AISD Forum | Characterizing Knowledge Manipulation in a Russian Wikipedia Fork
The AISD Forum 🤖 ⋂ 🛡️ (AI, Security & Defense) cordially invites you to a special public presentation by Mykola Trokhymovych (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) on the state of knowledge manipulation on the Russian Wikipedia fork. This event is a part of AISD's Fall '25 series on "Influence Operations".
Title: Characterizing Knowledge Manipulation in a Russian Wikipedia Fork
Speaker: Mykola Trokhymovych (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
Date: 23 October 2025 12h00~13h00 Boston (18h00~19h00 Oslo)
Hosts: Phil Tinn & Olivia Houck
Abstract: Wikipedia is powered by MediaWiki, a free and open-source software that is also the infrastructure for many other wiki-based online encyclopedias. These include the recently launched website Ruwiki, which has copied and modified the original Russian Wikipedia content to conform to Russian law. To identify practices and narratives that could be associated with different forms of knowledge manipulation, this article presents an in-depth analysis of this Russian Wikipedia fork. We propose a methodology to characterize the main changes with respect to the original version. The foundation of this study is a comprehensive comparative analysis of more than 1.9M articles from Russian Wikipedia and its fork. Using meta-information and geographical, temporal, categorical, and textual features, we explore the changes made by Ruwiki editors. Furthermore, we present a classification of the main topics of knowledge manipulation in this fork, including a numerical estimation of their scope. This research not only sheds light on significant changes within Ruwiki, but also provides a methodology that could be applied to analyze other Wikipedia forks and similar collaborative projects.
Upcoming from Fall '25 AISD Series on "Influence Operations":
09 Oct LLM-Consensus: Multi-Agent Debates for Misinformation Detection with Kumud Lakara (University of Oxford; JPMorgan Chase)
16 Oct From Moscow to Beijing: Russian propaganda and disinformation in Chinese Media with Patrycja Krzyśpiak (NASK National Research Institute, Poland)
23 Oct Characterizing Knowledge Manipulation in a Russian Wikipedia Fork with Mykola Makhortykh (Pompeu Fabra University)
28 Oct Bots of Occupation: Russian Influence Operations on Telegram with Yuliia Dukach (OpenMinds)
⚠️ More talks to be announced soon for November and December.
About: the AISD Forum is a collaborative initiative built with the support of the MIT Alumni Association (Norway, France & Germany). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of MIT.
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