\n<\/p>\n
A report from Canadian watchdog group Citizen Lab found<\/a> that at least 123 Chinese websites pose as local news organizations across 30 countries.<\/p>\n These websites spread \u201cpro-Beijing disinformation and ad hominem attacks within much larger volumes of commercial press releases,\u201d the report explains.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the campaign\u2019s websites enjoyed negligible exposure to date, there is a heightened risk of inadvertent amplification by the local media and target audiences, as a result of the quick multiplication of these websites and their adaptiveness to local languages and content,\u201d Alberto Fittarelli, the author of the report, wrote.<\/p>\n The campaign, which Fittarelli called \u201cPaperwall,\u201d is a \u201clarge, and fast growing, network of anonymous websites posing as local news outlets.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the Chinese websites use local spellings, such as \u201cRoma\u201d or \u201cMilano,\u201d paired with what the report describes as \u201cmundane terminology,\u201d such as \u201cfashion,\u201d \u201cmoney,\u201d or \u201cjournal.\u201d<\/p>\n The watchdog group believes the Paperwall campaign can be attributed to a Chinese firm called \u201cHaimai\u201d based on \u201cdigital infrastructure linkages between Haimai and PAPERWALL.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is therefore an incriminating finding, proving that both PAPERWALL domains had been set up by the same operators as the Haimai assets,\u201d the report asserted.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeding pieces of disinformation and targeted attacks within much larger quantities of irrelevant or even unpopular content is a known modus operandi in the context of influence operations,\u201d Fittarelli warned, \u201cwhich can eventually pay enormous dividends once one of those fragments is eventually picked up and legitimized by mainstream press or political figures.\u201d<\/p>\n