In a weekly series for IranWire, Jianli Yang analyses Chinese disinformation around the origin of coronavirus and its handling to date, and other recent affairs.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, during a regular press conference on June 22, was asked to confirm the number of casualties China had suffered in the recent clash (with India) in the Galwan Valley. Far from giving out the exact figure, he did not even acknowledge that there were casualties on the Chinese side, saying “I have no information to offer.”Disinformation about coronavirus published by state-backed media outlets in autocracies such as from China, Russia and Iran Turkey is frequently reaching a larger European social media audience than those European countries’ own domestic news providers.
Surprised? This was the major finding of a study conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute and released on June 29, 2010, looking at the dissemination of COVID-19 related news among French, German and Spanish readers.
It found, for instance, that China Radio International (CRI) has generated four times the number of engagements per shared article than such leading publications as the Spanish El Pais, the French Le Monde and the German Der Spiegel. CRI’s subsidiary operating in America has been… [Continue Reading]