This research brings the attention of the research community to the specific disinformation strategy known as "Flooding the Zone" (FTZ). This strategy has been successfully implemented by state actors over the years envisaged by the Russian government during the Skripal incident or the Chinese government when trying to suppress any news that is contrary to their narrative on the Xinjiang internment camps. In this work, we focused on the Skripal incident where a former Russian intelligence agent was poisoned with a bioweapon in England. The Russian state controlled media attempted to muddle the facts surrounding this incident by flooding the space of information with various narratives so that these confusing messages would dominate the social networks and spread further and faster than factual accounts of the attack.

PDF