Aligning Disinformation and Nord Stream 2

• In Event: Gossip, Conspiracy, and Disinformation in World Politics

Abstract

Aligning Disinformation and Nord Stream 2: How Russia Differentiates and Strategically Aligns Disinformation Narratives to English, Polish and German Audiences?

Christiern Santos Rasmussen
Phd-Researcher, European University Institute

How does Russian disinformation narratives influence audiences perceptions and do they so uniformly? Despite substantial attention given to Russia disinformation campaigns targeting Western Liberal Democracies, the scholars of International Relations and Security Studies have echoed the same theoretical insights on the weaponization of information, while failed to develop a conceptual mechanism for the manipulation of audiences.
Though conceptualizing Russia’s use of digital and analogue communication channels to spread disinformation as coercive application of Soft Power tools, a continuation of the Soviet strategic culture of Asymmetric Measures, Information Warfare or Subversion of Liberal Democracy gives glimpses into the Kremlin’s instrumental understanding of information, these concepts due not explain how information can coerce, subvert, manipulate or influence audiences. Combined with a general neglect of how intended audiences’ cultural context moderate manipulation’s success, this lack of mechanism risks leading to erroneous assumptions of disinformation designs and thereby misevaluating of their effects. Assuming Russian disinformation narratives as being promoted globally as either pro-Russian or anti-Western, risks ignoring that these may be aligned to intended audiences and thereby differ across audiences.
This study addresses these issues by bridging Roselle, Miskimmon, and O’Loughlin (2014)’s concept of Strategic Narratives, i.e. States’ attempt of pushing certain interpretations of reality to foreign audiences, with Benford and Snow (2000)’s Strategic Framing Alignment, i.e. when such interpretations are adapted to the intended audiences’ cultural context in hope of maximizing resonance and salience amongst them. By strategically pushing and offering narratives to intended audiences, who rely on narratives to navigate and interpret reality, states can influence audiences’ world perceptions using (dis)information and narratives strategically. However, existing narratives or cultural context influence audiences willingness to accept new narratives. This forces state actors to account for intended audiences’ cultural context, when designing strategic narratives. Based on this study argues that Russia’s disinformation campaigns strategically aligns their disinformation narratives to increase resonance among intended audiences and furthers Russia strategic goals. This arguments leads to a theoretical expectation of narrative differentiation between audiences with different cultural contexts.
Through two comparative content analyses, the study investigates if Russian disinformation narratives differ between English, German and Polish audiences. The first analysis uses the EUvsDisinfo-database of Russian disinformation to identify differences in which Russian disinformation narratives are pushed. The second analysis focuses on Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline and on how the project and relevant actors were portrayed in articles published by the Kremlin’s major disinformation platform Sputnik, between 2018 to march 2022.
The study contributes to existing literature by expanding our knowledge of the sophistication of Russian disinformation campaigns and their relation to the cultural context of intended audiences. Moreover it warns against overgeneralization of disinformation narratives and shows how Russia has been able to continuously adapt and develop disinformation narratives to real world events and overtime push certain topics on specific issues. It advocates for building societal resilience, by accounting for how exploitable individual audiences cultural context are and caution against evaluating risk based on simplified narratives.

Keywords: Disinformation, Public Diplomacy, Strategic Communication, Information War, Strategic Narratives, Framing, Propaganda.

Author

• Christiern Santos Rasmussen, European University Institute