In this publication, the ADAC.io project brings together four independent case studies examining how the online information environment is exploited to deceive, divide, or defraud through coordinated information operations. Each study looks at a different facet of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), and all four confront the same recurring difficulty: separating genuinely foreign interference from domestic actors who draw on the same repertoire of tactics for their own ends.
What the case studies cover:
- Manipulation of EU climate policy in the run-up to the 2024 European elections, showing how Russian state media and EU-based far-right outlets deploy near-identical rhetoric and cross-cite one another, and how “flooding” the information space with mutually reinforcing content lends falsehoods plausibility through sheer repetition,
- Gendered disinformation, with a typology distinguishing five patterns of “gendered FIMI” and an assessment of the vulnerabilities it exploits,
- Financial fraud, analysing Facebook scam campaigns impersonating the Swedish bank Swedbank to test whether ADAC.io’s attribution framework also applies to hybrid threats beyond political manipulation,
- Cross-platform manipulation around the 2025 Munich Security Conference and the 2025 Moldovan parliamentary elections, introducing the concept of “agenda-surfing”: opportunistic actors injecting their grievances into an unfolding event rather than running a tightly orchestrated campaign.
