Keywords

Introduction

This study asked what the Russian state media narratives about Sweden were about, how they were told, and in what ways they could be said to cause harm to Sweden. It was undertaken in order to analyze how an authoritarian and hostile state—Russia—uses news media as part of its security strategy to construct and disseminate disinformation that poses a threat to Swedish national security. Moreover, disinformation also targets deeper democratic competencies, altering people’s relationship with information and facts in general, and their ability for critical thinking (Bjola & Papadakis, 2020, p. 2; Lemke & Habegger, 2022). The use of information influencing activities to strengthen a state’s power position is not new, but novel media technologies, the internet, and easy access to social media have opened up new opportunities for digital disinformation and made it easier for authoritarian regimes to reach larger international audiences. In this chapter I summarize the findings of the narrative analyses of Sputnik and RT news coverage about Sweden and discuss story telling techniques that were used and which contribute to explaining why the narratives can be seen as disinformation and differ from journalism. They are both everyday practices, but in contrast to journalism, disinformation is referred to as an everyday security practice. The summaries do not include explicit references to RT and Sputnik news plots. These can be found in the empirical chapters.

Various terms have been used for the information influencing activities of this age, taking account of these new media technologies. This book has used the term disinformation, defined in line with Bennett and Livingstone (2021) who note that disinformation:

involves the production and dissemination of intentionally distorted information for the purpose of deceiving an audience. Distortion might involve deliberate factual inaccuracies or amplified attention to persons, issues, events, or both. Some disinformation campaigns seek to exacerbate existing social and political fissures by mimicking social protest movements and radicalizing and amplifying their narratives. (Bennett & Livingstone, 2021, p. 35)

The empirical focus of this study was on Sweden and how the news narratives about the country were constructed by the Russian state media outlets, Sputnik and RT. Sweden was an appropriate case given its high scores on liberal indexes, and that liberal ideas have been an especially noted target of Russian disinformation. In their study of disinformation during the Swedish election campaign in 2018, Colliver et al. (2018) refer to Sweden as “the heartland of Europe’s liberal, social democratic consensus”, but they also show that Sweden is increasingly vulnerable due to domestic links with the international far-right. Their analyses of disinformation during that election campaign found that the country was exposed to smear campaigns from both Russian state-sponsored media and the international far-right (Colliver et al., 2018, p. 12).

Sweden may be a suitable case but it is far from unique. Studies of other European states, the United States and elsewhere, have shown similar exposure to this type of disinformation. A number of studies have investigated various disinformation campaigns, especially in connection with general elections. A review of this research is presented in Chap. 3.

The empirical analysis was carried out using narrative analysis. This method is presented in Chap. 4. It asked what the Russian state media narratives about Sweden were about, how they were told, and in what ways they could be said to denigrate Sweden. A framing analysis was undertaken as a first step, to learn about the ways in which problems were defined, and to weigh the different frames across the five themes of gender, culture, anti-liberalism, public health, and climate change, on which the sampling of the news items was based. With the help of the framing analysis and a first search for meaning making patterns across the plots (i.e. the narrative of each news item), four narratives were identified. Special attention was paid to the sources used and to the narrative techniques (see below). It was found that links were established between some of the themes, and this was also considered when the narratives were defined.

These findings were brought together in the inductive formulation of four dominant narratives: (a) the liberal left: a threat to traditional Sweden; (b) ) obsessive gender concerns leading Sweden astray; (c) Islamic takeover and the selling out of Sweden; and (d). liberalistic defiance during a pandemic. These narratives were analyzed in detail and the results of the analyses formed the image of Sweden that the Russian state-controlled media, Sputnik and RT, sought to project. These narratives should not be seen as separate from or independent of one another. They were connected and the linkages between them added to the routinized and continuous image of Sweden—a master narrative of a nation in decline.

The Master Narrative About Sweden: A Failing State Victim to Liberal Ideas

As noted above, the narratives that made up the everyday coverage of Sweden in Sputnik and RT shared features with findings in other studies of Russian disinformation in European countries and the United States. These included narratives about liberal values giving rise to domestic conflict, malfunctioning institutions, individual ill-feeling/discomfort, and at times pure absurdity. There were also anti-establishment narratives where political elites and other authorities were depicted as untrustworthy and hypocritical, with ulterior motives behind their decision making or governance.

The Russian master narrative on Sweden—of attacks on the liberal order and the anti-establishment approach—served as core ingredients but they did not make up the whole story. Adding all the narratives identified in the news coverage together, it could be argued that the overall story about Sweden that RT and Sputnik intended to tell was to “reveal the true nature of Sweden” against the “pretend ideal that the elites were working to project”, to which liberalism was key. The main message was that Sweden is not what it pretends to be. It is not a homogenous country where political and social problems are managed in a climate of consensus. It is not a country appreciated by its neighbors and the other EU member states. It is not a country where people are satisfied and happy thanks to far-reaching individual freedoms.

The master narrative about Sweden as a failing state victim to liberal ideas was a story about a country so keen on its liberal values that it had become ungovernable. The government was depicted as either unable to deal with national concerns or absent from the picture altogether. Sweden appeared to be a society where the basic pillars of a nation state had been tossed away, with devastating consequences for governance, consensus, and cohesion. Sweden was depicted as a society where national heritage was downplayed, and where Swedish customs and traditions were seen more as problems than assets. The master narrative illustrated an enforced tolerance for Islam and Muslim traditions, as well as an increased acceptance of women forcing their way into traditionally male domains. Internationally, the pandemic had shown Sweden to be the odd one out and foreign governments had voiced strong criticism or incomprehension of the Swedish approach.

Liberalism and liberal ways of life were depicted as destructive and harmful to society in several different ways. The narrative entailed that liberalism had been allowed to run amok and the Swedish nation was losing leverage and status because of it. An unrestrained liberal ideology had caused the nation to decline, increasingly weakening society and adding to a growing mistrust of authorities, along with an individualism associated with egoism giving rise to conflicts of interest where there used to be consensus and acceptance. In short, it was because of liberal democracy and ingrained liberal values, firmly upheld by elites and netizens, that Sweden was unable to deal with its broad domestic problems, from crime and unmanageable refugee flows to the pandemic and gender discrimination. Progressive liberalism prided itself on uprooting traditional values and downgrading national unity without seemingly acknowledging the negative consequences this gave rise to.

A number of indicators were presented to support the notion that Sweden was in decline. These included climate activism led by Greta Thunberg, a young girl with a neuropsychological dysfunction; feminism clashing with Muslim customs; LGBTQ+ rights, which over-sexualized society and were lenient towards pedophiles; biased state media institutions in the hands of the establishment; multiculturalism leading to mass immigration; a Christian church that no longer defended traditional Christian values; and at the head of all this a government incapable of maintaining stable and determined leadership, often at odds with the public or its citizens

This was demonstrated, for example, in depictions of inadequate leaders who did not dare to name, define, or address social problems that were there for all to see—many of which were connected to migration issues. Moreover, the government failed to pay any attention to protecting the nation, its national cultural heritage, customs, and traditions. These were insignificant to the liberal left elite almost to the point where it was considered improper to promote any kind of Swedishness before an all-inclusive cosmopolitanism, and where immigrant Swedes’ customs and traditions had to come before traditional Swedish values.

Instead, the political leadership was reported as focusing on climate activism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ rights, and so on. According to RT and Sputnik, this in turn tended to fuel antagonism between groups, creating polarization and heated confrontation, along with serious social problems that remained unresolved. Furthermore, it was alleged that the efforts by the leadership to identify itself as key representatives for the defense of free speech and freedom of religion were in fact an attempt to cover up Sweden’s murky past and to avert attention from controversial issues. Moreover, the Swedish government seemed oblivious to the threat that the large number of immigrants posed to the Swedish native population. A term never explicitly mentioned but repeatedly hinted at was replacement theory, of which the Swedish government were depicted as completely oblivious. The term is used by white supremacists for immigrant populations (in the Swedish case Muslims) seeking to outnumber the native population.

The Master Narrative Comprises Four Narratives

The Liberal Left: A Threat to Traditional Sweden

Looking more closely at the components of the master narrative, four narratives were inductively identified and analyzed. The first was the narrative, “The liberal left: A threat to traditional Sweden”. It told of a series of political and social conflicts for which a leftist government and its supporting left-leaning authorities and institutions were to blame. The leftist establishment, including the government, was depicted as indecisive, incompetent, and even ignorant in the face of rising crime rates, mass migration-related problems, and, perhaps most notably, the pandemic.

The liberal left establishment and its ideas were presented as elitist and rarely anchored among the citizens. In numerous plots, citizens’ opinions as presented through tweets and Instagram messages provided evidence of the divisions between the leftist elite and the citizens. Boasting of the country’s long history of defending freedom of speech, and social and human rights, while ignoring current controversial or problematic issues affecting citizens, the liberal left was depicted as hypocritically deceiving its own people. This was also a message in line with RT and Sputnik’s journalistic ethos of calling the audience’s attention to an unreliable government and to the underlying intentions of powerholders. The RT slogan “question more” is a well-known expression of this approach.

The liberal left was reported as giving all its attention to climate change activism, multiculturalism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ issues. The establishment was said to be supported by the mainstream media and the Swedish Church—a troublesome libertarian with progressive ideas and a diminishing membership. Consequently, and adding all this together, there are a growing mistrust of the authorities, an increased individualism and indications of increased threats to people’s individual well-being—all of which appear to be taken lightly by the leadership or represented as challenges that are beyond its competence to identify and manage. A series of plots in Sputnik and occasionally in RT demonstrated the clashes Sweden experienced between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, mainly as a consequence of what was talked of as the nation’s large and growing Muslim community. The leftist political authorities did not figure in this context and were rarely heard to acknowledge the tensions between the two principles of freedom. This was only one instance where they appeared incapable of defending core pillars of Swedish society.

Obsessive Gender Concerns Leading Sweden Astray

The second narrative identified Sweden as a society preoccupied with gender concerns. Sweden was frequently depicted as a feminist country with questions concerning gender permanently on the news agenda. However, this was a multifaceted narrative where the often talked about consensual Swedish mentality revealed its true face by being conspicuously absent. Issues of gender and feminism were shown to be heavily contested, and were depicted as creating conflict rather than national cohesion. These conflicts were closely related to the far-reaching liberal ideas that permeated Swedish society, and added to the picture of an incompetent government and mistrust of leading public institutions. First, it divided people into opposing groups: men against women, feminists against LGBTQ+ groups, and right-wing traditionalists against liberals. Second, it caused mental illness, especially among young people who were utterly confused and distressed about their sex. Third, Islam had taken on such a major position in Swedish society that it had become impossible to maintain Swedish feminist values and ways of life. Muslim and Swedish traditions were incompatible with regard to gender equality, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, and in most cases Swedish views on gender were forced to stand aside to give room to members of the Muslim community. Finally, the heavy focus on gender issues tended to weaken Sweden not only domestically, but also internationally—the police, the armed forces, and the fire brigade were being feminized, and two female foreign ministers in a row had seriously jeopardized Swedish foreign relations by insisting on a so-called feminist foreign policy—and through diplomatic blunders.

Islamic Takeover and the Selling Out Sweden

The sampling of the news items for the empirical analysis did not specifically include themes on immigration, Islam, or Muslims in Sweden, but there was a narrative about the growing influence of Islam on Swedish society. A leading theme of this narrative was efforts, spurred on by the so-called mass-immigration of 2015, and anxious and insecure Swedish leaders, by Islam and the Muslim community to take over in Sweden, marginalize Swedish culture, and devalue and push national traditions and values aside. The narrative told how the Swedish authorities treated Muslims and Islamic customs and values as exposed and vulnerable, their rights subordinated and under threat, and therefore this supposed homogeneous group as in need of unconditional support. Swedish norms and values were downgraded in what was portrayed as a zero-sum game. Driven by the misconception that it was promoting democracy, integration, and liberal values, the government acted in ways that spurred de-nationalization tendencies. This also applied to the Swedish Church, which was an accomplice in the selling out of Sweden—not only out of respect for the Islamic faith, but in line with its liberal stance and engagement with Muslim immigrants. Despite growing crime rates targeting citizens referred to as “Swedes” or “Christians”, the state and state agencies ignored protest from the public, remained passive, and seemed incapable of protecting or unwilling to defend core Swedish values—even when it came to respect for Swedish rule of law.

Swedish Liberal Defiance During the Pandemic

News pieces about public health were almost entirely centered on the Covid-19 pandemic, and much of this coverage comprised the narrative on a collective national defiance against various social restrictions, such as freedom of movement. The narrative about the pandemic gave an indication of how crisis coverage might add to routine narratives constructed with the intention of doing harm. Key to the narrative on how Sweden was affected by and managed the pandemic were the connections made to the unreasonably liberal approach chosen by the Swedish government. The liberal strategy for managing the pandemic, which included the decision not to introduce a lockdown, gave room for the Russian state media to underline the leadership’s incompetence and hypocrisy, and show it to be morally dubious. The Swedish government opposed scientific experts and ignored the gravity of the situation.

However, contrary to what RT and Sputnik’s international audiences might have assumed, Sweden, so often characterized as consensual in crises, was depicted as riven by conflict over the choice of strategy. There appeared to be deep disagreements between the scientific experts and the public authorities. The government was more or less absent from the coverage and rarely appeared as a decisive authority working to protect the people from an existential threat. Like the government, Swedish citizens were depicted as ignorant and at times careless. There was evidence that while most European citizens isolated themselves and stayed at home to avoid infection or spreading the disease, Swedes were crowding into cafés and organizing parties seemingly oblivious of the dangers and the high risk of contamination. Having imposed unconventional, odd, and incomprehensible measures for which the real aims were concealed, Sweden was positioned as a black sheep, isolated and marginalized from Europe and the rest of the world. Foreign and domestic commentators used Sweden as a bad example of how to manage the pandemic and warned that Sweden was about to face a tragedy that no one seemed to either want or be able to stop. This was liberalism pushed to the extreme and leadership that had hit rock bottom.

The narrative portrayed Sweden as an unreliable and disloyal EU member state and international partner. This was in line with the Russian master narrative about Sweden not being the kind of country that it appeared to be, and that there were hidden, darker sides to Sweden that the pandemic had brought to light. In the case of the pandemic, it was not controversial to argue that Sweden was deviant in its approach to and its management of the Covid-19 crisis. Several scholars have pointed out that Sweden’s approach differed from most states, and deviated substantially from that, for example, of Denmark and Norway (Pamment, 2021, pp. 80–110; and Bergman & Hedling, 2022, pp. 41–43). In this sense, the narrative about Sweden as the odd one out leading to negative responses from allies and neighboring states demonstrates how the construction of harmful narratives can target a state’s reputation and work to alienate a state from its former partners, thereby amplifying the criticism and opposition.

Storytelling Techniques

The narrative analysis showed how Russian disinformation was constructed by way of news coverage in the international news outlets of state media, and demonstrated the main messages about Sweden. The analysis also highlighted how disinformation rarely contained outright untruths or “fake news”. Nonetheless, the way in which the news stories were told indicated that, while not fabrications or lies, they comprised strategic narratives with malign intent, aiming to destabilize a foreign state, which is also what studies of other countries’ exposure to Russian disinformation have found (see e.g. Bennett & Livingstone, 2018; Hoyle et al., 2021; Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019). Wagnsson and Barzanje (2021) talk about this with reference to three strategies: suppression, destruction, and direction (see Chap. 1). In order to capture the storytelling techniques used to turn news coverage into harmful narratives, and how the news coverage deviates from established journalistic norms, I return to the techniques introduced in Chap. 2 and discuss them in light of what has been identified throughout the analyses and across the narratives.

The Narrative Perspective from Within

In general, Sputnik’s and RT’s news coverage about Sweden took an insider perspective (see also Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022). This means first and foremost that the sources, be they actors or media platforms and institutions, tended to be domestic. Russian news sources were seldom used, and other foreign sources only occasionally. Instead, stories were built on information gathered primarily from secondary sources in the Swedish broadcast media, old media, and public officials (see Chap. 5).

The narrators of (the storyteller and the perspective from which the story was told) and the actor(s) in the stories were also overwhelmingly Swedish. However, although they were often used as sources of information (the actors in particular), they rarely participated in the story in the sense that they moved the story forward. Instead, they were the objects of the articles, in that they were talked about or referred to. The dominance of domestic narrators telling the stories from a domestic point of view created what Yablokov and Chatterje-Doody (2022) refer to as an insider perspective. RT and Sputnik appeared to be Swedish news platforms representing a Swedish take on the news, which was also mainly domestic, most often taking a critical standpoint. The channels—Sputnik in particular—appeared to provide an arena for the articulation of ideas—platforms where several opposing ideas were expressed, demonstrating that there were serious conflicts between parties and actor groups in Swedish society. The style, which sought to develop a sense of both geographical and psychological proximity to events, added to the insider perspective. It was the kind of domestic and personal style that signaled that “it could have been me or my family”.

Sputnik articles with few exceptions carried a journalist’s byline. A reporter named Igor Kuznetsov was the author of 12% of the material, and mainly wrote about gender issues in relation to religious matters. Mostly however, the stories were written from the perspective of someone made to represent Sweden or “the Swedes”. The State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, for example, appeared as source, actor, or narrator in articles about public health. This merger and confusion of the role of journalist, participant in the events, and the sources was a storytelling technique where Sputnik differed from western journalistic practice. Future research would do well to critically scrutinize this tendency.

The insider perspective was similar to what Moore and Colley (2022) write about with reference to RT and RT America in their study of Russian and Chinese propaganda models and the 2020 US election. They refer to the RT propaganda model as one of “partisan parasite”, by which they mean that RT lends support to a specific candidate in another country’s election (partisan) and “seeks to imitate a domestic media outlet in another country’s media ecology” (18). RT thus covered the election in a way that resembled a US news source and concealed its propagandistic perspective. Moore and Colley conclude that:

…[RT] frames issues in a partisan way that mimics US right-wing news media, giving the impression it is a domestic participant in the US culture wars, fighting against “woke” liberal elites, rather than an external observer…. It tries to “punch upwards” against “liberal elites” on behalf of ordinary Americans, frequently using satire as a means to achieve this….Cultivating an image as an insider in US politics is necessary for this satire to work. Otherwise, it would be too obvious that RT is an external product of the Russian state, not an authentic domestic news source. (Moore & Colley, 2022, p. 18)

The Instigation of Polarization

The second technique observed is the attempt to incite polarization among the audience. By polarization we mean that opposing views are structured as diametrically opposed, where one side ignores the other, takes no interest in listening to the opponent’s arguments, and the public sphere is characterized by two (or more) poles of separate and seemingly incompatible views. There is little incentive to engage with and understand the views of other opinions. The term is most often used negatively to refer to a problematic situation alleged to cause a weakening of democracies. This is due not to groups or citizens being divided on an issue or an ideological package, but to the lack of interest or respect for opponents and a lack of ambition to reach a shared understanding.

The storytelling techniques identified in the Sputnik and RT coverage show signs of fueling such divisions of opinion that might lead to polarization. The narratives were often built around confrontations between different groups in Sweden positioned as opposed to one another, indicating what little prospect there was of ever reaching agreement. Actors were depicted as representing incompatible interests. In a confrontation between two parties, one would be assigned the role of inferior and less valued, and the other as superior, thereby creating an ingroup and an outgroup. Muslims were repeatedly depicted as an outgroup trying to become an ingroup, but the narratives told of resistance to such inclusion. Muslims and Swedes were depicted as having such different morals and values that only the most naive would think that they could ever be able to coexist.

Several articles start out by launching a radical, new or daring idea or principle before making a sharp turn using words such as “however”, “meanwhile”, “despite”, or a similar transitional term, after which more or less fierce resistance and opposition to the novelty were expressed. There are formulations such as: “this did not go down well with users” (readers, the public, people); “public opinion is still divided” or “triggered an outcry of indignation”. This is followed by numerous quotes and references to quotes from people vehemently opposed, expressing themselves in emotional language. This structure is used to highlight the tensions and divisions between the Swedish establishment and “ordinary people”. It adds to the message of internal disagreement in Sweden that cannot be easily resolved. Official spokespersons in the news who were reported as having given rise to the disputes and conflicts were depicted as totally oblivious to the responses their actions might produce, and thus unprepared to deal with the storm of negativity. They did not know how to manage the situation. Matters seemed to be in the hands of no one or in the hands of incompetent leaders and managers. The rhetorical device of a “however”, turning the perspective over to the side of the public, served as a breaking point of the story, like a climax. People were often referred to as netizens, and the sources for their voice were taken from social media outlets.

There were also cases where the transition word “however” or “despite” was followed by an often-repeated standard paragraph, sometimes close to the topic of the report, sometimes stretching the topic to a seemingly unrelated topic, but in either case aiming to position the story in a wider context. The news reports were positioned and given a perspective within familiar and repetitive themes, which normally provoked a reaction and therefore might add fuel to an already emotionally charged issue and spur an already angry group of people. Such standard paragraphs might include descriptions of how Greta Thunberg was causing controversy, the Church of Sweden was losing worshippers or pushing a more liberal agenda, traumatic experiences of mass immigration in 2015 and since or Sweden’s outlier laissez-faire approach to the pandemic. The extract below is an example of such an end-paragraph from an article that Sputnik published on December 25, 2019, in which various topics were linked. This type of formulation might not contain polarizing features as such, but invites readers to engage with complex issues in a simplified way, and might implicitly call on readers to take a side and refuse to acknowledge the other.

The Church of Sweden is known for its liberal position on issues such as homosexuality, mass immigration, and climate change and is often blamed for its perceived “activist” position. Archbishop Antje Jackelén has sparked controversy by attacking the “Patriarchy” and “destructive masculinity”, most recently in her Christmas message. In contrast, Bishop Eva Burne stirred outrage by claiming she had more in common with Muslims than the so-called “Christian right”. (Sputnik December 25, 2019)

Another way in which RT’s and Sputnik’s news coverage can be said to have had a polarizing effect is the use of emotionally charged messages and moralistic or emotional words in headlines, sub-headlines, or the main text. Articles are imbued with emotive language and use words or phrases such as: “outrage”, “uproar”, “controversy”, “controversial”, “gamble”, and “deadly experiment”. Overall, the language of the news coverage is expressive, strong, and hostile rather than subtle and neutral. This emotionality factor inflates the image of Sweden as polarized and characterized by chaos, both of which were alleged to afflict Swedish society.

An illustrative example of the polarizing effect is an article headlined: “Is Sweden Facing ‘Herd Immunity in May’ or Disaster With ‘Ugly Death Rates’?” (Sputnik April 17, 2020c). The article describes a serious conflict between two medical authorities in Sweden arguing about the appropriate strategy for dealing with the pandemic. A professor at the Karolinska Institute is quoted from a piece on Norwegian public service television (NRK), saying that the strategy of the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, was a “dangerous experiment”, and that disaster was lurking around the corner. She argued that “It will explode in our faces”, and that there would be very ugly death rates in Sweden. Tegnell, who was said to be arguing that herd immunity was the only way to stop the epidemic, was depicted as rather lonely in holding such a view. The debate was said to be “hot” and “a significant proportion of Swedes believed the current line must be tightened”. The story was typical in that it was based on a piece broadcast or published in a local or Nordic news outlet. The article was a typical copy paste set-up, with one or two pieces of information brought in from another source, such as a review or a recap of a locally broadcast program, serving as the vehicle for the entire article (on media-centricity see Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021, p. 178).

Emotional Language

It is noted above how Sputnik and RT use emotional language to stress the seriousness of a problem or a conflict between parties. Research has shown the efficacy of emotional language for persuasion and for influencing audiences. Anger, for example, writes Weeks, “encourages partisan, motivated evaluation of uncorrected misinformation that results in beliefs consistent with the supported political party” (Weeks, 2015, p. 699 in Tucker et al., 2018, p. 44). Thus, a previously held political opinion might be further established, and critical thinking might be reduced in a person if messages are emotionally laden. Emotionally charged messages also “have a higher probability of becoming viral” (Berger, 2011 in Tucker et al., 2018, p. 44), and seem to encourage the spreading of messages on social media. Brady et al. (2017) found that including “moral-emotional” words in tweets on three politically polarizing issues (gun control, same-sex marriage, and climate change) made these messages significantly more likely to be shared on Twitter. Several studies on the use of Twitter and the sharing of messages show that emotionally charged tweets, be they upsetting, pleasing, entertaining, or provocative, tended to be shared more frequently—especially messages that were inaccurate or exaggerated (Chadwick et al., 2017; Tucker et al., 2018; Rudat et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2015; for more on emotional responses to RT coverage, see also Chatterje-Doody & Crilley, 2019).

Overlaps

The third, and perhaps most significant, technique identified is how themes repeatedly overlap with each other so that narratives appear interrelated and problems interconnected. It might be argued that this is a consequence of the research methodology, where the analysis seeks patterns in the messaging that once determined cannot be kept separate. While this might be the case to some extent, there are also overlaps that would have been identified regardless of the qualitative method used. Plots (the narrative of one news item) that serve as links between narratives tend to lack actors or are presented in passive tense (“it has been noted that”). Facts that emanate from different subjects are brought together so that although the content of each is accurate, their combination twists the message into a biased or denigrating account.

On October 21, 2020, Sputnik posted an article under the headline “Swedish State Epidemiologist Pins Faster Covid-19 Spread on Larger Immigrant Population”. Immigration was being connected to the pandemic and framed as speeding its spread, although none of the quotes in the article indicated this. State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell had said that the “spread is greater and faster among these populations”, pointing to populations in the cities from foreign countries. He did not mention immigration. In this and similar ways, different “facts” were added together, which one by one might be true but when put together made the news report speculative, and stressed tensions and problematic differences between “Swedes” and “immigrants” (Sputnik October 21, 2020f).

Stories covering Greta Thunberg (climate change) and Covid-19 (public health) were another common overlap between narratives. Sputnik (March 18, 2020a) published a confusing and quite unbelievable story in which foreign correspondent Magda Gad’s allegedly inhumane values and ideas were mixed with opinions about Greta Thunberg. This news piece is a good example of how Sputnik capitalizes on a respected and famous Swede—an award-winning female journalist to demonstrate cleavages between people in Swedish society—aligning strongly negative opinions about Greta with revelations about Swedes’ murky values and low morale, which were reported to have surfaced during the pandemic. The article mixed criticism of Gad with the global role that had been ascribed to Greta for her work on climate change. The article opened with a big picture of Greta with a thwarted facial expression, and it was stated how Gad had called her the Prophet of the Century, which was actually an epithet of the Swedish Archbishop of Sweden not invented by Gad. The thin connection made between Gad and Greta was the former’s explanation of activism, that when the right people died things started moving in an anti-capitalist and environmentally friendly direction. The story then moved on to cover protests about the expression “the right people”.

A similar overlap occurred when Sputnik reported that Greta Thunberg had been invited to speak to the European Parliament despite Covid restrictions, which prohibited even European Parliament staff from assisting the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to attend or be in the building. The president of the European Parliament’s spokesperson defended the invitation but the article sided with the criticism. Greta was referred to as an “eco warrior”. The problem was not Covid-19, which made it difficult for the Parliament to function or the MEPs to meet in session. It was that a 16-year old activist was being given special privileges that allowed her to enter the Parliament when not even the permanent (adult) staff were allowed to do so.

The Parliament was allowing itself to be run and influenced by a little girl who had started an activist network: “If the European Parliament grants an exception to Greta Thunberg, this house will not be taken seriously”, one MEP claimed. This was a question of justice and equality, and it made the European Parliament look ridiculous—an institution not to be taken seriously. The article ended with the most recent update on the number of people infected with Covid-19 in Europe. The sentence started with “Meanwhile…”, indicating that while the European Parliament was busy welcoming and defending the welcome of a teenage climate activist, the deadly pandemic was spreading across Europe.

There were also connections made between Covid-19 (i.e. public health) and gender. In an article with the headline ”Holy Matrimony vs Social Distancing: Sweden Sees Spike in Divorce Filings Amid COVID-19 Pandemic” (Sputnik September 16, 2020e), it was reported, partly based on statements from a Swedish psychologist and a Swedish demographic historian, that the number of divorces across the world had increased due to Covid-19 restrictions. Increased uncertainty, remote working, and anxiety were reported to be the causes. Even though these were worldwide problems, the article centered on Sweden. The story ended with a paragraph repeated in numerous articles:

Sweden’s controversial no-lockdown strategy continues to polarize the global public, with some berating it for “unnecessary” deaths and others crediting it with keeping the economy afloat and avoiding market crashes.

In a rather contradictory way, Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy, which included social distancing, was being criticized and it was being argued that marriages were breaking down because people were spending so much time together at home. The point could also be that marriages ended despite the open society policy during the pandemic—the landmark of the Swedish strategy. In other words, that the downfall of Sweden was inevitable regardless of supposedly open strategies; and not only did marriages break down, but the saving of the economy, which was the cause of the no-lockdown policy, was also a failure.

Finally, it should be noted that there were also plots that lacked any kind of structure, were unrelated to the coverage, did not work as either a link between narratives, overlap or fit into any kind of grander narrative scheme. The sequential ordering was strange and confusing as pieces of unrelated information were connected to one another. It was impossible to get a grip of what the message and problem were, who had said what and when, or whether people shared the same view. A jumble of statements and ideas was presented, sometimes unrelated, sometimes contradictory. It appeared as if Sweden had turned head over heels when it came to liberalism, no one or nothing could be trusted or taken seriously. The only thing that could be told for sure from analyzing these plots was that Sweden was an absurd and chaotic place

Misuse of Key Concepts and Choices of Words to Name Phenomena

The storytelling techniques that fueled conflicts between parties and sought to highlight antagonistic groups in Sweden tended to make use of concepts in an insensitive or provocative way. Key concepts, such as herd immunity or Darwinism, and emotionally charged words, such as unrestrained immigration, mass migration or Greta as eco-warrior, and gender-related terms were pitched into the stories and sometimes used inaccurately or their original meanings confused.

One of the most frequently used concepts in the coverage of the pandemic was herd immunity, and connected to it was a forceful critique delivered by various Swedish and foreign voices. It tended to be connected to great levels of uncertainty, inconsistency, indecision, controversy, and disagreement between national experts and decision makers. In one Sputnik article, the state epidemiologist was depicted as being at odds with his regional counterpart: “Despite contradictory messaging on the desirability by the Swedish authorities, and some Swedish regions such as Norrbotten County openly embracing the idea of herd immunity as a goal, Tegnell insisted that a ‘genuine’ herd immunity strategy could be disastrous…” (Sputnik October 21, 2020f). Another article stated that: “Swedish authorities have repeatedly hailed herd immunity as the ultimate means to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus”. This was referred to as Sweden’s “maverick approach”, which had been “slammed” abroad as well as at home. When Poland’s prime minister called Sweden’s approach Darwinist, Ivar Arpi, a writer at Svenska Dagbladet (“one of the country’s leading dailies”), asked: “How many must die for the sake of herd immunity?” (Sputnik May 15, 2020d). By not making a distinction between the state of herd immunity in a population, which is highly desirable, and employing herd immunity as a strategy to put a stop to the spread of the virus, Sputnik made it seem as if the Swedish authorities were willing to sacrifice Swedish lives by allowing the virus to spread unabated.

Sensitive phrases in connection with immigration issues and the Muslim population in Sweden were also misused. The Swedish experience of mass migration in 2015 was referred to over and over, and appeared in numerous contexts. Other terms evoked the image of Sweden as a society in chaos, often because of immigration, and terms such as “vulnerable areas”, “unrestrained immigration”, “ghettos”, and “no-go areas” were frequently used.

Mockery by Way of “citations” and the So-called

Sarcasm, mockery, ridicule, jokes, and exaggeration make up a powerful set of rhetorical moves that scholars find being used by producers of disinformation with the intention to belittle and defame. Among this study’s material were a plethora of articles written in a predominantly sarcastic and ironic tone. The language was scornful and key words and concepts were at times marked with scare quotes,Footnote 1 or preceded by the phrase “so-called”. Terms such as patriarchy, destructive masculinity, or herd immunity were placed in scare quotes—“patriarchy” and “the so-called herd immunity approach”—to signal a kind of moral distancing, suggesting partisanship or insinuated aversion. This indicated that the issue at hand was doubtful and not to be trusted, as though it was claimed but not proven, and a critical reader/viewer would do best to mistrust the information. The coverage put numerous terms and phrases in scare quotes. Gender and crime issues seemed to be particularly targeted with examples such as “gender equal snow ploughing” and “feminist foreign policy”. Jonathan Chait (2008) puts it succinctly: “the scare quote is the perfect device for making an insinuation without proving it, or even necessarily making clear what you’re insinuating”.

Lastly, several pieces on the climate topic had a vocabulary that was sardonic and insinuate doubt whether the world was experiencing warming. This doubt was substantiated by discrediting Greta Thunberg and her climate activism, with claims that she and her mad cult were excessively alarmistic about climate threats, or “climate threats” (scare quotes). She was given numerous different kinds of derogatory and deceptive epithets, suggesting that she was mentally ill, a spoiled child, controlled by the establishment, used by her famous parents, dangerous or not to be taken seriously, but then occasionally a respected activist, a heroine or a brave young woman with access to the mightiest world leaders. The narrative structure was similar to that used in conspiracy theories and the various epithets used created confusion as to who the person was.

Use of Experts

Lastly, I touch on the storytelling technique in which scientific experts, some well-known and others less so, played an important role in driving the narrative forward as they conveyed convincing and credible messages enticing to the audience. Whether they participated as actors or were referred to, their expertise added weight to the story. They provided an inside perspective and gave informed statements or accounts about Sweden, most often confirming or explaining its decline. With regard to the pandemic, experts made apocalyptic estimates of the spread of Covid-19, criticized the Swedish strategy and leadership making harsh accusations against the authorities for lying to and deceiving the public, and stressed the severity of the situation. Experts appearing on RT news were for the most part treated with respect by the anchor, but if the views of an invited expert tended to deviate from the RT line of argument he or she would be more sharply questioned or made to appear self-contradictory.

The Swedish professor, Agnes Wold, figured several times as an expert in the coverage about the pandemic. Her statement in a television interview that fortunately the virus only killed elderly people was reported as having sparked conflict among the Swedish public. In an interview in Aftonbladet, she is quoted as saying: “My policy is to keep people away”. It was reported that: “Wold’s unfortunate phrasing made many of her compatriots see red” and in a series of Tweets people expressed their anger at her statements. There were also statements by other experts who agreed with Wold (Sputnik March 30, 2020b). The depictions of Wold as self-centered, drastic in her medical assessment of the disease and too blunt in her delivery of advice to the public stood in stark contrast to how other experts were presented, even though their views were similar.

Seen over a longer period, it was found that Swedish experts as a group appeared divided and opposed to the authorities, demonstrating that the Swedish research community and national leadership were deeply at odds. Some experts interviewed on RT were assigned different academic titles depending on the context in which they appeared. The same expert could thus serve as a human rights expert in one story and then as a medical expert in another. On the one hand, the experts represented the establishment and as such were scrutinized by the news media for the sake of ordinary people. On the other hand, they represented competence and knowledge, which could be brought to the people with the help of the news coverage, thereby sidestepping the elites. This indicates that the use of experts might bring not only insights and scientific explanations to complicated questions, but also create confusion and strengthen Sputnik’s and RT’s anti-establishment positions. More research is required on how experts are used to assist media with malign intent to appear credible and trustworthy.

Disinformation as an Everyday Security Practice

This study has analyzed how international news media organizations are used for security purposes by way of disinformation. Harmful and deceptive news narratives were found to share properties with regular news coverage but were also seen to deviate from the mainstream journalism of liberal societies. The structure of the news coverage analyzed indicates that the construction of the news plots was highly routinized and followed a repetitive and continuous pattern. Disinformation was enacted as an everyday security practice. When all the plots and narratives are added together, they result in a denigrating image of the target nation, summarized in the master narrative of Sweden as a failing state victim of liberal ideas.

The messages took the shape of separate pipelines into which a variety of topics were placed, molded by storytelling techniques, and from which a limited set of narratives emerged, thereby strengthening the harmful messaging: the danger and threat of Islamism, a liberalism that has run amok, a national leadership no longer trustworthy and failing to maintain a sense of national unity; and loss of the national heritage. This is also the result of the overlap and interconnections created between topics, as various news events were connected to a limited number of narratives.

Seemingly unrelated news topics therefore ended up strengthening the same narrative or being framed as similar problems. In this sense, and in the highly routinized coverage, Sputnik and RT deviated from mainstream journalism. This is also identified in the studies by Wagnsson and Barzanje (2021) and Hoyle et al. (2021). The news material analyzed was smaller in scope than that used in the previous studies and covered a later time period (July 2019 to January 2021), but the findings are strikingly similar. This further strengthens the conclusion that the RT and Sputnik news coverage was made up of a relatively fixed set of narratives stretched across multiple news stories (plots).

Moreover, studies on particular news events covered by Sputnik and/or RT showed similarities in the storytelling techniques that deviate from other international 24/7 news outlets (see e.g. Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021; Moore & Colley, 2022). These include the heavy domestication of news, in which the coverage of events in a foreign country resembles the domestic coverage of news media and draws entirely on domestic sources. Other deviations concern the phrasing of the questions by the interviewees, and the use of mockery and irony to indicate a skeptical attitude to and disbelief of statements, especially those of “elite representatives”.

These were all features that led to the news narratives being labeled disinformation. They highlight the everyday practice of disinformation as deceptive, in that it naturalizes news plots and conceals how the messages distort information. What at first appears to be extraordinary or striking when covered by the news comes to be taken for granted as normal and natural, and part of the everyday. The repeated use of the same narrative structure and framing can influence audiences to gradually accept and give credibility to the distorted messaging. Disinformation as an everyday practice also means that far from all of the news stories are spectacular, provoking, violent, or dramatic. Instead, they are for the most part mundane and ordinary—or made to appear so. The use of news broadcasting for disinformation, the repetitive format and the continuity in style of reporting over time align with the media habits of the established audience, and this familiarizes them with the narrative structures of this type of news.

Global and national crises, unexpected incidents, dramatic events, and key political moments such as elections should not be dismissed as irrelevant to the kind of disinformation in which RT and Sputnik are engaged. The disinformation practiced through intensive attacks on specific public agencies at certain moments in time or efforts to amplify domestic tensions and disagreements in the format of campaigns also pose serious threats to the stability of democratic societies and to the trust between citizen and government. However, it is important to see these campaigns and peak moments of disinformation as part of a long-term and strategic security threat rather than as disparate crises. An important finding of this study is that the narratives of RT and Sputnik remained the same for the pandemic crisis as for the day-to-day coverage of national events (see Chap. 3).

This book has centered on disinformation as an everyday practice performed by the Russian state-affiliated media, RT and Sputnik, through the construction of harmful narratives about Sweden. However, the harmful narratives of these news outlets have also been found to target many other Western countries. Everyday disinformation against European and Western states has thus been enabled by international news organizations linked to an authoritarian regime. Before its objectives turned to defense and security, RT started out as an international 24/7 news broadcaster with public diplomacy ambitions in many respects similar to other global networks such as CNN or BBC World. In the past decade, both Sputnik and RT have worked to disseminate disinformation as tools of the Russian defense forces. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Commission decided to implement a ban on these media outlets in the European Union. RT America has also been closed down.

However, the media outlets of other authoritarian regimes are also known to feed the news media system with disinformation. Turkish media outlets, for example, have spread disinformation about Sweden in their networks—messages that were picked up by Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language global news network stationed in Quatar (Hamdan, 2023). This is yet another indication of the importance of disinformation by way of international news coverage to states’ stability, security, and international reputation. Malign media organizations and agencies with intent to do harm become part of the same news media networks as liberal news journalism and capitalize on liberal journalistic principles to spread their messages and appear trustworthy and reliable. They participate in the international news journalistic ecosystem and interact, exchange, distort, and disseminate news with other actors in the system, making it difficult to distinguish malign actors from liberal media organizations. This can make it difficult to assess the impact they have on domestic audiences in target countries.

Moreover, the interactive nature of the news media system causes disinformation to be performed in narrative alignment with domestic media outlets rather than directly consumed by the domestic audience of the target country. Domestic fringe media might welcome the messaging of these news flows and the two become mutually reinforcing. It will be important to continue to pay attention to how civilian institutions such as news media organizations might be used for malign purposes, and to develop resilience against disinformation perpetrated by international news journalism.