Bret Schafer – Alliance For Securing Democracy
About Bret Schafer
Bret Schafer is the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow. As an expert in computational propaganda, he has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and he has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and CBS and BBC radio. Prior to joining GMF, he spent more than ten years in the television and film industry, including stints at Cartoon Network and as a freelance writer for Warner Brothers. He also worked in Budapest as a radio host, in Berlin as a semi-professional baseball player in Germany’s Bundesliga, and in Moscow as an intern in the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy in Russia. He has a BS in communications with a major in radio/television/film from Northwestern University, and a master’s in public diplomacy from the University of Southern California, where he was the editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine.
Hamilton Toplines: August 1-7, 2020
Heavy coverage of the explosion in Beirut was substantial enough to break through the coronavirus news cycle, reflected in the fact that #Beirut was the third most-used hashtag by Russian, Iranian, and Chinese state media and government accounts las [...]
Hamilton Analysis: How Russia and China Covered the TikTok Ban
Overview President Trump’s executive order last week outlining plans to effectively ban Chinese short-form video app TikTok from the U.S. market triggered a predictable backlash from China’s state media and government officials, who accused the U.S. [...]
Hamilton Toplines: July 25-31, 2020
Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media and government accounts once again took aim at the United States last week, with the most pointed commentary coming from China and Iran. On July 31, a series of tweets from the Supreme Leader of Iran’s many [...]
Hamilton Weekly Overview: July 18-July 24, 2020
The Russian, Chinese, and Iranian networks monitored on Hamilton showed little topical overlap last week, save for the ever-present coverage of the coronavirus. Russian state-backed media and government officials pushed back on the U.K. Russia repor [...]
Hamilton Weekly Report: July 11-July 17, 2020
Overview Coronavirus coverage was again the primary through line in messaging from Russia, Iran, and China last week, with Russian state media and diplomats touting an alleged breakthrough in the country’s development of a vaccine (a claim boosted b [...]
Hamilton Weekly Report: July 4-July 10, 2020
Overview The United States and its allies were, once again, the primary targets of negative messaging from Russia, China, and Iran’s diplomats and state media last week. Kremlin-funded media hammered the Baltic states for a second straight week afte [...]
Hamilton Weekly Report: June 27-July 3, 2020
Overview Besides the ubiquitous coverage of the coronavirus, Russia, China, and Iran’s state media and government messengers last week hit on familiar themes for each of their respective countries. For Russia, that meant elevating claims of “Russoph [...]
Bret Schafer Discusses China’s Messaging on George Floyd Protests on VOA Chinese
Digital Media and Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer explained that for the first time with the George Floyd protests, we’ve seen China aggressively messaging on an issue that doesn’t directly relate to its own interests. China has been trying to pa [...]
Hamilton Weekly Report: June 20-26, 2020
Overview Besides ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, there was little narrative overlap in messaging from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government officials and state media, besides the ever-present strain of anti-Americanism. For most of [...]
Hamilton Weekly Report: June 13-19, 2020
Overview For the first time since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, coverage of racism, police brutality, and related protests did not feature among the top ten hashtags or key phrases (in aggregate) used by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian d [...]
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