Project description
A closer look at Russia’s digital disinformation
The expansion of internet technology has enabled the digital disinformation attacks on electoral campaigns in the EU states during the last years. Russia has been accused of orchestrating the attacks. The digital interference in elections raised serious concerns about the future of European societies. The EU-funded RUSINFORM project will use computational and traditional methods to systematically research the relationship between Soviet foreign propaganda and the actual Russian digital war of information. It will study the role that foreign on-line audience and social media play in the transmission of Russian media content to the Russian speaking media abroad. It will also investigate the role that the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yan-dex plays in foreign influence.
Objective
Over the past decade, Russia’s ruling elites have massively stepped up their efforts to influ-ence media audiences abroad. Amongst others, Russia has been alleged to have sought to sway votes in Austria, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the US. This project’s overarching research ques-tion is: How, and with what consequences, have new Internet-based technologies contributed to the emergence of novel resources, techniques, and processes by which political elites in Moscow can influence media audiences abroad?
In order to address this question, a theoretical work package (WP4) will undertake the first major systematic effort to interrogate how much, or how little, we can leverage extant in-depth knowledge of former-Soviet foreign propaganda, conducted in the broadcast era, in order to make sense of Russia’s recent digitally-enabled efforts.
WP4 will be informed by three empirical WPs. They will scrutinize three heavily digitally-enabled elements of Russia’s recent efforts:
• WP1 will conduct a comprehensive in-depth study of foreign active online audiences and other co-creators of Russia-related content.
• WP2 will produce pioneering research about how social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia’s domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad.
• WP3 will be the first study to scrutinize the role of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yan-dex as a resource of foreign influence.
Methodologically, WP1-3 are highly innovative because they combine new computational methods (data mining, automated text analysis) with traditional methods (surveys, in-depth inter-views, grounded theory).
In response to Russia’s recent efforts, countermeasures have been ushered in by a plurality of actors, including the EU, NATO, and NGOs. These actors will benefit immensely from the knowledge generated, which will enable them to enhance their initiatives to secure democratic elec-toral processes against undue informational interference.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
94032 Passau
Germany