Russia’s Media at War in Neighboring States

• In Event: The International Spread and Influence of Russia’s War Propaganda

Abstract

Drawing from preliminary research conducted for the SSHRC-funded “Russia’s Media at War” project, this paper leverages television broadcast transcripts from Russia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan to identify Russia’s strategic narratives about its war in Ukraine and their transfer from Russia’s domestic media to media environments in neighboring states. Strategic narratives may be identified and observed in terms of their potential to influence target audiences in relation to current events. More subtly, the seeding of narratives in the media over time can prime foreign publics to accept them as standards for evaluating a government’s performance. In other words, such an approach potentially accounts for the ways in which Russian propaganda influences both what audiences think about a specific subject (like the war on Ukraine), as well as how they think about it in a local context.

Author

• Paul Goode, Carleton U (Canada)