The Perils of Defense in an Information War: Media, Minorities, and the Threat Next Door

Abstract

Disinformation spread by Russian Federation television channels to Latvia’s ethnic minority audiences became an especially challenging problem after the occupation of Crimea in 2014. In the Latvian political agenda, the issue was reduced to seeking legal arguments justifying the ban of Russia’s broadcasts on domestic cable networks and via the internet to protect the Russian-speaking population from propaganda. Public opinion polls, however, did not consider Russia’s transborder communication a critical issue. Media content analyses reveal the absence of feedback communication: Lay people and their problems are underrepresented in leading media. Moreover, reference to “Kremlin propaganda” was instrumentalized as a populist argument discrediting political opponents and critics of government policies. On the one hand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 proved the significance of the propaganda concerns following 2014. On the other hand, little was done to establish top-down and bottom-up communication channels with the Russian-speaking population identified as vulnerable to Kremlin propaganda.