Washington hopes more countries will join US, UK and Canada in signing agreement to define, identify and label such operations

A global coalition of democracies is being formed to protect their societies from disinformation campaigns by foreign governments, the US special envoy on the issue has said.

James Rubin, the special envoy for non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts at the US state department’s global engagement centre (GEC), said the coalition hoped to agree on “definitions for information manipulation versus plain old opinions that other governments are entitled to have even if we disagree with them”.

The US, UK and Canada have already signed up to a formal framework agreement, and Washington hopes more countries will join.

The GEC focuses solely on disinformation by foreign powers. Apart from trying to develop global strategies, it works to expose specific covert disinformation operations, such as a Russian operation in Africa to discredit US health services.