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Covid-19 is wreaking havoc around the world. The daily number of infected and dead keeps climbing. As I look out my window, I am not sure that things will ever fully return to the way they were before the pandemic. But press freedom and the truth should not be among the casualties.

Late last week, Human Rights Watch warned in a report that while Beijing is attempting to censor and suppress news and facts about Covid-19, there is a real threat of the disease making a comeback in China.

The censorship itself goes back to the start of the outbreak, when Beijing suppressed news reports from doctors in Wuhan about the new, and spreading, disease. Experts in the West have also been questioning the numbers of sick and dead from Covid-19 in China, believing that Beijing is drastically downplaying the total numbers.

On top of this, there have also been numerous stories of how Beijing is trying to re-write the history of the disease.

This all works together to change the narrative of the disease to make the government in Beijing look more favourable. In a report by Reporters Without Borders, China ranked 177th out of 180 countries in the world in press freedom, while Hong Kong dropped seven places to 80th because of its treatment of journalists during pro-democracy demonstrations.

Unfortunately, none of this should be a real surprise to those familiar with press freedom in China, and I have written on this topic before.

But attempts at censorship, suppression and re-writing history are not just coming from Beijing. In a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists titled The Trump Administration and the Media, President Trumps attacks on the news media are seen as having dangerously undermined truth.

President Trumps history of labeling stories he doesnt like as fake news, belittling reporters who question his past statements in comparison with what he says today, and his penchant to state untruths with impunity, as Columbia Journalism Review digital media reporter Matthew Ingram wrote, are very dangerous to journalism and journalists not just in the United States but around the globe.

In the Committee to Protect Journalists report, former White House communications director Michael Dubke is quoted as saying What concerns me is that authoritarian leaders who had already placed restrictions on their press are using President Trumps words to justify what they are doing.

Also quoted in the report is a speech given at Brown University in September 2019, by the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger: In attacking American media, President Trump has done more than undermine his own citizens faith in the news organisations attempting to hold him accountable. He has effectively given foreign leaders permission to do the same with their countries journalists and given them the vocabulary with which to do it.

The rise of Covid-19 on top of these trends from Washington and Beijing is only making the situation for journalists that much harder, and more dangerous. Around the world, government leaders are using the outbreak of Covid-19 along with their now emboldened stance against journalists, both to instil mistrust in news organisations and to crack down on press freedom.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has also been cataloguing these issues as well.

And that is not all of the cases the Committee to Protect Journalists has tracked.

Individually, each of these instances is a flagrant attempt to silence journalists in the countries where they occurred. Taken together they show the full scale of governments use of the outbreak of Covid-19 as cover while they crack down on press freedom, knowing that while the world is preoccupied with the pandemic these incidents are likely to draw less scrutiny.

Howard Chapnick, the former president of the Black Star Photo Agency, titled his 1994 book about photojournalism Truth Needs No Ally. But things are very different now than they were in 1994.

Clearly in this day and age truth does need an ally, and it is the community of journalists around the world who pay the price for being that ally. But how much higher that price will become for both the journalists, and those harmed by not knowing the truth, remains to be seen.

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During a worldwide crackdown on press freedom, the truth needs an ally - Hong Kong Free Press

From his offices inside the bleak walls of the Carcere dei Penitenziati palace in Palermo, the great inquisitor Luis de Paramo seemed to barely notice the Black Death had begun to sweep across the Spanish empire in 1596, killing hundreds of thousands. His mind was fixed on an even more dangerous disease that threatened his world, corrupting not just the bodies of men, but their minds. The holy offices of the Inquisition annihilated the heretical plagues, he smugly recorded two years later.

God reserved his worst torments, Paramo solemnly wrote, for the heresy: Nestors tongue was eaten by worms; Marcus Ephesus reduced to excreting ordure from his mouth; Calvins body overrun by great swarms of lice as he coughed out blood this before the eternal torments of hell. Protecting people from poisonous ideas, thus, was at least as important as guarding against plagues.

Inside the dungeons of the inquisition, the agents of heresy intellectuals, witches, dissident priests and nuns were quarantined to secure the health of the Kingdom of God.

As the greatest pandemic in a century continues its grim progress, India is seeing the unfolding of an unprecedented campaign to ensure the Republics intellectual hygiene.

Thousands are facing prosecution for something they wrote or said: Left-wing intellectuals and journalists like Siddharth Varadarajan, right-wing television anchors like Arnab Goswami, Islamic activists, Hindu nationalists, even plain-vanilla panicked citizens. For years now, the criminal justice system has become ever more focused on silencing thought and speech; a climax could be nearing.

Luis de Paramo would have found this world almost indistinguishable from his own. For any democracy, this is evil news. India needs much more free speech even evil, toxic speech not less.

***

Even though the term has become entrenched in public debate, the idea of hate speech rests on less-than-firm ground. Bengaluru Member of Parliament Tejasvi Suryas now-infamous tweet 95 percent Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years, attributed to the gadfly anti-Islamist agitator Tarek Fateh is a useful prism to examine the issue. Erased from the internet after furious protests from Saudi and Kuwaiti commentators and demands for the Prime Ministers intervention, the tweet has been cited as a textbook example of hate speech.

Feminist writing in the Middle-East, though, has made much the same argument for decades. In a 2005 paper, for example, anthropologists Abdessamad Dialmy and Allon Uhlmann examined the cultural memes that ensured the sexuality of the respectable wife is confined to satisfying her husbands desire and producing a large number of male offspring.

In the Fez region, Dialmy and Uhlman noted, a proverb held that if the wife were to move during intercourse, she would be divorced because her movement would indicate the presence of desire and pleasure.

Fatahs polemic is an agit-prop rendering of the work of generations of Middle-East feminists among them Mai Ghoussoub, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Haleh Afshar, Haideh Moghissi, and Hammed Shahidian who have long critiqued the use of religion and culture to repress womens freedoms.

The Muslim man conceives woman as uncontrollable and untameable: a being who can therefore only be subdued by repression, Ghoussoub famously argued in a seminal essay in The New Left Review, back in 1987. It is difficult to utter your frustrations if a veil seals your lips.

Little intellectual insight is needed to see that Surya like Fatah is a propagandist. Neither, for example, acknowledges that feminists have also shown how Hindu texts and cultural norms like Christian and Buddhist texts sustain tyrannical phallocracies.

The lines between crude propaganda and serious critique arent, however, as well-etched as we might imagine.

In 1924, the Arya Samaj activist Mahashe Rajpal published Rangila Rasul in Urdu, the colourful prophet a polemic on the Prophet Muhammads sexual mores. Lower courts condemned Rajpal to prison. Lahore High Court judge Dalip Singh, however, reasoned that if the fact that Musalmans resent attacks on the Prophet was to be the measure, then a historical work in which the life of the prophet was considered and judgment passed on his character by a serious historian might [also] come within the definition.

Tejasvi Suryas now-infamous tweet is a useful prism to examine the issue of hate speech. Here the BJP MP is seen with journalist Arnab Goswami. File Photo

Legislators responded to the Lahore High Courts admonition by amending the Indian Penal Code to outlaw deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class. That law continues to be used to ban an array of serious books, and persecute atheists and heterodox religious sects.

Propagandist polemic, it could be argued, can be distinguished from serious speech because of their intent and consequences. This argument, however, leads to another cul-de-sac. The purpose of all political text, after all, is to incite. The Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata and the works of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong have all been cited as inspiration for large-scale killing at various points in history; so, too, have Batman and Catcher in the Rye. Abul Ala Maududis Jihad has indeed been read as a manifesto for violence by Islamists but millions of others have encountered the text without being moved to swat a fly.

To characterise Suryas tweet, or other chauvinist propaganda, as a form of illegitimate speech is to make a moral judgment about politics valid or otherwise. To allow moral judgment to decide whether speech ought to be illegitimate, history tells us, ought to lead to perdition.

***

For decades, the case against free speech has assailed by pointing to the apparent role of mass media in engendering genocides and mass violence. The role of Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines in inciting genocide in Rwanda is often cited as evidence for this claim. The rigorous empirical work of political scientist Scott Strauss, though, has demonstrated that that data does not show RTLM was the principal vector by which the genocide spread and by which most ordinary Rwandans chose to participate in genocidal violence.

Indeed, scholar Mary Franks, has pointed out, laws outlawing propounding wickedness or inciting hatred are now used by the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Peoples Front to persecute of the very journalists and NGOs who fought the genocide. Leading opposition figure Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and her lawyerwere imprisoned for arguing that communal reconciliation required acknowledging not only Tutsi victims, the primary target of the genocide, but also Hutu victims.

For Franks, the real problem in Rwanda lay in the fact that power actors held near-monopolies on discourse through Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines prior to the genocide, and through the shutting-down of dissenting media platforms thereafter. The answer to hate speech, she proposes, isnt silence: its a loud, cacophonic media.

Lazy claims that the rise of German Fascism illustrates the power of toxic propaganda are similarly misleading. For one, Nazi propaganda grew despite the existence of the expansive hate speech laws of Weimar. Perhaps more important, Richard Evans magisterial work shows us, Nazi propaganda failed to persuade anything resembling a majority of Germans before the coup of 1933. The hegemony of Nazi ideology was ensured by stamping out of all alternate voices and points of view.

In India, the case is often made that hate speech propagated and amplified through digital media has accelerated communalisation.

The evidence, though, is far from unambiguous. Even a cursory glance at Violette Graff and Juliette Galonniers summary of communal riots shows that the intensity and frequency of communal violence in India has diminished not intensified. The largest chauvinist mass-mobilisations in India the Ram janmabhumi movement, for example, or the Kashmir jihad took place long before most homes even had a telephone.

Even though hate-speech is claimed to be sharpening the divisions between Hindus and Muslims engendering ghettoisation of the mind, as it were theres plenty of reason to be suspicious of such claims.

In a study of the 1974 riots in Delhi long before the evil influence of Facebook emerged three out of every 10 Hindus and almost two out of 10 Muslims, reported never even meeting with members of the other religious community in any social context political, casual, or even business. An investigation by the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights in 1987, similarly, noted that old Delhi was sundered into caste and communal agglomerations whose inhabitants understood each other, in the main, through communal invective.

The rise of social media has done little other than to provide a new platform for voicing the long-held prejudices and hatreds of a society hatreds earlier voiced within the family, during social interactions, or in the village square. Put another way, hate speech is an artefact of a dysfunctional society, not its cause.

***

Indias urge to police thought crime impulses predate the birth of the republic, the Rangila Rasul debates demonstrate. Less than two years after independence, though, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru amended the Constitution to carve out restrictions against free speech and embedded the inquisitor at the heart of the Indian state. Free speech, it was argued, made India vulnerable to the dangerous tides of communist propaganda and communal hatred; words could even explode into war with Pakistan.

The debris from those decisions is all around us. Wendy Donigers provocative readings of Hindu text; Aubrey Menens irreverent retelling of the Ramayana; DN Jhas The Myth of the Holy Cow, James Laines history of Shivaji, or Paul Courtrights exploration of Hindu mythologys fraught sexuality. We still cannot read an uncensored text of the path-breaking Urdu collection Angaarey, proscribed in 1933.

Salman Rushdie, MF Husain and Taslima Nasreen are the best-known victims of the Indian inquisition, but theyre not the only ones. The progressive cultural organisation Sahmat came under attack in 1993, merely for recording the existence of variant texts of the Ramayana in which Ram and Sita were siblings; Narendra Dabholkar and H Farook were assassinated.

Book-bans, prosecutions and killings have not, however, engendered pluralism: India remains a mosaic of warring religion and caste-based agglomerations, and the petty tyrannies which run them.

Propaganda, history teaches, succeeds only when it is unchallenged: The real answer to hate speech is plurality, not censorship. Ensuring that Indians hear a diversity of voices is a formidable challenge. Large swathes of the media, increasingly dependent since the 1980s on government advertising for survival, have surrendered their role as a space for the exchange of ideas. Efforts to create alternatives have, for the most part, floundered, with even lite audiences proving unwilling to pay for independent news and opinion.

The only kind of censorship which is legitimate in a democracy is the right each of us has to turn off our television sets. To give that power to the state is to assent to bodies, and minds, being broken on the wheel.

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Hate speech in the time of a pandemic: Answer to malevolent, incendiary language is plurality, not... - Firstpost

These are strange times, but The Daily LITG is becoming a valuable way to quantify just what comic book geek culture and Funko is being absorbed in this time of trial. Welcome all, to the daily Lying In The Gutters a long-running run around the day before and the day ahead. You can sign up to receive it as an e-mail here.

Bleeding Cool continues to report from the comics industry shutdown, as Funko furloughs its own Pops, DC Comics arrive wrapped in plastic and Forbidden Planet continue to appeal for help Klaus Janson just donated a thousand dollars. Keep up with your Daily LITG.

Remember when Wonder Woman was a symbol of power, both in terms of censorship and recreation? DC censoring their own work and the misappropriation of others, and people cared enough about Heroes In Crisis to threaten Tom King's life.

There would also have been signings, appearances, symposia, all manner of comic book-related events. But a few have gone online, and here are some still happening today, on the Daily LITG.

There may not be much of a party atmosphere right now. Or if there is, the police will come and shut you down. But comic folk are still getting older and still celebrating that special date.

Interested in the bribes and furloughs of Marvel, the fate of Forbidden Planet, or anything else? Subscribe to our LitG Daily Mailing List. And we'll see you here tomorrow.

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Furloughed Funko and DC Packaging in The Daily LITG 26th April 2020 - Bleeding Cool News

Ashley Graham it is considered by fashion critics as a model plus size in an environment where the standards of beauty are still quite conservative.

He began his modeling career in the year 2000 and the following year already had a contract with the prestigious agency Ford. The charismatic model now has international recognition.

With several magazine covers and photo sessions of high level that mark your path, the u.s. put the voice in the sky for those women who have their appearance.

In the year 2010 Ashley she married videographer Justin Ervin and in August last year announced the arrival of their first child.

Within A few weeks of giving birth, Graham manifested to live the pregnancy with a lot of enthusiasm and had no qualms about starring in a photo shoot only, although the community standards of Instagram youre behind it.

That is why the supermodel had to retouch the photo with photoshop so that you can be published without problems, calling the attention of all internet users.

Its crazy to think of everything that has happened since 2010, the year in which I married the love of my said celebrity in the social networks.

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As God brought the world! Ashley Graham on the edge of the censorship I Had to retouch the photo! - OI Canadian

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Rainer Puster/iStock/Getty Images Plus, macky_ch/iStock/Getty Images Plus, and ayzek/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the world, so does disinformation (intentional deceit, at times peddled by governments themselves) and misinformation (the spread of falsehoods that may or may not be intentional) about its origins, reach, and potential cures. Meanwhile, multiple different regimes are citing fears about misinformation and fake news to suppress unflattering information about the handling of the disease. To learn more about how three giantsChina, Russia, and Brazilare both handling and perpetuating misinformation about COVID-19, Jennifer Daskal invited country experts to discuss the current state of affairs: Mia Shuang Li, a former Beijing-based journalist, who is now a research associated at Yale Law Schools Paul Tsai China Center; Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Atlantic Councils Cyber Statecraft Initiative,columnist at Wired, and close follower of developments in Russia; and Roberta Braga, an associate director at the Atlantic Councils Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center and an expert on Brazil. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jennifer Daskal: Welcome, Mia, Justin, and Roberta! An initial question for all of you: What kinds of disinformation is percolating in the countries you cover with respect to the pandemic? And what has been the government response?

Mia Shuang Li: In China, the state is pushing a narrative on social mediausing both government accounts and sponsored nongovernment accountsthat authoritarianism is better at mobilizing all-society effort in a public health crisis, including citizens and private sector companies. This creates a rally around the flag effect, making the narrative seem a lot more supported and more like a widely accepted reality.

At this point, most of the population is too traumatized by all that has occurred to question the official narrative.

Justin Sherman: The Russian government itself has been very actively spreading disinformation about the virus, both in Russia and around the world. As early as January, Russian state media were propagating all kinds of lies about the coronavirus, like saying it was made in the United States. Moscow has used these kinds of false statementspushed on television, on social media, and elsewherein an effort to sow divisiveness and confusion abroad and to undermine trust in credible news sources.

This is being coupled with Russian efforts to demand that social media companies and other media platforms remove information about the coronavirus that Moscow deems false, information that is being viewed by those physically residing within the country.

Roberta Braga: In Brazils case, a lot of misleading information is coming from the top. Brazil is the largest, most populous country in Latin America, and the biggest economy in the region. Around 85 percent of Brazils population live in urban areas, with over 16 percent of the national population living in So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro alone. Brazil also has over 13.6 million people living in favelas. Informal workers comprise a large part of the Brazilian population. In this context, where for many people staying home can mean they face hunger, the most misleading narrative has been that of health vs. economy. In his live addresses to the country, President Bolsonaro says that the virus should not do more harm to the economy, and by extension peoples livelihoods, than it does to peoples health. So, in an effort to emphasize the importance of keeping Brazilians employed and working, he has built a campaign against social distancing.

A judicial order was required to stop a campaign he promoted using the hashtag #Brazilcannotstop. And as recently as April 10, Bolsonaro was taking to the streets in Braslia in his public effort to push back against social isolation. This has had an effect. Recent statistics say only around 50 percent of people in Brazil are social isolating. While local governments have taken measures to protect health, when the president himself is questioning those measures, that leads to more and more people failing to comply. Recent reporting from Reuters show 49 percent of So Paulo residents were considered to be in social isolation as of April 8, compared to a weekday peak of 56 percent on March 30.

Daskal: Mia, many reports suggest that the coronavirus situation in China was worse than is assertedbut that negative information about the persistence and spread of disease was suppressed by the Chinese government. Do you have a sense as to whether that is the case?

Shuang Li: Chinas numbers are, the best I can tell, vastly, vastly undercounted inside Wuhan, and slightly undercounted outside. First, many died at home without ever getting a diagnosis. Those cases were not counted. No city in China tested the deceased. Second, asymptomatic cases never went to the hospital and therefore were never tested or counted. Iceland, which has done some of the most widespread testing in the world, found that approximately 50 percent of those infected never showed any symptoms. Third, only those who showed symptoms, went to the hospital, and were able to be admitted were counted. Inside Wuhan that is a very small portion of the patients. Ive read on Weibo that even hospital directors could not get friends and families hospital beds.

Daskal: Roberta, you described Bolsonaros concerning narrative about the disease. How is he responding to those who critique his approach?

Braga: Brazil is a democracy, and freedom of speech is a strong pillar of that democracy. Certainly weve seen dissent. For weeks, Brazilians in social isolation in key capital cities like Fortaleza, Braslia, So Paulo, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and others have banged pots and pans together and called for a removal of Bolsonaro in a reaction to his public addresses.On April 16, Bolsonaro fired Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, and the protests exploded even more. That said, of course, President Bolsonaro doesnt like to be criticized, much in the way that President Donald Trump doesnt take well to criticism.

Bolsonaro also continues to criticize the Brazilian media, saying they are twisting the facts and exacerbating polarization. This has really contributed to a crisis of trust in media. And at a time when Brazilians access to information is so important, people in Brazil are really struggling to trust in the independent journalists who are providing them with factual information. Fringe media outlets are becoming increasingly popular.

Daskal: Justin, you have written about Russias internal efforts to crack down on what it claims to be fake news in response to the pandemic. Can you talk a bit about how this is being done?

Sherman: In mid-March, Roskomnadzor, which is Russias internet and media regulator, threatened stringent action against anyone disseminating false information about the virus. (Again, false information here is defined by the Russian government.) It then began issuing content removal orders to a variety of media outlets, including those incorporated within and outside of Russia.

These takedown orders mostly draw on existing laws that give Roskomnadzor the authority to order media companies to censor particular types or pieces of content. That said, the upper house of Russias Parliament voted at the end of March to expand criminal punishments for those spreading false information with significant public health effects.

As for what is actually being censored by the government, there is still relatively little information available, but from what we do know, its clear that the censorship has increasingly targeted anything critical of the Russian governments response to the virus and anything that contradicts the official government narrative. In March, a couple of takedowns focused on claims that Moscow had a curfew in place when it didnt. But other takedowns have focused on everything from social media posts that contradict Russias official figures on infection counts (which many say seem suspiciously low) to claims that Russian hospitals didnt have enough supplies to deal with the pandemic (which is now something that even the Moscow Health Department has started warning about).

Daskal: Roberta, there has been a lot of attention to the fact that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube removed content from Bolsonaro, on the grounds that it violated their terms of service. Can you talk a bit about that?

Braga: Twitter recently took down two Twitter posts by Bolsonaro. The posts contained videos of the president walking around Braslia and talking with small-business owners and vendors on the streets. In the videos, the president also talked about the need to use hydroxychloroquine for treating the virus. This has been a consistent narrativein the videos, the president was shown claiming the anti-malaria drug has worked everywhere it has been used when in reality, the drug is still in the testing phases.

Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram also took down posts that depicted the presidents claims that hydroxychloroquine was the best treatment for COVID-19.

The companies state that the posts were taken down because they violated their platforms terms of service, which prohibit the spread of false information that can cause real harm to users. The removals were apparently done so in close collaboration with the in-country teams for better understanding of the country context.

Daskal: What was the reaction to those take down decisions in Brazil?

Braga: Reactions from Brazilians followed polarized linesthose who support Bolsonaro blasted the companies for blocking and removing the content. Others praised the decisions for preserving safety and for disallowing disinformation about a health crisis that could cost countless lives in Brazil.

Though perhaps not a direct reaction to the companies actions, the Brazilian Congress has proposed legislation to reduce the spread of disinformation and to penalize those who spread false information about the coronavirus. Some of the laws call for criminalizing the spread of disinformation. One of the proposed laws would also criminalize the sharing of disinformation if you are a government official. Fact-checking organizations in Brazil also jointly authored a statement calling on authorities in Brazil to stop spreading disinformation.

Daskal: Justin, do you know how the media outlets have responded to the content removal orders? Are the media outlets criminally responsible for the content that is on their sites?

Sherman: Media entities from Russian social media service VK to American internet platforms like Instagram have complied with censorship orders from Roskomnadzor. They can be fined by the Russian government for failing to censor content, although they are more likely to be blocked than fined. Fines for spreading false information are generally directed at specific individuals. In fact, law enforcement in Russia has already opened a number of cases against people alleged to have disseminated false information about the coronavirus online.

Daskal: As companies respond to Russias takedown demands, do you know if they are doing so on a global or local scale?

Sherman: Generally, companies complying with Russian government content censorship demands do so via geoblocking. In other words, the information they remove is only removed for those who appear to be viewing it from within Russia. This underscores the fact that Moscow is focusing its censorship efforts within the country.

Daskal: Mia, you and I have previously written about the ways in which Tencentthe giant China tech company that owns WeChat, the countrysmost popular messaging apphas used its market power to effectively disconnect those who spoke out against ways in which the Chinese government was managing the epidemic. Is that something that is continuing? What other tools is (and has) the Chinese government used to stifle dissent and critiques of its handling of the pandemic?

Shuang Li: Yes, Tencent is still censoring voices that counter the official narrative, not just in public posts but also in closed chat groups. Luckily their method is not as smart as we thought. I used to think Tencent can censor based on the sentiment of content, not just keywords, but now it looks like its just keyword combos, per this very good Citizen Lab report.

Daskal: Roberta, is there any way to assess how much of a chilling effect Bolsonaros efforts have had on the mainstream medias discussion of the pandemic and its seriousness? Are people rushing to use hydroxychlororoquine as a cure?

Braga: From what Ive seen, the mainstream media in Brazil continues working to report on the pandemic in a fact-based way, sticking to the guidelines of responsible journalism. Fact-checkers havent faltered, either.

But Bolsonaros reactions have had a real effect on how the population perceives the pandemic. When the discussions on hydroxychloroquine first started happening, we saw a race on pharmacies for the medication. And some patients who needed the medication for lupus, for example, reported not being able to find the medication.

It is worth noting that there is a much higher sense of skepticism and awareness about the dangers of disinformation two years after the 2018 presidential elections. Nevertheless, we are still seeing a lot of disinformation and misinformation circulating online and through messaging platforms in Brazil.

Daskal: Justin, can you talk a bit more about the ways in which Russia is spreading disinformation about the virus outside its borders? What are the means by which it is doing so? And you mentioned falsehoods with response to the origins of the virusare you seeing other kinds of disinformation emanating from Russia as well?

Sherman: Moscow is employing numerous vectors to project and amplify disinformation about the coronavirus. State-controlled media outlets like RT and Sputnik have been pushing lies about COVID-19. Russia also is likely using groups like the Internet Research Agency to spread these falsehoods on social media as well. Some of these narratives have targeted the viruss origins. True to form, some of these falsehoods are even contradictorylike accusing the U.S. of developing the virus and then a few days later saying it was developed in Latvia. But the disinformation has covered many different angles. Recently, for example, Russian state media organizations have exaggerated British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons hospitalization with oxygen support into claims that the prime minister is on a ventilator.

Daskal: Mia, a similar question for you as the one I asked Justinare Chinas information and censorship efforts focused mainly internally?

Shuang Li: China adopts different strategies inside and outside the Great Fire Wall. Beijing relies on a host of state media accounts and diplomats on Twitter and Facebook to push its narrative. However, due to a general lack of credibility of state media outlets, it doesnt work. Recently Beijing may have begun to use commercial entities and digital marketing firms to amplify its voice on Twitter and Facebook, but still is mostly pushing its narrative in Chinese targeting Chinese speaking populations. ProPublicas Jeff Kao and I did some digging on that issue in this story.

Outside the firewall, Beijings propaganda campaign is defensive and reactionary. It sees a narrative it doesnt like, or sees its enemy having a win and tries very hard to counter it.Often it backfires. So far Beijing is having a hard time selling its narrative outside of China.

Braga: A peak of the pandemic is expected to hit Brazil in May/June. This pandemic will have a devastating effect on Brazils society, particularly given the overburdened and underfunded public health system. Brazil needs to prioritize addressing this crisis head oneveryone has a responsibility to stick to the facts and to the science. The cost could be millions of lives.

That said, Id like to end on a positive note. Local media outlets in many of Brazils favelas are working hard to create content on how to address the spread of coronavirus in those communities. We are seeing everything from independent articles to videos produced by journalists who understand the realities Brazilians living in the favelas face every day.

Daskal: Huge, huge thanks to all three of you for your time and incredible thoughtfulness.

Read more from the Free Speech Project.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Facing COVID-19 Misinformation and Censorship in Brazil, Russia, and China - Slate