Section 1: the role of the Russian state media on UK citizens during the EU referendum

1. Putin’s Brexit?
The influence of Kremlin media & bots during the 2016
UK EU referendum.

2. The full report will be released 14 February
2018. This is part one - an extract from
Section 1 of the report:
5 - 44: Section 1: the role of the Russian state media in the
UK during the EU referendum
45 - 65: Section 2: the role of Russian bots during the EU
referendum
66: Appendix A: Terminology and Notes

3. INTRO
Who is 89up?
89up is a communications agency with a specialist social media analytics team led by Josh Feldberg.
Mike Harris provided insights into Russian propaganda methods.
How did we do this work?
Data was sourced from the Twitter Search API, Buzzsumo, the Facebook API and other scraping
methods. For equivalent media spend information we used data from Kantar.
Who paid for this work?
No one. 89up undertook this work because as a team we are concerned about the role of autocratic
regimes in shaping public opinion in democracies.

4. Section 1: the role of the
Russian state media on UK
citizens during the EU
referendum
There has been a lot of speculation
about the role of the Russian
government in the EU referendum in
2016. To date interest has focused on
the impact of Russian bots.
This report outlines the evidence for
Russian interference that was hiding
in plain view during the EU
referendum.

5. The real story of
Russian interference
in the EU
referendum was
hiding in plain sight…
Russian state media
propaganda through
Facebook and Twitter
led to significant
online traction

6. 261
Kremlin-aligned media published a significant number of unique
articles about the EU referendum, or anti-EU articles, from January
2016 until the day of the referendum. Our researchers analysed the
most shared of these articles, and identified 261 articles with a clear
anti-EU bias to the reporting. The two main media outlets were RT and
Sputnik with video produced by Ruptly.

7. There was a
heavy Leave
bias in the most
shared RT and
Sputnik articles
Of the 200 most
shared RT and
Sputnik articles
referencing the EU
referendum or Brexit
we analysed, there
was a significant bias
towards positive
coverage of the
Leave campaign.
Analysis of article bias

8. The bias is most
stark when
compared to other
media outlets
Whereas PBS covered
announcements of the
Leave and Remain
equally, with the majority
of their coverage clearly
neutral; RT’s coverage
was biased towards
highlighting the activities
of the Leave campaign.
Analysis of potential media bias

9. No other state controlled
media outlet came close to
social exposure of Russian
media
Compared to other major foreign
state-funded media outlets, the
Russian media outlets led to
significantly larger social media
exposure. Here we include all shares
for France24 and PBS, but we narrow
RT and Sputnik to only pro-Leave
articles - still the reach is markedly
greater.
Social engagement by foreign
state-funded media platform

10. Russian MediaVote Leave Leave.EU
Including only
objectively anti-EU
articles, Russian
state media articles
led to nearly as
many engagements
as the official Vote
Leave website.
When neutral articles on
RT/Sputnik are filtered out,
it is still the case that the
Russian media has nearly
as much social
engagement with anti-EU
articles as the official Vote
Leave campaign.
263,000
287,000
1,700

11. Russian Media Vote Leave Leave.EU
Twitter:
Russian state
media articles won
the Twitter war -
with significantly
more Twitter
impressions than
any content from
either anti-EU
campaign website.
We estimate the value of
Russian media’s
impressions on Twitter to
be between $47,000 -
$100,000.
134,000,000
33,000,000
11,000,000

12. Why are RT and Sputnik different from other
media outlets?
News by mainstream UK publications - from newspapers to online magazines
to the majority of our TV - is paid for commercially either by advertising,
subscriptions or sales. The BBC - Ofcom-regulated and established by Royal
Charter - has a legal duty to provide impartial news.
Online articles from RT or Sputnik UK are not regulated, either through
self-regulation (IPSO) or statutory regulation (Ofcom, IMPRESS). Some online
platforms are not subject to regulation or standards codes - but the clear
difference is that they do not receive a significant state subsidy from the
Russian government. Sputnik UK has an operating budget from the Russian
government of £1.8m a year. There is little evidence of any commercial
revenue except low revenue Google adverts on the websites.

13. Why are RT and Sputnik different
from other media outlets?
RT (formerly Russia Today) has an international operating budget
of around £250 million per annum, its expansion in the UK prior to
the EU referendum was seen as a way of increasing the Kremlin’s
influence. As Richard Sandbrook, director of the centre of
journalism at Cardiff University puts it: “It’s not a commercial
proposition, therefore the main purpose must be to gain
influence. It’s about soft power for the Kremlin”.
The Russian government is paying for biased news to be
published in the UK to influence British voters.

14. The full report will be released 14 February
2018.
For media enquiries please contact:
Padraig Reidy
padraig@89up.org
0203 411 2891