war debates over vaccine and mask mandates,' said Bret Schafer, a disinformation expert at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
  19. 1 2 "Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors". United States Department of the Treasury. March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. Russia's SVR directs two additional disinformation outlets, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review. Both media outlets spread many types of disinformation about international organizations, military conflicts, protests, and any divisive issues that they can exploit. Recently, both outlets spread false information to undermine COVID-19 vaccines.
  20. ↑ "West hits Vladimir Putin's fake news factories with wave of sanctions". The Guardian. March 20, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022. Twelve key disinformation outlets used to bolster Vladimir Putin have been hit with sanctions in an online crackdown on "false and misleading" reports claimed to be orchestrated by Russian intelligence.
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