Examining strategic integration of social media platforms in tracking disinformation campaign coordination

Social media is a widely used communication platform that affords easier sharing and access to information.Although social media is used for benign purposes, a few use this platform for deviant activities such ascyberbullying, cyber warfare or propaganda, disinformation and fake news dissemination to influence the masses.With the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools like social media, disseminatinghoax, false information, and propaganda is both convenient and effective. Social media in general and blogs inparticular act as virtual spaces where narratives are framed. In order to generate discourse, web traffic needs tobe driven to these virtual spaces. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and other websites aretherefore used as vehicles to disseminate the content. This link between blogs and social media platforms is vitalto examine disinformation campaigns. In this research, we examine the role of media orchestration strategies,more specifically, cross-media and mix-media strategies in conducting disinformation campaigns. The researchpresents in-depth examination of the information networks using social network analysis and cyber forensic-basedmethodology, to identify prominent information actors and leading coordinators of the disinformation campaigns.Using the developed research methodology, the study reveals a massive disinformation coordination campaignpertaining to the Baltic region conducted primarily on blogs but strategically linking to a variety of other socialmedia platforms, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, VKontakte, among others.