State Media Abroad: Russia and the Syrian Conflict

• In Event: Russian Interference

Abstract

We are still trying to understanding how states use new technologies of information to accomplish their goals. A leader in this area is Russia, which has received substantial attention in recent years, but much of the attention has been focused on fake accounts and the use of bots and trolls. In this paper, we explore a more public component of the Russian state’s information strategy, RT News, and use a key event with high foreign policy stakes for the state, to examine the strategies that RT uses online to increase their prominence as an information broker. Using Twitter data collected during the conflict in Syria, in both Arabic and English, we explore the influence of RT as a news source about the Syrian conflict online both before and after the Russian intervention. By focusing our analysis around such a critical shift in Russian policy, and the stakes for the Russian state, we are able to explore how strategies of RT online shift in response to shifts in Russian policy, including changes in content, and the way that suspected bots interact with this content. We also explore how strategies differ when addressing an Arabic speaking audience and an English speaking audience, and under what conditions RT is successful at becoming an influential information broker in both the English and Arabic Twitter sphere. Our findings give important insights into the role of Russian funded media sources online, and the strategies that underlie moments of success for these sources.

Author

• Megan MacDuffee Metzger, Stanford University