17 January 2026

The Perception War over Venezuela

Ellie Munshi

This EdgeTheory report synthesizes geospatial narrative mapping, narrative attribution, and emotion and network analysis surrounding the U.S. military capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The brief focuses on coordinated Russian and Chinese information operations that frame the action as illegal aggression and resource-driven imperialism while positioning Moscow and Beijing as defenders of sovereignty and international law. 

Drawing from multi-platform collection streams, including state media, social media actors, RSS feeds, and X posts, this assessment maps how narratives of U.S. illegitimacy, neocolonialism, and the collapse of the rules-based order propagate across the global information environment. Using EdgeTheory’s narrative classification and amplification tools, the report traces how state-aligned, proxy, and influence-for-hire networks organize, interact, and reinforce emotionally charged messaging, providing a layered view of how adversarial information power seeks to undermine U.S. credibility, fracture allied cohesion, and normalize a sphere-of-influence model of global order.

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