The Chinese party-state is obscuring human rights abuses and oppression in border provinces such as Xinjiang through an increasingly sophisticated propaganda and disinformation campaign. Our research—published today in a new ASPI report, Frontier influencers: the …
In September 2020, at the conclusion of a UK parliamentary committee hearing during which TikTok executives were grilled, in public, for the first time, committee member Kevin Brennan offered his colleagues a frank assessment of …
In November 2021, almost one year after he had posted a computer-generated image on Twitter of a grinning Australian soldier appearing to slit the throat of an Afghan child, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian …
The loss of control of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s account on the Chinese social media app WeChat should not have come as a surprise to the government. As I warned in multiple media appearances in …
Originally published 12 March 2021. There’s one thing we’re all getting wrong about TikTok: it’s not really a social media app. As TikTok Australia’s general manager told the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September …
Our new ASPI report, Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang, explores how the Chinese Communist Party uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang that are aligned with …
As international concern about Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai’s whereabouts grows and more of the world’s top tennis stars weigh in, Beijing’s propagandists are floundering. Hu Xijin, the impish editor of the rabidly nationalistic Global …
There’s one thing we’re all getting wrong about TikTok: it’s not really a social media app. As TikTok Australia’s general manager told the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September last …
Scott Morrison demanded three things in his emotionally charged press conference about ‘that tweet’ last week. One: an apology, two: that the Chinese government remove foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s post, and three: that Twitter …
Chinese video-sharing app TikTok is facing an existential crisis. By its own estimation, its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is set to lose US$6 billion after being kicked out of India. A decision on a ban …
The news that Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok is not approved for use on devices owned by Australia’s Department of Defence, as the ABC reported today, is hardly a surprise. Defence’s default position on what apps …
In the 18 months the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was busily working away on its 623-page opus on digital platforms, Chinese-owned app upstart TikTok grew a global audience of over 700 million. With no …
