Report: Økende, komplekst og uoversiktlig– kartlegging av utenlandsk påvirkning i forbindelse medstortingsvalget 2025

Commissioned by Norway’s Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development (KDD), this report examines whether foreign actors attempted to influence Norwegian citizens on social media ahead of the 2025 parliamentary election. Conducted by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in cooperation with Analyse & Tall and our team at Common Consultancy, the analysis draws on a dataset of more than 22 million posts and comments from Facebook, X, TikTok, and Telegram collected between 1 September 2024 and 14 September 2025.

What does influence look like when attribution is unclear - and when authentic and inauthentic activity blend together? The report documents increased Russia- and China-linked attention to Norway and maps how narratives are used to shape perceptions and amplify distrust. It also identifies a campaign explicitly linked to the election (#OpNorway) and a case of coordinated inauthentic activity on TikTok. Beyond these, the findings point to a more complex information environment where platforms’ limited transparency makes it difficult - and sometimes impossible - to determine who is behind what. What does that mean for trust, democratic debate, and our ability to tell what’s genuine from what’s fabricated?

Note that the report is in Norwegian.