Over the summer, LSE Consulting worked for the first time with Arena, a programme based at LSE's Institute of Global Affairs. Arena's work is dedicated solely to the issue of disinformation and 21st century propaganda. This particular project, commissioned by Jigsaw (a think-tank and subsidiary of Google), focuses on Russian methods of disinformation during the Cold War, and their relevance today.
The report, written by Nicholas J. Cull, Vasily Gatov, Peter Pomerantsev, Anne Applebaum and Alistair Shawcross, highlights eleven case studies in order to examine counter-disinformation and counter-propaganda tactics to explain Cold War strategies followed by the USSR as well as the Western response. The study looks into the Soviet influence and disinformation campaigns and what the West did about them. Can these attitudes and tactics behind the responses be used in the more complicated online context today?