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Russia's strategic narrative of the West: A study of influence in Ukraine

Objective

This project investigates the relationship between mass communication and influence in 21st Century international relations. It does so through a study of Russia’s official and media narratives about the West and their reception in Ukraine. Success in today’s information age is said to depend on ‘whose story wins’. Emerging powers such as Russia have developed various policies and instruments under the banner of ‘soft power’ to challenge Western hegemony in global media discourse. The projection of counter-hegemonic narratives has been documented extensively, yet we still understand little about their reception and the extent of their influence among target audiences.
Anti-Western narratives have been a distinguishing feature of the Russian public sphere during Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term. The narratives of Russian politicians and state media characterize ‘the West’ as a destabilizing force which backs, even orchestrates, illegitimate regime change. Russian narratives are easily accessible among some audiences in Ukraine for reasons of language and overlapping media environments. This project employs a survey, focus groups and interviews to study the assimilation or otherwise of negative narratives about the West among Ukrainians. It concentrates on three groups as case studies: MPs, a regional business community and students from a regional university.
The project’s principal goal is to identify factors which condition assimilation of anti-Western ideas from Russian strategic narratives, in order to explain when and why they are accepted or eschewed. A second goal is to advance research on power and communication in international affairs by applying the new conceptual framework of ‘strategic narrative’ in a detailed empirical study. Thirdly, the project aims to generate practical insights to help improve the effectiveness of EU engagement with Ukraine. A secondment to the UK Foreign Office is incorporated to facilitate knowledge exchange.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF-GF - Global Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2014

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Coordinator

ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 243 934,20
Address
EGHAM HILL UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
TW20 0EX Egham
United Kingdom

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Region
South East (England) Surrey, East and West Sussex West Surrey
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 243 934,20

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