Amplifying doubt: How Russian trolls leveraged pandemic uncertainty for strategic gain

The COVID-19 pandemic was not just a public health crisis but a crisis of confidence—one that revealed the fragility of public trust in scientific expertise, democratic institutional governance, and the very mechanisms by which societies establish trust and determine truth. The pandemic brought many existing geopolitical tensions to the fore, with several state-aligned actors from various countries—including both authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies—taking to social media to engage in what could be seen as aggressive vaccine diplomacy as well as covert operations targeting rivals. Russian state-aligned social media actors seized on this moment of uncertainty—not to promote any coherent counter-narrative, but to make coherence itself elusive. Their strategy was not to persuade but to confuse, amplifying deep-seated anxieties and contradictions, fostering ideological polarization, and transforming pandemic discourse into yet another site of contestation. By strategically amplifying both vaccine skepticism and criticism of government failure and overreach, this operation did not merely seek to instill doubt in a particular version of reality. Rather, it aimed to erode faith in the very possibility of a shared reality altogether. This deliberate amplification of uncertainties carries consequences that extend far beyond COVID-19.