Foreign State Media Influencers Spin Charlie Kirk Assassination

For­eign influ­encers are spin­ning the Char­lie Kirk assas­si­na­tion to serve their gov­ern­ments’ pro­pa­gan­da nar­ra­tives, though experts say these efforts have lim­it­ed impact on Amer­i­can audi­ences. On 18 Sep­tem­ber 2025, NPR report­ed that while Russ­ian, Chi­nese, and Iran­ian state media have men­tioned Kirk’s death over 6,000 times, the tox­ic online dis­course sur­round­ing the shoot­ing remains pri­mar­i­ly home­grown rather than for­eign-dri­ven. The arti­cle begins:

The assas­si­na­tion of Char­lie Kirk has been divi­sive online, and some offi­cials believe for­eign gov­ern­ments are try­ing to make things worse. “We have bots from Rus­sia, Chi­na all over the world that are try­ing to instill mis­in­for­ma­tion and encour­age vio­lence,” warned Utah Gov. Spencer Cox in a press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the shoot­ing last week. But experts who mon­i­tor for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns say the pic­ture is more nuanced. While it’s true that for­eign-paid influ­encers are dis­cussing the shoot­ing, and state-run media out­lets are spin­ning events to fit their nar­ra­tives – there’s not much evi­dence those mes­sages are reach­ing Amer­i­cans, said Dar­ren Linvill, co-direc­tor of the Media Foren­sics Hub at Clem­son Uni­ver­si­ty. The tox­ic dis­course around Kirk’s shoot­ing is pri­mar­i­ly home-grown: “I wish it were the Rus­sians,” he said. “It’s not the Rus­sians, it’s us.”

Read more: https://www.global-influence-ops.com/charlie-kirk-killing-opens-opportunity-chinese-russian-manipulation-kirk/

Key Points

• Russ­ian state media blames Ukraine for Kirk assas­si­na­tion while Iran­ian out­lets point fin­ger at Israel.
• Chi­nese state media uses Kirk’s sto­ry to por­tray Amer­i­ca as unsta­ble and a divid­ed nation.
• For­eign influ­ence cam­paigns strug­gle to gain trac­tion when major news sto­ries dom­i­nate social media conversations.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion dis­man­tled gov­ern­ment agen­cies respon­si­ble for track­ing for­eign malign influ­ence operations.s

How State Media Influencers Drive Global Influence Operations Campaigns

For­eign state media out­lets serve as pri­ma­ry vehi­cles for inter­na­tion­al influ­ence oper­a­tions, with Rus­sia Today pre­sent­ing a Russ­ian per­spec­tive on glob­al events to counter per­ceived anti-Russ­ian bias in West­ern media while oper­at­ing in mul­ti­ple lan­guages includ­ing Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Ara­bic, and Span­ish. These oper­a­tions have esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing glob­al con­flicts, prompt­ing the Euro­pean Union to ban RT and Sput­nik across its 27 mem­ber coun­tries due to their role in spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion dur­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

State broad­cast­ers employ sophis­ti­cat­ed tac­tics that blend legit­i­mate jour­nal­ism with strate­gic mes­sag­ing, as demon­strat­ed by Iran­ian bot net­works tar­get­ing Scot­tish inde­pen­dence through 1,332 fake pro­files that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ed divi­sive nar­ra­tives before piv­ot­ing to pro-Iran­ian mes­sag­ing. Sim­i­lar­ly, Turkey’s state broad­cast­er TRT faces legal scruti­ny for poten­tial­ly vio­lat­ing US for­eign agent laws by deny­ing polit­i­cal activ­i­ties while exten­sive­ly pro­mot­ing Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan’s for­eign pol­i­cy objec­tives and pro-Hamas mes­sag­ing to Amer­i­can audiences.

These influ­ence oper­a­tions extend beyond tra­di­tion­al broad­cast­ing through dig­i­tal plat­forms and sophis­ti­cat­ed net­works that cir­cum­vent reg­u­la­to­ry restric­tions, as seen with Sput­nik’s return to Esto­nia through new domains and fund­ing mech­a­nisms. The coor­di­nat­ed nature of these cam­paigns reveals how author­i­tar­i­an regimes lever­age state media infra­struc­ture to shape inter­na­tion­al per­cep­tions, influ­ence dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties, and advance strate­gic geopo­lit­i­cal inter­ests while main­tain­ing plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty through claims of edi­to­r­i­al inde­pen­dence and jour­nal­is­tic legitimacy.

Exter­nal References:

• Trea­sury Takes Action as Part of a U.S. Gov­ern­ment Response to Rus­si­a’s For­eign Malign Influ­ence Operations
• Two Inter­na­tion­al Pro­pa­gan­da Mod­els: Com­par­ing RT and CGT­N’s 2020 US Elec­tion Coverage
• Tik­Tok removes Russ­ian state media out­lets RT and Sput­nik, cit­ing ‘covert influ­ence operations’

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.