Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RUSINFORM (The Consequences of the Internet for Russia's Informational Influence Abroad)
Période du rapport: 2022-11-01 au 2024-04-30
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 affect Russia’s digitally enabled efforts.
In order to work towards these goals, a theoretical work packages (WP4) undertakes 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. WP4 is informed by three empirical WPs.
These empirical WPs scrutinize three heavily digitally-enabled elements of Russia's communicative efforts:
• WP1 conducts an in-depth study of the foreign audiences who co-create and disseminate Russia-related content.
• WP2 produces pioneering research about how social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia's domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad.
• WP3 is the first study to scrutinize the role of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex 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 (in-depth interviews, grounded theory).
In response to Russia's recent efforts, countermeasures have been ushered in by a plurality of actors, including national governments, EU, NATO, NGOs, and leading news media across the globe. RUSINFORM-team members are disseminating knowledge and findings generated in the project regularly among these key stakeholders.
In order to work towards these goals, a theoretical work packages (WP4) undertakes 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. WP4 is informed by three empirical WPs.
These empirical WPs scrutinize three heavily digitally-enabled elements of Russia's communicative efforts:
• WP1 conducts an in-depth study of the foreign audiences who co-create and disseminate Russia-related content.
• WP2 produces pioneering research about how social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia's domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad.
• WP3 is the first study to scrutinize the role of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex 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 (in-depth interviews, grounded theory).
In response to Russia's recent efforts, countermeasures have been ushered in by a plurality of actors, including national governments, EU, NATO, NGOs, and leading news media across the globe. RUSINFORM-team members are disseminating knowledge and findings generated in the project regularly among these key stakeholders.
WP1 aspires to conduct an in-depth study on how foreign online audiences co-create and disseminate Russia-related content. Amongst other research endeavors, in the first funding period WP1 conducted 42 qualitative interviews with German Russian speakers, investigating their media diets, the degree to which they trust in different Russian and German language media outlets, and the extent to which they co-create and disseminate Russia’s strategic narrative. The first article manuscript focusing on the media diets of this group details the consequences of four types of transnational news repertoires: 1) German/Global media-oriented news repertoire, 2) Russian state-sponsored media-oriented repertoire 3) The seeking-the-truth oriented news repertoire, 4) convenience-oriented news repertoire.
WP2 investigates how social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia's domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad. A first article completed in the first funding period within this WP systematically investigates how news content of Russia’s leading media outlets is distributed to foreign audiences by Facebook. By triangulating two Facebook APIs that have rarely been used in the field of communication, the manuscript demonstrates that 35% of the Facebook accounts of Russia’s leading domestic news outlets attract more than 50% of their audience abroad.
WP3 aims to implement a series of studies that illustrate how search algorithms can function as a resource of the Kremlin’s foreign influence. One of the articles already published compared the output of the search engine Google, comparing the type of Covid-19 conspiracy theories that it contained across 5 key target countries of Russia’s foreign communication (Belarus, Estonia, Germany, Ukraine, and the US) and Russia as of November 2020 (N = 5280 search results). It found that, across all countries, primarily content published by mass media organizations rendered conspiracy theories visible in search results.
WP4 seeks to theorize Russia’s recent digitally-enabled efforts, drawing on the empirical results of WP 1-3. In the first funding period, this work package, for instance, compiled a history of political “online astroturfing” (i.e. the simulation of grass roots movements) in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dividing the history of this phenomenon into four phases.
In the first period of the project, and particularly after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the RUSINFORM-team engaged intensely in outreach activities with government officials and media outlets as well as with the general public. Amongst others, the PI held lectures at governmental entities like the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and universities in Munich, Muenster, Mainz and Passau. The RUSINFORM-team also shared its expertise with a multitude of activists and journalists working at leading media outlets across the globe, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the German public service broadcasters ZDF and ARD, and the Russian Novaya Gazeta. These interviews resulted in more than a dozen media reports that reached an audience of millions.
WP2 investigates how social media platforms function as key transmission channels that connect Russia's domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad. A first article completed in the first funding period within this WP systematically investigates how news content of Russia’s leading media outlets is distributed to foreign audiences by Facebook. By triangulating two Facebook APIs that have rarely been used in the field of communication, the manuscript demonstrates that 35% of the Facebook accounts of Russia’s leading domestic news outlets attract more than 50% of their audience abroad.
WP3 aims to implement a series of studies that illustrate how search algorithms can function as a resource of the Kremlin’s foreign influence. One of the articles already published compared the output of the search engine Google, comparing the type of Covid-19 conspiracy theories that it contained across 5 key target countries of Russia’s foreign communication (Belarus, Estonia, Germany, Ukraine, and the US) and Russia as of November 2020 (N = 5280 search results). It found that, across all countries, primarily content published by mass media organizations rendered conspiracy theories visible in search results.
WP4 seeks to theorize Russia’s recent digitally-enabled efforts, drawing on the empirical results of WP 1-3. In the first funding period, this work package, for instance, compiled a history of political “online astroturfing” (i.e. the simulation of grass roots movements) in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dividing the history of this phenomenon into four phases.
In the first period of the project, and particularly after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the RUSINFORM-team engaged intensely in outreach activities with government officials and media outlets as well as with the general public. Amongst others, the PI held lectures at governmental entities like the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and universities in Munich, Muenster, Mainz and Passau. The RUSINFORM-team also shared its expertise with a multitude of activists and journalists working at leading media outlets across the globe, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the German public service broadcasters ZDF and ARD, and the Russian Novaya Gazeta. These interviews resulted in more than a dozen media reports that reached an audience of millions.
In its first funding period, the RUSINFORM-project has generated novel empirical knowledge that advanced the state of the art in the discipline of communications on an entire series of highly consequential aspects of Russia’s informational influence abroad (for details, see previous paragraphs). In addition to creating novel empirical knowledge, the RUSINFORM-team has also advanced the state of the art at the methodological level in its field. For instance, in WP3, RUSINFORM-researchers devised standards for search engine audits that allow for implementing not only national but cross-national audits. This research showcased how algorithmic audits can consider the role of input language, for instance whether Internet users search for a topic in the Russian or in the English language. The standards developed can be adopted also in future research on other issues and in other contexts. In WP2, RUSINFORM-research illustrated how to triangulate data of two Facebook APIs in order to estimate the global geographical distribution of audiences of Facebook account. In the second period of funding and until the end of the project, RUSINFORM expects to create further novel empirical findings in each of the research areas of the three empirical work packages: WP1 will further explore the role of human audiences involved in the global dissemination of Russia’s strategic narratives (extending its scope to journalists working at alternative media, social media influencers, and so called Russian “trolls”). WP2 will broaden its empirical focus from Facebook to other social networks, including the social messenger service Telegram which has greatly gained in users in the post-Soviet region recently. WP3, will seek to refine its methodological approach and implement additional audits on how the Russian search engine Yandex mediates political information in Belarus.