Rally Around the Tweet? Russian Disinformation and the Ukraine Crisis

• In Event: Politics of Communist & Former Communist Countries Virtual Poster Session I

Abstract

While a considerable body of academic literature has examined the the Russian state’s use of social media to influence the 2016 US presidential election, comparatively little literature has examined the Russian state’s use of online disinformation on its own citizens. On Twitter, a domestically-focused disinformation campaign sprang into action during the 2014 Ukraine crisis, ultimately utilizing far more accounts and generating far more content than the US-targeted campaign. Using text analysis methods, I find that the Russian state used Twitter as a unique prong in its coordinated multimedia response to the Ukraine crisis, taking advantage of the anonymity of the platform to create the illusion of grassroots engagement and agreement with state-sponsored media narratives. This strategy draws a stark contrast with the Chinese case, where the state prefers to distract and drown out unwanted content rather than actively engaging with its online citizens. I argue that this difference arises due to Russia’s more open regime type, where the presence of elections requires the Russian regime to actively cultivate and mobilize its supporters. These differences highlight the need for further comparative research into authoritarian use of online disinformation.

Author

• Sean Norton, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill