Keywords

Introduction

This chapter presents the two Russian state-affiliated news media organizations RT and Sputnik. They are both news media targeting international audiences. The Russian Federation has openly declared in its security doctrines that information is part of its security policy and a number of studies have found RT and Sputnik to be used for information influence activities in line with these doctrines (Wagnsson, 2023; Bradshaw et al., 2022; Russian Government, 2014, 2016, see also Chap. 1). RT began as an international 24/7 channel aimed at reporting about global events from a Russian perspective. Around 2008 the channel dropped its programming on Russian culture and became an outlet for the defense ministry, providing news about foreign countries. Sputnik has never been a public diplomacy outlet. Since its inception in 2014 it has consisted of a growing number of news websites producing news in different languages with an increasing popularity in several African states.

Although Sputnik and RT are media organizations that disseminate news their style of reporting deviates from their liberal journalism counterparts. It is rare that the news reports publish false information, but the messages of the news reports are often distorted. One way of explaining the distinctions between these media engaged in disinformation and liberal journalism is to look at how the news stories are constructed. Following the presentation of the organisations and journalistic features of RT and Sputnik is therefore a discussion about storytelling techniques that contributes to defining disinformation in news coverage. Among these are for instance how multiple meanings are ascribed to concepts, how polarization between different actors are evoked, or how the veracity of a statement or fact might be questioned by the use of quotation marks or the phrase the so-called.

In a discussion of RT and Sputnik it must be asked who the audience is and what impact the news coverage might have on the audience. These are difficult questions, since statistics on these matters are difficult to verify and research on audience reception is complicated. Nevertheless, previous studies in the field have shown that Sputnik and RT, before being banned in Europe and the United States, were consumed by a variety of people and for the most part as two media among a number of other national and international news media outlets. However, studies have found large numbers of followers of RT on Twitter users even if these users seemed not to engage with RT news content (Crilley et al., 2022). In a Swedish study on the reception of news by Wagnsson (2023) it was found that RT and Sputnik were consumed by about 7% of the population with an overrepresentation of young, men, and supporters of non-parliamentarian parties and the right wing nationalist Sweden Democratic Party. Having studied also to what degree consumers shared their RT and Sputnik news, it makes sense to agree with Wagnsson that the consumers also are co-creators and disseminators of meaning and can “function as suitable vehicles for aiding the messenger in trying to polarize society, undermine democracy and even erode the national security interests of the target” (Wagnsson, 2023, p. 1863)

Sputnik and RT

Founded in 2014, Sputnik was established by the Russian state news agency, Rossiya Segodnya (formerly RIA Novosti). Like RT, it was set up as a multimedia organization with several different language versions and social media platforms; also like RT, and other broadcasting organizations linked to authoritarian states, Sputnik sees itself as an alternative to established media outlets in the countries it targets (Müller & Schulz, 2021; Audinet, 2021). It comprises numerous news websites addressed to audiences around the world. The Swedish language version of Sputnik lasted only nine months in 2015–2016 (Larsson, 2016), but the French-speaking version has a longer history and is still fairly popular—not so much in France but among French-speaking African diasporas for whom Sputnik has more content and a wider spread than RT (Limonier, 2019).

In its journalistic style, Sputnik has been described as having a more militant editorial line than RT (Limonier, 2019), but this study treats RT and Sputnik as similar news outlets. As a smaller news organization Sputnik addresses an international audience but customizes its output to the target audience (see storytelling techniques). In most respects Sputnik and RT appear to resemble each other with regard to their use of disinformation.

The broadcaster RT originated from Soviet-era APN—a press agency set up by the Soviet Union Journalists Union, the Soviet Union Writers Union, the Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and the Znaniye Society. In 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev replaced APN with Information Agency Novosti, which was in turn replaced just one year later by the Russian Information Agency (RIA Novosti), placed under the Press and Information Ministry. It was from this news agency that Russia Today, later renamed RT, was founded.

An oft-cited study (Elswah & Howard, 2020) reveals RT’s organizational behavior through in-depth interviews with staff members and gives a detailed account of the development of RT. At the start, the channel was housed in the same building as RIA Novosti, which was Russia’s main news agency at the time (Elswah & Howard, 2020, p. 629). It soon emerged as a state-owned broadcaster and in 2003 Putin appointed Svetlana Mironyuk head of RIA Novosti and its sister channel, Russia Today (Finn, 2008). She had good connections with Russian government ministries and the higher echelons of the administration, and managed to acquire capital and support for the network which grew and became increasingly influential. Mironyuk allowed a degree of openness in the programming even if the content of Russia Today contained little politics and mainly consisted of programs on culture, notably places and events that demonstrated the greatness of Russia (Osipova, 2016, pp. 348–349; Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022, p. 24).

The first major shift in the profile of the channel came around the time of the Russia–Georgia conflict in 2008. It was argued that this change would enable the channel to reach out to a larger audience, not just people interested in Russia (Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022, p. 26). The channel dropped its programming on Russian culture and became an outlet for the defense ministry, providing news about foreign countries. Journalists employed at RT at the time have said that this was when the channel began to produce disinformation. The Russian government had realized that “it could weaponize the channel to serve its political interests” (Elswah & Howard, 2020, pp. 629–630).

Around this time, RT began to expand and add regional channels that addressed audiences in Arabic (in 2007) and Spanish (in 2009). The regionalized channel RT America was founded in 2010, followed by RT Deutsch and RT UK in 2014, and RT France in 2017. However, the English language RT International remained the channel’s flagship.

In December 2013, Putin unexpectedly replaced Mironyuk with a new editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, and the media corporation was transformed from Ria Novosti to International Information Agency Russia Today. It has been argued that Simonyan had better connections in government while some have suggested that Mironyuk had run into conflicts with representatives of the Kremlin (Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022, p. 24).

Under Simonyan’s leadership, RT was relaunched and its output became less about Russia and Russian culture, and more about hardcore news with an international focus. Putin supported the rebranding, arguing that: “We wanted to break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media in the global flow of information” (see Audinet, 2017). Audinet (2017) argues that Putin reorganized the channel following Russia’s war in Georgia because he saw the mainstream Western media outlets as one-sided. The idea then was to develop RT into an international channel that could provide “a different vision of events”, and to relativize the Western interpretation of events. This was also what was behind the RT slogan “Question more”, which was given further credibility when the channel recruited the US talk show host, Larry King, who in turn attracted a number of high-profile US and British politicians as guests (Richter, 2017, 44p). RT claimed to report what was ignored by mainstream media outlets, and this often involved questioning or challenging authority, be it hegemonic powers or more local powerholders, and adapting its messages according to the audience (see Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022, p. 27; Mattelart, 2018). While the transformed channel aimed for a global audience and news coverage to be reckoned with, “a political requirement to broadcast news compatible with the national interest as perceived by the stakeholding state” remained (Audinet, 2017).

By 2017, RT comprised nine versions within its organizational structure, with news websites and broadcasts on YouTube and other platforms. Its budget of well over US$ 300 million was on a par with the BBC at the time (Richter, 2017; figures from 2015 estimate the budget at US$ 376 million, Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 107 referring to Meduza project 2017). A study of RT YouTube videos (Orttung & Nelson, 2019) found that RT Arabic had the largest output by far of the foreign language RT channels: about a quarter of all videos shown were broadcast on RT Arabic. The Russian channel also had a large output of videos, at about 20% of the total number, whereas the RT flagship—its English language channel—had only 11% of the total number of videos broadcast and RT American just 8% (Orttung & Nelson, 2019, p. 82). The latter differed from the others in that 70% of its programming was on US themes (2019, p. 83).

The changes that RT underwent can be seen as a movement from what most scholars had seen as an international broadcaster used as an outlet for public diplomacy to a media institution increasingly centered on domestic issues and a populist, anti-establishment agenda (see e.g. Widholm, 2016; Yablokov, 2015, p. 305). Coverage of Russia promoted a positive image of the country, its moral righteousness and strength, but Orttung and Nelson (2019, p. 84) found that whenever there was a change in international or national mood on topics related to this positive image of Russia, coverage turned to other topics.

This pattern was applied when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not proceed as quickly and smoothly as anticipated. YouTube videos about Ukraine were dropped and replaced by stories on Russian historical war memories (p. 84). Similar RT editorial decisions could be found on its English language flagship regarding Russian involvement in Syria.

Following the 2016 US presidential election, when RT was found to have unlawfully meddled in the campaign by denigrating the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, the channel was labeled a “foreign agent” by the US intelligence services (Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2017 in Crilley et al., 2022). RT America was permanently closed in March 2022 after one of its major carriers was closed down. The production company behind RT America, T&R Productions, announced the closure as a result of “unforeseen business interruption events” (Darcy, 2022).

France, the UK and Germany have also acted against RT transgressions of media and press regulations. The UK regulatory body, Ofcom, took action on “impartiality breaches”, while in France RT’s involvement in the Yellow Vest movement gave rise to legislative proposals to prevent future harmful media interference (Crilley et al., 2022).

In his critical study of the centenary RT project, #1917Live, Hutchings (2020) shows how the network used its negative international reputation for being an unreliable and scandalous channel for propaganda purposes to promote the channel and its role as a counter-force to the Western hegemonic media sphere. By ascribing to itself pariah status, RT took a self-ironic approach to its reporting of a diverse mix of disruptive, scandalous, and outrageous stories while at the same time denying and affirming the atrocities committed during the Revolution. By presenting views that were highly controversial and non-controversial simultaneously, and allowing its output to float between fact and fiction, and past and present, it became impossible to distinguish truth from fantasy and perhaps humorous coverage from serious reporting. Lenin tweeted jokingly about Stalin’s beard. Molotov complained that he missed key moments of the revolution while taking a nap. This “floating” between fact and fiction, as well as its educational ambition, were seen as impressive qualities of the project, which received international awards. RT thus presented itself both as a pioneer in the creation of a new media event, and as the enfant terrible among news organizations. In this way, it could not fail to be expected to be anything but horrific, incorrigible, and—to some—objectionable.

At the inception of Russia Today in 2005, the channel recruited young Russians who were fluent in English (Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022, p. 25), British editors and junior British journalists. The foreign recruits were important to the channel since the Russian staff had limited experience in journalism and tended to be linguists or diplomats’ children fluent in English (see Bodner et al., 2017). While the editors assisted in the running of the channel, the young journalists worked with their Russian colleagues on writing programs under the leadership of editor-in-chief Simonyan. Among the staff there were also Western journalists who supported the underlying aims and mission of the channel (Elswah & Howard, 2020, p. 629).

Early on, RT attracted journalists critical of mainstream Western media outlets and ownership, who saw in the channel an independent voice representing alternative views on world politics. Staff members considered themselves to be underdogs revealing information that the Western authorities were trying to keep secret from their citizens. The network has counted supporters among the European and US far-right and far-left but little is known about their role or capacity to disseminate narratives domestically or in their transnational networks through the media ecology. Yablokov writes:

A simultaneous adoption of arguments of left- and right-wing critics of the US gives RT leeway to adapt its narratives in relation to different audiences, thereby expanding its global influence. Moreover, the Kremlin’s links to both right- and leftwing intellectuals in Europe and the US supplies RT with a range of public figures ready to justify Russia’s policies to foreign audiences. (Yablokov, 2015, p. 306 referring to Orenstein, 2014)

The channel has also taken on the role of an underdog, going against mainstream media outlets, which tend to be owned by profit-making entities and Western dominated. The criticisms levelled at the RT journalists for serving as “Putin’s mouthpiece” were used to strengthen the image of truth-seeking, hardworking reporters going against establishments and global elites in the service of ordinary people (see Widholm, 2016). Nonetheless, this positioning of RT by both the network itself and outside observers restricted its ability to perform the tasks it was set up to accomplish. Hutchings (2020) writes about how “RT’s pride in its capacity to scandalize the established order, to disrupt the global media equilibrium, conflicts with the broadcaster’s aspiration to be accepted within the media professional fold as a serious actor capable of rivalling the BBC or CNN” (Hutchings, 2020, p. 15). This was underlined by the resignations of some of the prominent Western journalists at the network following the shooting down of Flight MH17 and after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Nonetheless, despite being criticized, questioned, and accused by established Western or US media outlets, RT continued to seek out and tell alternative stories about the West and the world. In Yablokov’s words, RT “challenges an elitist aspect of American politics through populist ideas vocalized by experts and show hosts” (Yablokov, 2015, p. 307). In a study exploring how journalists working in state-controlled media institutions across the world legitimize or justify their work and deal with state dependency, Wright et al. (2020) identified three legitimizing narratives employed in such media outlets. One of these narratives was termed “exclusionary”, which referred to journalists defending what they termed their “truthful” work and contrasting it with “false” state propaganda. RT was referred to by several respondents, notably staff at the Chinese broadcaster CGTN, as a representative of such a channel, and it was claimed that what it produced should not be considered news (Wright et al., 2020, p. 616).

The rich and the powerful are said to manipulate those without means and power, and there is a lack of transparency and openness among elites that is accepted by the Western media. In its US news coverage for example, RT uses experts and guests who emphasize this and confirm the suspicions that the US authorities manipulate the truth and keep the public in the dark. The establishment is usually represented by the mainstream media, Big Tech—the term used to refer to dominant and highly influential technology companies—celebrities and “Washington elites” (Moore & Colley, 2022).

With the help of these experts and guests, RT repeatedly reports that the US government says one thing but does another (Yablokov, 2015; see also Hellman’s analysis of Sputnik 2021). These experts, however, rarely appear in any other media. In RT America, which was suspended in 2022, it appeared to be a technique to verify these narratives by drawing on historical examples and using US experts and intellectuals already highly critical of the US establishment and whose voices were rarely allowed on mainstream media platforms. Instead, they were given a voice on RT (Yablokov, 2015, p. 309).

Storytelling Techniques

As is discussed above, RT and Sputnik as news organizations are similar to other international broadcasters that emerged in the early 2000s with the aim of promoting favorable national images of the reporting country or framing events in accordance with their world view (see Widholm, 2016). They differ in their reporting style from other international broadcasters, however, and over time have come to disseminate news and information that scholars have found go beyond critical perspectives and instead disinform and denigrate foreign countries (Hutchings, 2020; Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019; Elswah & Howard, 2020). To better understand how this news journalism deviates from journalistic norms and practices in liberal democratic systems, a number of strategies are outlined below. These have been inductively identified from the news material and are illustrated further in the empirical chapters. I refer to them as storytelling techniques.

Domestication: An International News Channel Reporting as a Domestic News Channel

Despite the fact that both RT and Sputnik are international broadcasters with an outspoken aim to broadcast to a global audience, they adopt an insider perspective in much of their news coverage. This means that the style of reporting often resembles that of domestic news media. The choice of topics are often domestic events in the target country and stories are presented as if RT and Sputnik were local or national news networks. An analysis by Wagnsson and Barzanje (2021) found that—apart from at the beginning of their time period, in 2014—Russia rarely appeared in the coverage. They talk about an absence of the “self” that:

makes the reporting look less like traditional foreign coverage and more like distanced and sober descriptions, based on a purportedly universally valid frame of reference that leaves little room for alternative interpretations. Moreover, there is no foreign or evil ‘other’ visible and no easily discernible intent to manipulate the reader, all of which may make the reader more susceptible to accepting the stories uncritically. (Wagnsson & Barzanje, 2021, p. 245)

The domestic perspective of the coverage is also noted by Moore and Colley (2022) in their comparative study of RT and CGTN (see also Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022; Hellman, 2021; Oates, 2021). They refer to this storytelling technique as “partisan parasite”, and also include in it politically biased reporting, where the channel openly supports a candidate running for office and broadcasts stories to the disadvantage of opponents (p. 18). Based on their analysis of RT coverage of the US presidential election, they describe domestic storytelling as:

parasitic in the sense that it deliberately seeks to imitate a domestic media outlet in another country’s media ecology. It functions like a brood parasite, such as a cuckoo. It enters the home of the host, adopts its character, style and mannerisms, hoping its output will be accepted and adopted as though it were one of the host’s own. (Moore & Colley, 2022, p. 18)

The analogy with a cuckoo is also useful in that the domestic reporting style takes advantage of and feeds on national political cultural landmarks, as well as references to traditions and shared historical memories, and features well-known personalities or figures with whom the target audience might identify. This all makes the coverage appear to be taking an inside perspective and reflecting a complete and full understanding of the context of the news event. Moore and Colley argue that this is an efficient way in which to disguise the underlying propaganda purposes since the RT coverage appears similar to a domestic, in their case US, news source. The domestication of the news can be seen in the choice of topics and the people included in the reports, so that for instance people who are less known internationally but well-known in a US context will feature in the news.

This domestication is accomplished in large part with the use of domestic sources, mainly from national and local news media. The content is translated, edited to varying degrees, and repackaged (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019). There are also examples found in Sputnik of European news coverage where local news articles have been translated and published unedited. The treatment of sources can be connected to the overall journalism, which contains very little reportage in the sense that a journalist has been dispatched to cover an event or carry out observations in the field.

In his study of nine weeks of RT coverage of the war in Ukraine in the summer of 2014, its political tensions and divergences, Widholm (2016) talks about the frequent use of desk reporting. This is news produced inside a news room using information from external sources, such as competitor national or international media, press conferences, press releases, and other planned events, none of which require observation in the field or journalists to take the initiative to cover stories based on their own insights or experiences. Because it is dependent on other media sources and political statements, this type of reporting tends to result in a journalism that uses formal language (Widholm, 2016). Widholm shows in his study that 92% of the RT coverage of Ukraine was desk-reporting, but the extent to which the language could be considered formal or official was more questionable and not made clear in the analysis. For a channel seeking to represent an alternative voice to the international news flows with the aim of projecting anti-establishment and sometimes populist values, and an aim to appear trustworthy and serious, an official tone might be counterproductive.

It is somewhat surprising that a channel such as RT, with such large resources at its disposal, should come to rely to such a high degree on other news sources for their news production. The media sources used in RT coverage were found to be a balance of Russian news media and international and Western sources (about 40% each). It is worth noting that one-fifth of the sources used came from social media, and Twitter dominated both text and footage (Widholm, 2016).

The equal share of sources used in the Ukraine case study was linked to how the stories were told but did not result in balanced coverage between differing viewpoints. On the contrary, the news coverage took the form of oppositional analyses of stories published in Western media or told by US politicians. The RT stories projected “counter-perspectives” in defense of the Russian side. Both texts and visuals from Western sources were used to make clear how the Western news media in cooperation with Ukraine and the US had fabricated images and manipulated the truth, for example of the downing of flight MH17, to make it appear beyond doubt that Russia was to blame. RT referred to the Western reporting as “the latest masterpiece in the Ukrainian exercise in conspiracy theories” and Widholm concludes that this confirmed the view that RT is a political tool of the Kremlin (Widholm, 2016, p. 204). This is in line with what Simonyan—the editor-in-chief of RT since 2005, and Rossiya Segodnya (which owns Sputnik) since 2013—has been quoted as saying on numerous occasions.

The Instigation of Polarization

A second storytelling technique concerns journalistic work intended to instigate polarization, that is, reporting on events and situations in a way that is likely to provoke or to stress irreconcilable differences between groups and the opinions or values they represent. This is done by using strong language in the reports, framing problems as emotionally charged and projecting people expressing strong feelings. Storytelling that fuels polarization is also made easier by these media outlets choosing to report on contested and sensitive topics in the target countries. This is shown by the analyses of Cushman and Avramov (2021) of what they term “Kremlin-sponsored political warfare” with reference “to sexuality and gender-based narratives in Russian and pro-Russian disinformation campaigns targeting EU and EU aspiring members”. In their analyses of the EU versus Disinfo database—an EU-run database that monitors disinformation news and writes counter-stories—they show how sexuality and gender-based disinformation narratives are used to instigate basic emotions such as fear, anger, confusion, and disgust. The image of a promiscuous and decadent West is contrasted with Russia, which is talked of as a defender of traditional and Christian values (Cushman & Avramov, 2021, pp. 145–146). The use of visuals is a key part of this storytelling technique, especially since visuals have been shown to stir emotions and reinforce the audience’s sensemaking of or attraction to text or the spoken word (see e.g. Grigor (Khaldarova) & Pantti, 2021; Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2020; also focusing on humor Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2021).

It should be noted that storytelling to induce polarization can be achieved by depicting both sides of an issue negatively, undermining each side’s claims so that both are diminished or delegitimized. Bradshaw et al. (2022) talk about this as playing both sides. They write:

This strategy of playing both sides of an issue and creating or amplifying content designed to increase existing tensions appeared across a range of topics: funding for veterans versus support for refugees; pro- versus anti-police; pro- versus anti-immigration; Muslim pride on one page, anti-Muslim themes on another; pro-LGBT content on one Instagram account, traditional religious perspectives on another. (Bradshaw et al., 2022, p. 5, referring to Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2018; Riedl et al., 2021; US Department of Justice, 2018)

The Overlap of Narratives

Journalism is a practice that not only talks about events, but also aims to contextualize those events so they make sense and take on meaning. One way that this might be done is to relate stories to other recently reported events, topical issues or familiar narratives. However, this can also be used more strategically to influence audiences to make associations and connections between issues and problems, and solutions and responsibilities, which creates an impression of impending chaos and social disorder, and most importantly identifies scapegoats and designates blame to certain groups in society. The overlap between narratives might be made explicit or implicit, leaving more or less room for the audience to fill in the blanks and make sense of the content. This type of storytelling stresses dichotomies, as well as representations of a hostile other and of helpless victims. A news story narrated as a crime can for example be linked to a news narrative about immigration. A story about a shortage of women police officers might be contextualized by background facts about increased gang violence in the suburbs.

Misuse of or Giving Multiple Meanings to Key Concepts

Storytelling in which the use of concepts and terms to describe phenomena is inconsistent and unclear makes news stories subtly confusing. This can also be achieved by the journalist repeating concepts but assigning slight variations to their meaning or putting together quotes from experts talking about related but not identical terms but drawing conclusions from them as if they were the same. The significance of key concepts varies depending on the topic but, for instance, the lack of precision is most obvious in medical reports or news based on official reports or scientific facts. This is a subtle storytelling technique that makes it difficult to demonstrate and assess.

Mockery by Way of “Citations” and the Expression “The So-called”

Mockery, humor, and satire have been found in several studies of RT in particular. Crilley and Chatterje-Doody (2021) talk about the blurring of news reporting and comedy, and argue that RT has a reporting style that uses humor and satire to legitimize Russian foreign policy (p. 269). They talk about an RT “locker room humor” (see also Moore & Colley, 2022). This attitude and tone of voice have been useful for RT to, as Hutchings (2020) writes, confront its “pariah status”, and is in line with an overall attitude of being the enfant terrible of the news media market and maintaining a distance from the mainstream media.

However, humor and satire can also infer a feeling of doubt and uncertainty, and give the impression that the world is an odd place where false cannot be distinguished from true, and where humor is a way for people to deal with these uncertainties. Humor as a storytelling technique can be explained as way to attract audiences, while satire is used to express anti-establishment sentiments and skepticism of democracy. Satire, write Crilley and Chatterje-Doody (2021, p. 272 with reference to Stott, 2014, pp. 152–163), is “a form of humour that traditionally follows a bottom-up principle in which injustices are laid bare in ways that contest the positions of the powerful”, in other words “a tool of the powerless used to critique the powerful”. Mockery and satire can thus serve to strengthen the dichotomization between the people and the elite, and demonstrate an alignment between the broadcaster and the people. By siding with the audience, the broadcaster shows its support for the public and relates to the elite with suspicion and disbelief—and as deserving of mockery.

Mockery by way of citation and the oft-used term “the so-called” are storytelling techniques that do not add humor to the news coverage, but sow doubt. Formulations used by interviewees, public figures, experts or spokespersons are at times assigned epithets surrounded by quotation marks as if the channel is distancing itself from them or handing over responsibility for formulation to the individual. Herd immunity is a typical example of this. Quotation marks were also used for terms and choices of words used by people referred to in the articles, instead of quoting a whole statement or a sentence from a statement. An ordinary word set in quotation marks is thus given a value-laden meaning that might give the impression that it is contested, while an unusual expression with little context given but set in quotation marks might signal irony or be seen as representing an oddity. Sweden’s feminist foreign policy is an example of a term that was most often set in quotation marks when it appeared in the news. In a story on a Pride festival, the terms secular Muslim and Rainbow Muslims were said by an expert to be unique. The term Rainbow Muslims was put in quotes.

Added to this, the term “the so-called” is used to give the impression that nothing that is said or done can be trusted, or that sensemaking is contested and not generally shared. It labels a phenomenon, a strategy or an event in a way that makes it questionable or with the aim of hiding its true nature.

Use of Experts

The storytelling technique involving use of experts is not unique to authoritarian state-affiliated news media. On the contrary, it is part of the foundations of journalism to disseminate knowledge and information based on experts’ insights that give credibility and weight to the news content. However, just as experts can be used to affirm arguments and facts, increase reliability and deepen understanding, they can also be exploited to aggravate disagreements, polarize debates, and amplify uncertainties about facts and knowledge, and question what it is possible to know. There have been cases where experts appearing on RT or Sputnik were misquoted or misrepresented. The role experts are made to play in the coverage and how they are defined and fit into the news narrative therefore illustrate the fine line between journalism and disinformation.

The Audiences for RT and Sputnik

RT and Sputnik: Who Is Reading and Watching?

Audience research in media studies has gained increased attention in the past decade, but is still an under-researched area. Studying audiences’ reception of mediated messages from meaning making to opinion formation and dissemination, and then political or social action is highly complex. It is demanding in terms of time and resources, and studies are difficult to design. Audience interactivity, through comment fields, chat groups, tweets, and so on, has made audience views more accessible, but only a limited strata of news consumers actively engages with the content using these tools. Other sampling and analytical methods are needed to capture representative samples of audience reception of media content. Significant developments have been made in the field, however, as attention is paid to diverse and fragmented audiences, the meaning making of producers and consumers, engagement and disengagement, and interactivity between news producers and consumers.

It is no longer taken for granted in research or among policymakers and practitioners that audiences are homogenous in their reception of messages, or that the messages necessarily take on the meaning intended by the news producer. Interactivity between news program maker and news consumer is not just about the former receiving responses on news output from the latter. It also includes the news consumer in the making of news. This might be an especially salient aspect of news production used for the dissemination of strategic narratives and disinformation, where the intent is to influence the target audience to see the flaws and dysfunction of their own society, and to encourage that audience to question and doubt the political system in their home country. The broadcaster might produce news on contentious and critical issues, narrated in harmful ways, to invite vocal responses from the audience by way of tweets, Instagram posts, and comments on the media’s website. These might in turn generate more news coverage that fuels tensions even further, resulting in an increasingly aggressive and negative spiral of news coverage. The audience responses, including those critical of the original story broadcast by the news channel, become the driving force of the story and contribute to its infectious and emotionally charged content. In this sense, audiences for disinformation, or to use Wagnsson’s term “consumers of malign information influence”, become co-creators and disseminators of meaning, and can “function as suitable vehicles for aiding the messenger in trying to polarize society, undermine democracy and even erode the national security interests of the target” (Wagnsson, 2023, p. 1863)

RT and Sputnik are both global news channels with audiences all over the world. The RT YouTube channel is often talked of as a highly successful platform, thought to be the first such channel to reach one billion views, having gained popularity with its eyewitness reports of catastrophes and disasters (Crilley et al., 2022, p. 223). At the same time, politically and ideologically driven content has made up only a small proportion of these reports (1% of RT’s YouTube content) (Crilley et al., 2022; see also Mickiewicz, 2018), and it is on the news sites and in news broadcasting that these topics appear. Taken together, the popularity of RT and Sputnik is often talked of as a result of their digital presence. Even though RT has long been a widespread international broadcast news channel, its television audience numbers outside of Russia have never been very high compared to other international broadcasters such as CNN International and BBC World. RT and Sputnik seem instead to cater to niche audiences in Western countries and elsewhere.

RT and Sputnik audience figures should be treated with caution, not only because official statistics might be unreliable, but also because of the numerous outlets to consider and the different ways that are used to define and measure audiences. There are also reasons to be cautious in assessing popularity and spread by way of the resources spent by RT and Sputnik or the amount of news programming that they offer. With regard to RT’s YouTube videos, Orttung and Nelson (2019, p. 85) show that the RT Arabic version made about a quarter of the total number of YouTube videos, but had an audience share of only 16%. The RT flagship by contrast displayed the opposite relationship, with 12% of output and an audience share of 31% (p. 85). Attracting the attention of an Arabic audience thus proved more difficult for RT than appealing to English, Spanish or Russian speakers.

Moreover, when describing the RT and Sputnik audiences, there are reasons to keep users and consumers of the different outlets separate. Studies on Twitter followers show huge numbers of users (Orttung & Nelson, 2019; Crilley et al., 2022), but their motivations for following RT and Sputnik or their reception of the tweets must not be equated with what motivates RT and Sputnik readers. Based on their analysis, Crilley et al. (2022) argue that “RT Twitter followers rarely engage with RT content” (p. 222).

A large quantitative study of the number of views of RT and Sputnik official websites and mobile apps investigated audience reach in 21 countries between October and December 2021. The study found that the audience for the official websites and the mobile app was below 5% of the digital population of the respective countries (Kling et al., 2022, p. 1). The numbers were thus considerably lower than the number of social media users found in studies of social networking sites, including for example Twitter feeds and YouTube videos (Orttung & Nelson, 2019). Even if the size of the RT and Sputnik audiences is relatively low, however, they still amounted to millions of European news consumers.

Taken together these different categories of users and consumers could shed some light on the attraction of RT and Sputnik as news organizations, how they function as nodes in news networks and how information and news from RT and Sputnik spread. If we are interested in learning about audiences’ news intake, sense making or reasons for choosing to consume news from these channels, however, it is more fruitful to look at reception of news content. Drawing on previous studies by Chatterje-Doody and Crilley (2019) and Crilley and Chatterje-Doody (2020, 2021), Crilley et al. (2022, p. 225) write that Twitter followers are not equivalent to a traditional broadcasting audience, or even to the engaged “active” audiences that comment on YouTube videos. Indeed, a user might follow an account but never engage with it at all—and simply forget to unfollow it (see also Marwick, 2018).

Asking who the audiences of RT and Sputnik are Wagnsson (2023) found that RT/Sputnik consumers were predominantly male. Three out of four consumers were male (see also Kling et al., 2022), that RT and Sputnik were only two accounts among many international news media (and world leaders’) accounts that they followed, and that the followers constituted a heterogenous population. With regard to age, Wagnsson (2023) and Orttung and Nelson (2019) found that younger males aged 18–29 were slightly overrepresented. In the Swedish study, 13% of young men consumed RT/Sputnik, compared to 7% of all Swedes. Orttung and Nelson (2019), studying RT’s YouTube audience, also found in their study that young men with a higher education appeared to be the most frequent consumers. Like Wagnsson, they concluded that this audience group tended more than other consumers to interact with the comments on stories and share news through links and reposts. In contrast, Kling et al. (2022, p. 3) found that men in the older age groups were substantially more likely to be Sputnik/RT consumers (see also Crilley et al., 2022).

Acknowledging the difficulties in identifying and categorizing RT and Sputnik audiences, it nonetheless seems that they tend to be dominated by male consumers who engage with international news and include RT and Sputnik in their news menu along with established international news media such as BBC World and CNN International. According to Kling et al. (2022), comparisons of RT consumers across countries find significant national differences. Finland, Ireland, and Italy had an audience website/app reach of less than 1% in the months prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and enforcement of the EU ban. This contrasts with Spain (RT 3.94%, Sputnik: 2.63%), Germany (RT: 3.18%), and France (RT 2.32%).

Wagnsson (2023) also found that Swedish RT and Sputnik consumers shared all kinds of news on social media to a somewhat greater extent than non-consumers (although it was rare that they reported sharing RT/Sputnik news content), and that they tended to sympathize with nationalist and conservative political views. RT/Sputnik consumers were both more media savvy and more skeptical of established or mainstream media than non-consumers of these media. The respondents appreciated the content and shared it on social media, and 40% said they consumed for “pleasure” when asked about their motivation, while 31% argued the content of news was a reason to consume RT/Sputnik. It is worth noting that despite their skepticism towards established media, they found public service broadcasting and Swedish journalists more trustworthy than Sputnik and RT (Wagnsson, 2023).

The results also show that consumers of RT and Sputnik tend to be overrepresented in sympathizers with non-parliamentary parties and in supporters of the Swedish far-right Sweden Democratic party. At the same time, it should be stressed that RT/Sputnik consumers were found among supporters of all political parties. In comparison to the group of non-consumers, the consumers showed a lower level of trust in politicians, institutions, news, and journalism more generally. This did not prevent them from sharing untrue or unreliable news content through their social media networks, however, including a group of news consumers who engaged with the content even when they suspected it to be untrue.

Based on these findings, Wagnsson states that RT/Sputnik audiences were found to have more so-called identity grievances, meaning negative feelings related to an individual’s sense of identity-based injustices, which can yield conflicts between people holding different identities. Although there were indications that non-consumers of RT/Sputnik also held identity grievances, such as “Sweden has gone too far with regard to feminist politics” or “Sweden should do more to promote traditional values and traditions”, these were significantly more common among consumers. Wagnsson concludes:

the findings exposed that consumers align with RT/Sputnik messaging on identity grievance issues and national security issues more than non-consumers do. They hold the potential to function as megaphones of Russian messaging in Sweden, whether intentionally or not. (Wagnsson, 2023, p. 1863)

It might be assumed that the size of the audience would be reflected in the amount of resources and program output produced by the media organization, but this seems not to hold true in the case of RT. The varying sizes of the audiences for RT in different countries and parts of the world have not been found to correlate with the amount of news output of the RT channel producing news in that country or region. Orttung and Nelson (2019) studied mainly news videos and found a divergence between the number of YouTube videos produced and aired on RT and the size of the audience watching the videos. Despite the considerable amount of news, talk shows, and documentaries on the English-speaking channels, for example, RT has not succeeded in attracting large Anglo-US or Western audiences. The number of viewers fluctuates and seems to coincide with Russian engagements abroad, such that audience numbers rose when Russia launched its military activities in Syria (September 2015) and during the US presidential campaign in 2016. The situation has been different in Africa and in Latin America, where fewer resources spent on news production have not prevented a steadily growing audience (Orttung & Nelson, 2019). Overall, studies have shown that RT (and to some extent also Sputnik) has gained greater popularity in the Arab, South American, and African worlds than in Europe and North America. Limonier shows in his study that French-speaking Sputnik has larger audiences in African than in hexagonal France (Limonier, 2019).

This discrepancy is most significant with regard to RT’s Arabic broadcasting, where a high number of videos broadcast (26% of the total number of broadcast videos in the sample) was matched with a lower proportion of views (16% of the total number of RT video views). The opposite relationship was found with the RT Flagship, which had a small share of the total number of videos (11%) but a large portion of the total number of views (31%). The number of people watching RT YouTube videos was found to fluctuate depending on breaking news or dramatic events, especially when these involved Russia, creating so-called rally effects or momentary peaks in viewer numbers, quickly followed by low numbers of viewers (Orttung & Nelson, 2019).

The short shelf life of RT videos forces RT editors to constantly scramble to find new material to attract attention to its message. As Syria receded from the headlines, RT flagship and the other stations turned more of their attention to the various crises in Europe, particularly the immigration problems caused in part by fighting in Syria in the early part of 2016. With the UK Brexit vote in June 2016, attention on Europe reached a peak. The US election then became a focus, with Wikileaks releasing Democratic Party e-mails in July and the voting in November 2016. (Orttung & Nelson, 2019, p. 84)

Previous research has found that, despite their large resources and plentiful news coverage, political programming, and talk shows, RT and Sputnik have relatively small audiences in the West. However, there is a lot more to reception than audience size, particularly as RT and Sputnik are sometimes regarded as addressing niche audiences. As noted above, studies have shown that RT and Sputnik news consumers appreciate the content and share it on social media (Wagnsson, 2023; Wagnsson et al., 2023).

Alignments Between RT and Sputnik News, and Audiences’ Opinions and World Views and Motivations for Consumption

While studies have highlighted similarities in the news discourses of Sputnik/RT in targeted countries, for example with regard to depictions of right wing candidates in national elections and other types of imprints in domestic debates (Jamieson, 2016; Elshehawy et al., 2021), few have been able to discern whether the Russian state media news coverage succeeds in shaping public opinion, ideological outlooks or voting behavior in another country. In their experimental study of audience reception of RT in the US, however, Carter and Carter (2021) show how RT coverage of foreign policy issues influences viewers’ opinions. The same effect was not seen with regard to the domestic news topics included in the study. They write: “Exposure to RT, we find, induces respondents to support America withdrawing from its role as a cooperative global leader by 10–20 percentage points” (p. 49), a point pushed by RT in the news pieces to which the respondents were exposed. Knowing that the news emanated from a news outlet connected with the Russian government did not change the responses. Carter and Carter (2021) conclude that their study finds “no evidence that RT undermines trust in democratic institutions or changes domestic political opinions” (Carter & Carter, 2021, p. 53), but that it does shape opinions on foreign policy: “Our central theoretical argument is that beliefs about foreign affairs are more susceptible to outward-facing propaganda than beliefs about domestic politics” (Carter & Carter, 2021, p. 58).

Audiences’ disregard of the source of information has also been found in a study by Fisher (2020), which analyzed the influence of Russian international broadcasting (RT) on US audiences. In an experimental online survey conducted in 2016, Fisher asked whether the audience’s knowledge that a mediated message came from a foreign government made any difference to the opinion formation of that audience in regard to the coverage they were presented with (p. 281). The article chosen for the experiment was a news story on Ukrainian human rights violations. It was representative of the coverage about Ukraine in which RT has depicted the Russian government as defending humanitarian interests and state sovereignty. Of the 895 participants in the study, the average age was 38 and there was an almost equal number of women and men; 55% of the participants had at least a college degree (p. 286). The participants were divided into four groups and given different information about the source, ranging from one group having no information to a fourth group being told what the source was and its known intentions (Fisher, 2020, p. 286). The results showed that the fact that the information came from a Russian state-affiliated news outlet did not seem to affect the way in which the content was perceived (Fisher, 2020, p. 287). The fourth group of participants was found to have as many negative attitudes to Ukraine as the group that lacked any information about the source. It did not matter if the audience knew the information came from Russian state media. This still did not lead them to question the views or opinions presented. Fisher concluded that revealing the source of the information as a countermeasure against disinformation might not have the desired effect, especially for audiences with little prior knowledge of the topic.

Fisher writes:

What this means in practice is that making the source of foreign information apparent is an important counter-propaganda strategy, but it may only be effective on a limited audience with sufficient prior knowledge about the topic. Individuals with lower levels of prior knowledge about Ukraine are actually more likely to adopt less favorable attitudes toward Ukraine when presented with more information about the Russian network. (Fisher, 2020, p. 289)

In their study, Lemke and Habegger (2022) were interested in the role reporting style plays in the reception and impact of RT and Sputnik news. Focusing on the French presidential election campaign of 2017 and its aftermath, they compare RT and Sputnik Twitter feeds to a network of Twitter accounts that are interested in French politics. In their search for overlaps between the Russian state media tweets and the other Twitter group, they found that the Kremlin-linked outlets were active in local networks, and that themes such as Islamophobia, chaos in Western societies, Euroscepticism, alleged alliances between corrupt elites and immigrants, and “Russia as a responsible international player” were given prominence (Lemke & Habegger, 2022, p. 21). Their findings indicate that RT and Sputnik know how to address their audiences in order to incite a flow on Twitter networks beyond their immediate realm. However, the design of the study did not enable them to assess whether or how French audiences were influenced in their voting behavior as a result of these flows. What they could see was how the user panel’s tweets aligned with tweets from Sputnik and RT.

The study also found links between the Russian state media Twitter feeds and the far-right, including both parties and individuals, which indicates that the far-right is used as an inroad to domestic politics in Western democracies and their networks (Lemke & Habegger, 2022, p. 21; see also Badawy et al., 2019).

In one of the few in-depth qualitative analyses of RT and Sputnik audiences, Wagnsson et al. (2023) asked Swedish consumers, as representatives of citizens of democratic countries, about their motivations for consuming the content of international propaganda outlets. Based on responses from interviews with 43 Swedish RT and Sputnik consumers—selected using an assessment survey by a well-established Swedish analysis and research agency, Novus, from their Sweden Panel–four profiles were inductively identified: distant observers, reluctant consumers, media nihilists, and establishment critics. These profiles, or ideal types, demonstrated that audiences might consume RT and Sputnik for very different reasons. In line with the findings of an interview study by Schwarzenegger (2023) with users of German alternative media, including RT and Sputnik, and several quantitative studies, the Swedish study concluded that the audience is fragmented and diversified.

In addition, the close readings of the respondent’s explanations also give an idea of what these different approaches might be. The distant observers consume RT and Sputnik because they think it is important to know what other people are reading and what alternative media outlets publish, not because their own views are confirmed. Some members of this group expressed resentment and fright of these type of media (Wagnsson et al., 2023, pp. 15–16). The reluctant consumers are, as the label indicates, skeptical of the reliability of these media, but they turn to them because they deliver specific types of news not found elsewhere and they are easily accessible. The media nihilists are critical of all media without distinction, and as a consequence their consumption patterns include a broad spectrum of media types. Some media nihilists are balanced in their view and argue that it is only natural that different media promote different interests and therefore present biased news coverage; others present stronger negative resentments. However, they all claim that to be accurately informed calls for consumption of all available news. Finally, the establishment critics represent the group with the strongest critique of established media, which they find to be biased, corrupt, and too politically correct. They express strong preferences for alternative media (Wagnsson, 2023, p. 18).

Another aspect of understanding the appeal of RT and Sputnik was explored in the same study by asking to what extent the consumers align ideologically with the channel’s messaging. The distribution of opinions was found to fall into three main segments. Of these, one was found to align with the RT and Sputnik messaging, the Anti-Woke, and one to directly oppose it, the Progressive Wokes. A third segment, the Confident Pragmatists, shared views with both Wokes (Wagnsson et al., 2023, p. 19). Wagnsson et al. (2023, p. 19) write that:

Interestingly, those who most strongly agreed with the ideas projected—the Anti-Woke—were also those who most strongly admonished the outlets as muddying the information space, showing that while there is a high degree of ideological overlap, they are not uncritical followers of the outlets.

The results confirm what other studies have shown: that RT/Sputnik audiences have different reasons for their consumption and that among these are people who find support for their own views as well as people who disagree. For some, these media are only part of a larger number of news channels in their daily or weekly news repertoire that provides them with alternative topics and ideologies. For others, these media are consumed because they are part of the alternative media and represent anti-establishment perspectives.

However, other studies have found stronger affiliations between “Anti-Woke” type consumers and RT and Sputnik. Anti-establishment appeal was found to be the main reason why the French protest movement, the Yellow vest activists, were more positive about RT and Sputnik than they were about the mainstream French media. Both left- and right-wing sympathizers consumed RT and Sputnik news about the demonstrations. Twitter seemed to be the vehicle where news and information were being transmitted, while Facebook played a greater role in the construction of the messages. The study found strong mistrust among the French for the media, and that many people see the media as part of the establishment and as no longer representing the interests of the people. This was also why they turned to RT and Sputnik, especially when it came to coverage of a demonstration targeting the elites and those with political and economic power (Gérard et al., 2020).

In Sum

The need to understand more about the news output of the Sputnik news website and RT television output, which is what this book propounds, is not based only on the size of the audience, which in itself is difficult to measure. The significance of the messaging and the underlying claim that these media intend to cause harm are related to more complex processes. Their malign influence is perhaps more connected to their harmful narratives and long-term everyday influence on the global news media. It should also be noted when looking at studies of Twitter flows and their interlinkages between RT/Sputnik and domestic networks that the different platforms are linked. RT and Sputnik might have an indirect influence on fueling or supporting certain sentiments, ideas, and views in domestic news networks to which they link up and which have a wider spread or a considerable impact on a country’s politics and social life.

Moreover, the ban on RT and Sputnik by the EU and the closure of RT America do not mean the end of outreach by these media. Both are still producing and disseminating news in other parts of the world. In Europe, audiences may have diminished in number (Eurobarometer, 2023) but there are still viewers and readers who circumvent the ban and have continued to consume Sputnik and RT with the help of technology (Timmermann, 2022).