The study, published on Monday, October 17, revealed a network of shadow Wikipedia editors who try to influence the narrative of the Russian-Ukrainian war by making changes to articles on the site. The study doesn't point the finger at the Russian government, but it does find plenty of cause for concern when it comes to "suspicious" edits made to the open-source platform.
The report was prepared by researchers from two British think tanks - the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Center for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) - and aims to assess existing methods of searching for disinformation on Wikipedia and determine whether they can be improved.
According to researchers, these attempts included changing “language to minimise objectivity of pro-Western accounts and maximise objectivity of pro-Kremlin accounts,” introducing “topics which sway historical background toward pro-Russia narratives,” and adding “Kremlin quotations and press releases explicitly into the page to increase the salience of pro-Russian arguments and viewpoints.”
At the same time, the researchers found evidence that banned editions constantly inserted links to Russian state media.
"One of the threats to Wikipedia (as identified through the interviews) is the use of suspicious or tendentious sources. We first, therefore, tested an approach of filtering edits by blocked editors based on whether they add references to state-media affiliated or sponsored sites."
While this may all sound rather suspicious, the report notes that proving coordination between banned editors, as well as achieving accurate attribution (ie, figuring out who actually controls the accounts) is the tricky part. It also makes it clear that there is currently little precedent for government manipulation of Wikipedia. That is, there is simply no hard evidence that it happened — yet.
"There are few known instances of illicit behaviour on Wikipedia clearly attributed to a state. Perhaps the clearest attributions are edits made from known Government IP addresses, and a number of bots on Twitter monitor this activity, highlighting incidents when they occur. These edits do not imply any sort of coordinated or concerted campaign, and IP addresses can be easily spoofed or obscured."
In addition to government propaganda efforts, Wikipedia has been subject to other hoaxes and controversies over the years, which it is happy to highlight on its page "Wikipedia's contradictions". One such incident occurred last year involving a Chinese housewife who was exposed in the falsification of hundreds of articles on medieval Russian history.