The Doppelganger Network: Folkloric Moniker for Spectacle Infrastructure

We understand how Doppelganger, which is the folkloric moniker given to this method of Russian Disinfolklorists using spoofed Western media to pretend that stories which it plants are in The Guardian or in the BBC. And so it uses doppelgangers of their websites to spread them out and spread these fakes. And when the European Union’s anti-disinformation practitioners discovered this They called it the doppelganger network. They reached into German folklore to take a moniker, which then the Russians themselves took on and began in their internal documents, we now see, to describe their own bot network.

Source: How Disinfolklore Communicates Archetypes

The spectacle’s infrastructure revealed through its own name. Russia spoofs Western media websites — The Guardian, the BBC — to plant Disinfolklore stories that appear to come from trusted sources. When the EU discovered this, they reached into German folklore for the name “Doppelganger.” The Russians then adopted this folkloric moniker in their own internal documents. The name itself tells the story: the spectacle operates through doubles, through copies that look real but serve the puppeteer’s purpose.

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