Following Russia's annexion of Crimea in 2014, 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. This project’s overarching research question was: 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) accomplished a series of theoretical interventions that systematized Russia’s digitally-enabled propaganda efforts. WP4 was informed by three empirical WPs. These scrutinized three heavily digitally-enabled elements of Russia’s recent efforts. Methodologically, WP1-3 were highly innovative because they combined new computational methods (data mining, automated text analysis) with traditional methods (surveys, in-depth interviews, grounded theory).
WP1 focused on the foreign online audiences of Russia-related content and how these audiences curated, co-created and disseminated such content. The goal was to garner a better understanding of the audiences who consume the content of the Russian or Russia-affiliated media outlets by looking at their media diets, their online participation and their individual backgrounds.
WP2 generated research about how social media platforms functioned as key transmission channels that connect Russia’s domestic media with Russian-speaking audiences abroad. It will generate empirical knowledge that is pivotal to evaluate the influence of Russia‘s domestic, Kremlin-controlled news outlets on Russian-speaking audiences abroad and illustrate new approaches to study the audiences of public social media pages by combining computational with traditional social science methods.
WP3 will be the first study to scrutinize the role of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex as a resource of foreign influence.
To receive further information about WP3, please contact Daria Kravets (Daria.Kravets@uni-passau.de).
WP4 leveraged knowledge of former-Soviet foreign propaganda, conducted in the broadcast era, in order to make sense of Russia’s recent digitally-enabled efforts.
For further information on RUSINFORM research, please navigate to the results and outputs section of this website.
This project is affiliated with the Chair of Political Communication with a Focus on Eastern Europe and the Post-Soviet Region.
The project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement number 819025).
