Russian Public Diplomacy: Questioning Certainties in Uncertain Times

Abstract

Much recent political and scholarly engagement with Russia’s politics of international influence tells of an integrated and highly efficient disinformation ecosystems in which bots, trolls and broadcasters work in harmony to undermine Western liberal democracy. Yet, no state can effectively control the narratives in today’s interactive media ecosystems. This is where Russia’s approach to public diplomacy comes into its own, with media outputs designed to fit and capitalise upon an environment of uncertainty. This chapter presents empirical analysis of the multimedia outputs that Russia’s international broadcasters, RT and Sputnik, published around the 2018 poisoning of the Russian-British double agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK. It argues that Russian public diplomacy efforts are oriented towards a contemporary global environment in which public trust in established institutions is waning, whilst openness to alternative sources of information and legitimacy is increasing: marginal perspectives are centred; information sources are curated; and the problems inherent to Western normative models—and the media narratives disseminated about them—are highlighted. Nonetheless, the evidence presented in this chapter suggests that Russian public diplomacy efforts are rarely as effective as is commonly assumed, and that the most productive responses to Russian public diplomacy efforts in times of uncertainty would be focused on addressing the underlying problems that such coverage exploits, rather than being constructed in direct response to that coverage.