In the 2010s, Russia's ruling elites have massively stepped up their efforts to influence media audiences abroad. Amongst others, Russia has been alleged to have sought to sway votes in Austria, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the US. At the start of this project in 2019, RUSINFORM's overarching research question was formulated as follows: 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? After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the research team additionally has raised questions around how the massively increased levels of international conflict and Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine affected Russia’s digitally enabled efforts.
In order to work towards these goals, a theoretical work packages (WP4) undertook a 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. In addition, this theoretical work package investigated the degree to which Russia’s propaganda narratives have increasingly been permeated by fascist discursive elements. WP4 has been informed by three empirical WPs. These empirical WPs scrutinized three heavily digitally-enabled elements of Russia's communicative efforts:
• WP1 has created in-depth knowledge of digitally-enabled co-creators and disseminators of Russia-related content online, specifically focusing on Russian speaking migrant audiences in Germany, on audiences of Russia's state-broadcaster RT, and on so-called "troll-factories";
• WP2 has produced pioneering research about how both US- and Russia-based social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia's domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad.
• WP3 has been the first study to explicitly scrutinize the role of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex as a resource of foreign influence.
Methodologically, WP1-3 adopted a series of highly innovative approaches that combined new computational methods (data mining, automated text analysis), investigative methods and traditional methods of social science (in-depth interviews, grounded theory).
In response to Russia's increasingly aggressive informational influence efforts, during the course of the project, a series of countermeasures were ushered in by a plurality of actors, including national governments, EU, NATO, NGOs, and leading news media across the globe. RUSINFORM-team members have disseminated knowledge and findings generated in the project regularly among these key stakeholders.
