Keywords

Introduction

It is generally acknowledged that developments in media technologies involving digitalization and social media networks and platforms have increased the capacity not only for the free flow of information and transnational interconnectedness, but also for surveillance by authoritarian regimes and for disinformation. It is for this reason that the concept of propaganda, discussed in Chap. 1, has been reworked and revised by scholars. This chapter takes as its point of departure aspects of the media developments that have enabled the practice of digital disinformation. It then moves on to introduce the concept of everyday disinformation as a way to explain Russian disinformation in its current form.

The chapter provides a context in which study of the Swedish case can be placed and understood. Sweden has been heavily targeted by disinformation by way of Russian state media and news coverage, but so have a number of other European states, as well as states in North America, Africa, and elsewhere. With a focus on RT and Sputnik, the chapter reviews previous research findings on Russian disinformation against Western and African states, and presents the national images cultivated by the Russian international news media outlets.

Disinformation and Digital Developments

Since the 1980s, the media industry has undergone dramatic upheavals in its business models and technologies. The rise of digital platforms has changed the relationship between information producers and consumers, especially in the fields of news production and journalism. An intensified interactivity between journalists and their audiences has brought about citizen journalism (Allan, 2009; Andén-Papadopoulos & Pantti, 2013; Cottle, 2014), in that citizens have become participants in and producers of news, blurring the boundaries between professional journalists and citizen content and production of news stories, often referred to as user-generated content (UGC). Easy access to amateur footage enabled by mobile phones and low cost, easy and fast distribution have inundated news media outlets with images and visual material. Where journalists used to search for footage, they now spend more time selecting and verifying images.

Such changes in the production and consumption of news have given rise to global networks and a multitude of news media platforms. The dissemination of news is more diverse and the mass media (from one to many) and multicasting now compete for attention with narrowcasting in an increasingly fragmented media market. Distinctions between the new media in contrast to old media, the traditional media outlets of broadcasting and print, have dissolved since almost all established media institutions produce news for a number of different platforms simultaneously (Chadwick, 2017). Newspaper journalists do stand-ups in web-television newscasts and links to articles are made accessible through apps. News stories are shared between users of social media networks, which has further diversified media consumption patterns. It is also truer than ever before that such mediated messages and narratives, whether broadcast to a mass audience or shared in Facebook groups, know no national boundaries. Oates et al. (2021) for example found collaboration between the right-wing US Fox news and RT, and that the sympathies between these news organizations are stronger than between US Democrats and Republicans—an interconnection which might have been unexpected only a few decades ago.

These developments in news journalism in Western liberal societies have not been without their critics, and journalists as well as scholars have highlighted a decline in professional journalism, as well as diminishing resources in news organizations which has caused news media outlets to cut down on their foreign coverage or close it down altogether. With the advent of the internet, advertising revenues for old media organizations fell, and audiences and readerships diversified their news consumption, diminishing the audience for established news media (McChesney, 2013; Downie & Schudson, 2009; Benson, 2018). Furthermore, the increase in transparency meant that the difficulties of doing politics behind closed doors greatly damaged diplomacy, a situation exacerbated by harmful leaks of sensitive documents leading to crises in foreign relations. Others have welcomed the new opportunities offered by digital technology as strengthening democracy and the citizen’s rights to know. Military operations and intelligence work have benefited from new means of digital communication but have also found their organizations and activities more exposed and at greater risk (Hellman et al., 2016).

At the same time, these organizational, technological, and political media developments are being used increasingly successfully by authoritarian regimes to suppress, control, and surveille. What was formerly Russian propaganda has been adapted to current media dynamics and aligned with a more anti-Western approach. What might for a time have been benign public diplomacy has turned more hostile and antagonistic. Examples of the informational weapon have reached beyond the conventional military sector and now primarily target domestic issues in foreign countries. It is no secret that the low cost and easy dissemination of news coverage to target audiences underpin a resurgence in Russian-sponsored information influencing activities with geopolitical objectives. Oates (2014) talks about “a rewired propaganda” and refers to the digital media ecology as enabling the construction and dissemination of strategic narratives (Oates, 2014), and most scholars agree. What is new is not the use of information in the context of security and defense, but the use of digital technology and of liberal democratic news media systems (see e.g. Rid, 2020; see also Chap. 1). There is therefore good reason to keep in mind that the current situation with regard to disinformation can be seen as a continuation of active measures adapted to new media technology and a different world order. This calls for an understanding of disinformation as a long-term phenomenon, which is what is embedded in the term everyday disinformation.

Everyday Disinformation

Disinformation campaigns are part of a continuum of disinformative narratives and information flows. Wagnsson writes that a trademark of Russian disinformation (or malign information influence, which is the term she uses) is that it is both long term and systematic (Wagnsson, 2023a, p. 662). She likens Russian disinformation to a “continuously, viscous stream in which lies manipulations and heavily biased information mix” (Wagnsson, 2023a, p. 652). The news format, with its daily bulletins and continuously updated online editions, fits well with everyday disinformation, and therein lies the seriousness of the problem. A steady flow of biased and denigrating news narratives about a nation and its population can over many years normalize attitudes, values, and ideas both about the nation and within it, producing a tendency towards intolerance, polarization, disrespect, and a diminution of the pluralist and liberal public sphere.

Hence, this study of Sputnik and RT coverage of Sweden focuses not on particular events, but on continuous day-to-day disinformation activities mediated through the two Russian international news organizations. It can be positioned at the crossroads between studies of propaganda and digital media, studies of disinformation and conspiracy theories, and studies of information influencing activities targeted at liberal democracy and the West, as well as within the group of narrative disinformation studies.

This is not to say that there are not special campaigns launched against countries in which Sputnik and RT take on key roles, such as showing burning cars in the suburbs of Stockholm, underscoring the Trump narrative on “last night in Sweden”; or spreading news about Swedish social services kidnapping migrant children. Thus a focus on everyday practices does not make case studies irrelevant. On the contrary, it is of key importance to focus on disinformation campaigns at certain peak moments where the public is particularly sensitive to influence or the political system is vulnerable, such as during election campaigns or a national crisis. These cases often showcase key ingredients of the antagonistic coverage, however, such as anti-establishment views, domestic conflict and chaos, government incompetence or its inability to control a critical situation, and problems caused or aggravated by Muslim immigrants. They do not deviate from the day-to-day narratives in terms of content and structure, which shows that disinformation is not an incidental or temporary phenomenon (Wagnsson & Barzanje, 2021; Hellman, 2021). It might be displayed in more or less dramatic news stories, but it is an everyday practice that for most European states has been ongoing for many years and is therefore better characterized as a constant flow of everyday news coverage. According to Lucas:

… propaganda efforts like those surrounding the downing of the Malaysian jetliner are not isolated Russian responses to particular events. Instead, they are manifestations of a comprehensive strategy using “sharp power” to disrupt, subvert, and essentially hijack the information systems of targeted countries and regions. The Kremlin’s ambitions are evident in the scale of its financial investments and the global reach of its activities. (Lucas, 2022, p. 138)

Lemke and Habegger (2022) also make the point that more attention must be given to everyday disinformation. They studied Russian disinformation as a “percolation network” with regard to the #MacroLeaks, and used fine network analysis to identify the connections between a vast array of Twitter accounts, most notably with Sputnik and RT. Everyday disinformation, they argue, is dependent on the internet, its fast transmission of messages and capacity to distribute information to a vast audience in a short period of time, but also with relative anonymity for the sender or participant in the network. It is about platform users engaged in everyday sharing practices. “It is the combination of hyperconnectivity and the everyday digital practices that makes the strategic use of digital disinformation campaigns so powerful” (Lemke & Habegger, 2022, p. 8).

The term everyday disinformation directs attention to the long-term process in which public trust in institutions and in politics and democracy is slowly and gradually eroded—rather than through a single or time-limited election campaign. Lemke and Habegger (2022) conclude their study about the #MacronLeaks by emphasizing the low-intensity, continuous process of disinformation.

The #MacronLeaks episode reveals a sophisticated process operating at the level of individual users and localized internet communities. Russian disinformation campaigns rely on an insidious process that plays the long game of undermining public faith in institutions and eroding political trust. It preys on the weaknesses of advanced Western democracies, especially on their open, fragmented and polarized media ecologies. Russia and other geopolitical actors are not looking for a political or military knockout blow. Instead, they promote a long-term and low-intensity strategy of demobilization—death by a million digital cuts. (Lemke & Habegger, 2022, p. 21)

The antagonistic actors engaged in everyday disinformation have therefore put “great effort into embedding information influence in seemingly normal and attractive news reporting, projected through channels such as CCTV-N and RT” (Wagnsson, 2023b, p. 1850). This further distinguishes everyday disinformation from traditional propaganda, since it uses new channels and international news media, and links these to the global media ecosystem. Moreover, it hitches on to citizens’ established media consumption habits and, because of its format, clouds the distinctions between public diplomacy, propaganda, and traditional journalism (Wagnsson, 2023b, p. 1850). Such reporting is often made appealing through affective narratives that build on disinformation (see Turcsanyi & Kachlikova, 2020; Eberle & Daniel, 2019; Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2020).

In order to learn and understand more about the Russian disinformation in foreign countries, it makes sense to analyze the everyday news coverage of RT and Sputnik. This book sets out to do that with the case of Sweden (see Chap. 4) in an effort to reveal what these everyday narratives say about Swedish society and what it is being told. However, a review of previous studies of RT and Sputnik’s news coverage of other countries is called for in order to assess the differences and similarities in everyday Russian disinformation, and to contextualize the Swedish case. This chapter presents what is known about RT and Sputnik’s depictions of the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, French-speaking Africa, and Ukraine, during election campaigns and crises, as well as in everyday coverage.

Russian Disinformation Targeted at Similar Nation States But with Different Contextual Frameworks

Research has found a pattern in the projection of antagonistic narratives by Sputnik and RT targeted at the United States, as well as states in Europe and other parts of the world. On closer examination, however, studies have also found national differences worthy of consideration. Both similarities and differences reflect Russian perceptions of the West as a threat to the values that the Kremlin under President Putin has declared it will defend. They can be summarized as typical national conservative values such as the promotion of Orthodox Christianity, “morality”, and “traditional family values”, features underlined by an antipathy toward Islam, LGBTI+ communities, and migration. In addition, it is a conservatism that promotes respect for the authorities, and contrasts security and law and order with liberalism. The threat from the West also involves geopolitical interests such as the defense of Russia’s territorial borders in the light of NATO enlargement and strengthening its Eastern European military flank (Petersson, 2023; Edenborg, 2023; Pallin, 2023, for the use of gender see also Edenborg, 2020, 2021).

However, the major part of the disinformation is not expressed as defense of a Russian lifestyle and political culture against Western supremacy or imperialism. Instead, it is built around depictions of values and norms that the Kremlin resents and rejects. The international news broadcasters are set up to demonstrate to the domestic audience and the world the negative consequences of societies adopting a liberal, rather than a national conservative, outlook, and how detrimental liberal Western attitudes are to governance and societal security.

The Russian state media constructs news coverage to show how Western societies are built on liberal democratic principles that it deems vulnerable, malfunctioning, and weak, with consequences that reach from domestic unrest to damaged international reputations and reduced trust among strategic partners. Sweden is one of the countries that has for many years been heavily and negatively framed in this way by RT and Sputnik, but other Western countries have also been targeted. There have been only a few longitudinal studies, and even fewer that employ qualitative methods, but there have been in-depth analyses of Russian involvement in election campaigns and crises, for example, that in many respects share similar features with one another and with everyday disinformation.

Commonalities Found in Studies of European Countries

There are striking similarities between Russian disinformation in European countries (see Deverell et al., 2021; Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019), especially when studying the framing of the news or the problem definitions in the narratives. Most frequent are the similarities in framing societies as dysfunctional. The countries are all depicted as struggling with social conflict, crime, and lack of integration, which is explained by high levels of immigration and the impact of Islam. The latter two are often conflated in the news coverage and at times depicted as connected to terrorism. The theme of immigration is particularly notable in RT and Sputnik’s coverage of Germany and Sweden. Reports focus on violent crime, and social and religious differences as key obstacles to integration (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 91). The political systems are led by incompetent leaders who fail to maintain law and order while at the same time undemocratic tendencies grow stronger. Depictions of population mistrust of the political leadership and the elite demonstrate anti-establishment attitudes, sometimes expressed as anger and frustration, sometimes as ridicule and irony. Moreover, Western states share a declining international reputation as they are considered troublesome international actors. The Netherlands is for example depicted as a “greedy actor in the international arena who ignores EU values of unity and provokes irascible states with tactless political moves” (Hoyle et al., 2023, p. 217).

Tailor-made News Coverage

There are also national differences in how countries are targeted, and these seem to be tied to national political cultures, established foreign policy orientations, and the national trademarks and symbolism by which the country is known internationally. The target countries’ international reputations might be similarly exposed to disinformation, but the types of narratives used to achieve this seem to differ. Russian disinformation focuses on the features, values, and resources the target state tends to hold dear in its nation branding or public diplomacy, or on representations that might be sensitive for the state’s identity. In the Swedish case this might be its policies on equality, in the Netherlands its liberal drugs policy, in Denmark a willingness to engage in international operations, and so on. Thus, it is about disclosing weaknesses in areas where a state tends to present itself as strong and exploiting areas where the state is experiencing challenges.

The Nordic Countries

In a comparative study of Sputnik’s coverage of the Nordic countries, Sweden stood out as the country subject to the most negative and destructive narratives. The researchers sampled all news coverage between 2014 and 2018 with the name of the country in question in the headline and conducted separate narrative analyses of each country using a three step qualitative method of analysis developed by Wagnsson and Barzanje (2021). This comprised questions about the actors, places, problems, and solutions that made up the narrative, and in-depth connotative narrative analyses of the structure of the news stories. It found that all the countries were negatively depicted and said to be in moral decay. This was amplified by talking about the countries as “the Nordics” and referring to them collectively as dysfunctional and naive (Deverell et al., 2021, pp. 29–30). However, there were also differences in the narratives between the countries. For example, Sweden and Denmark were marked out as “lost causes”—the latter to a lesser degree than the former—and both countries were depicted as failed states and states in decline. Denmark’s international engagement was acknowledged but rated as insignificant, and Sweden’s reputation as steadily falling (Deverell et al., 2021).

It is notable how the immigration question was at the forefront of the coverage of all four countries but stressed most strongly in the Swedish case. This is in line with the comparative study by Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019) of several European states and the United States.Footnote 1 This found that Sweden in particular, along with Germany, was depicted as facing severe social and cultural tensions, including violent crime, linked to migration and Islam. The articles adopted a mocking tone and, in some instances, went further in finding denigrating material to publish about Sweden. Moreover, in contrast to what was found to be the typical reporting style built on news from external sources, there was a notable increase in reports written about Sweden in the style of editorials that passed judgement on the Swedish way of dealing with social problems such as crime and migration (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, pp. 81–82).

The authors of the Nordic study concluded that the negative and denigrating coverage found in the study could be tied to “standard strategies and tailor-made narratives working to destruct, direct and suppress” (Deverell et al., 2021, p. 15). Based on their findings, they argued that the Russian news media narratives were detrimental to democracy and could erode national security, damage actors’ status in international society (Deverell et al., 2021, p. 31) and, as a result, could weaken international or Nordic cooperation.

The Netherlands

In a Dutch study of RT coverage of the Netherlands between January 2018 and December 2020, Hoyle et al. (2023) used a similar method of analysis as Deverell et al. (2021) to identify six narratives. These share similarities with the findings on Sweden of Wagnsson and Barzanje (2021), most notably the portrayal of the state as “hyper liberal” to the extent that law and order could no longer be maintained, where decadent, deviant communities take hold of norms degenerate to the detriment of democratic governance and government control.

Although the RT coverage of the Netherlands shares with coverage of other countries narratives about liberalism having gone too far, leading to violent unrest and domestic conflict, the imagery used in the Dutch case is more colorful. It stamps the country as a “narco-state” and combines this with coverage of how the police and other public authorities fail to deal with criminal gangs, and a laissez-faire approach to drug use and to immigration. Here too there is a mocking tone to the coverage of the public authorities and the government, which is combined with depictions of the Netherlands as a dangerous society. An arrogant and demeaning tone runs through several narratives but is given its strongest expression in narratives that Hoyle et al. label “weird society” and “foolish institutions”. These depict the country as ridiculous and not to be taken seriously. Hoyle et al. (2023 p. 216) write:

In belittling Dutch society and culture, pathologizing its progressive aspects and mocking liberal groups for pushing these “strange policies”, there is a concerted effort to tarnish the Netherlands’ image as respectable or admirable. Instead, the Netherlands becomes absurd, ridiculous, even morally reprehensible—and undeserving of recognition by the international community.

In addition to this high-handed attitude to the Netherlands, there are accusations of Dutch Russophobia, most notably in connection with and amplified by the investigation into the shooting down of Flight MH17. Overall, the Netherlands is depicted as a flawed international actor and a nuisance to its EU partners, and spoken of as a “reckless geopolitical actor” (Hoyle et al., 2023 p. 217).

With the exception of these analyses of the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, there are few in-depth qualitative studies of Sputnik and RT disinformation about other countries where the analysis extends over a period of time and includes daily news coverage of a variety of topics. Qualitative studies of the UK, Germany, the US, and France tend to focus on specific crisis events or election campaigns. Despite the fact that these cover only limited time periods or situations that are not easily generalizable to the everyday, these case studies are informative about the ways in which Russian state news coverage is constructed and used to disinform and weaken a foreign state when the stakes are particularly high for governments and institutions seeking to maintain legitimacy and public trust.

Germany

A comparative study by Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019) showed that RT and Sputnik coverage of Germany and Sweden was similar in its emphasis on immigration. Both countries were depicted as burdened by social conflict as a result of high levels of immigration. In the German case, this was strongly related to crime and difficulties with integration. Immigrants were depicted as perpetrators of violence and sexual crimes, and reports linked immigration to Islamic terrorism and terrorist attacks in Germany. Problems were exacerbated by the German government, for example its failure to manage asylum applications. The image of Germany was also one of a country where far-right extremism was to be found all the way up to the German military forces, and there was mention of underground Nazi activity (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, 78p).

While the latter was framed as a reason for social division and domestic problems, Elshehawy et al. (2021) show that RT also gave support to the far right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and its politics. Based on their study on the 2017 German election campaign, they write:

… Kremlin-sponsored media provided what AfD operatives may have found useful—a news forum publishing appropriately slanted migrant stories to refer to in political discussions. We find evidence that Kremlin-supplied coverage spiked, compared to domestic outlets, around the national elections that also resulted in AfD’s most significant political breakthrough….The anti-refugee message more broadly exacerbated internal divisions in the ruling parties and may have dissuaded voters from turning out. (Elshehawy et al., 2021, p. 2)

The findings of the study give empirical support to the insight that disinformation campaigns are not merely knee jerk reflexes, where the news narrative of a candidate running for office or a party campaign is either promoted or dismissed. Instead, they should be seen as needle injections into a system that influences the framing of a campaign or a discourse on certain issues and perspectives rather than others, and some explanations rather than others.

Like the US and French presidential elections, there were revelations concerning a disinformation campaign during the German federal elections in 2017. In an analysis of over one million news stories in the German and Russian media in the run-up to the election, Elshehawy et al. (2021) found that refugee stories were more heavily emphasized in Russian outlets than in the German media discourse, and were more strongly framed to give legitimacy and support to AfD and its political position. In contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel was negatively targeted, and referred to as “autocratic” and out of touch with German voters and their preferences. Like the US and French cases, where candidates Joe Biden and Emanuel Macron were not merely negatively portrayed in the media, but also had their campaign email accounts hacked (see below), Merkel was the target of Russian information influence campaigns using revelations from her private telephone and email-conversations, as well as damaging news reports. The German government was criticized for its inability to deal with the large flows of migrants to Germany. RT made frequent references to what it called a “refugee invasion” (p. 1) and held the mainstream parties and the government responsible. Merkel was “endangering the country” (p. 1). At the same time, RT gave its explicit support to the extreme rightwing AfD, which was pushing an anti-immigration agenda, and after the election reported that AfD was the true winner (p. 2). The main conclusion of the study was not simply that RT reported negatively about the German management of refugees and asylum seekers, but that its coverage boosted AfD by aligning with its political ideas and by augmenting the amount of anti-immigration coverage in the run-up to the election. In parallel, RT also set its affiliated networks of news and social media platforms (on Ruptly, InTheNow and Twitter) in motion to disseminate these messages more widely (Elshehawy et al., 2021, p. 13).

The pattern of reporting derogatory coverage of Chancellor Merkel and the government, and cultivating an image of Germany as crumbling under the pressure of large numbers of migrants, had begun quite some time before the election campaign. In January 2016, a year and a half earlier, news about the rape of a young Russian-German girl of 13 by three Arab men made it into the headlines. This case, which attracted much national and international attention, is illustrative of the different components of disinformation against Germany. A few days after the first report was published, it was established that the story, referred to as the “Lisa case”, was totally untrue. The girl in question had run away from her parents and then lied about the rape. By then, however, the story had hit the headlines, especially in the Russian state media. Despite the fact that it was known that the story was false, it continued to be covered in the news and on news websites. The story is alleged to have emerged from what Janda refers to as “a minor website for Russian expats living in Germany” (Janda, 2016; Kondratov & Johansson-Nogués, 2022, p. 13). It might not have gained momentum had it not been for events in Cologne a few weeks before, when migrant men attacked women during the New Year’s Eve celebrations (Kondratov & Johansson-Nogués, 2022, p. 13). Coverage of the reported rapes on New Year’s Eve was framed around the lax and passive German police being unwilling to act, make arrests, or file charges against the perpetrators. This very same framing was initially applied to the Lisa case.

Set in this context, the story attracted news value and was further heightened a few days later, when a team from the Russian Channel One interviewed a woman at a rally of the ultranationalist National Democratic Party of Germany, who presented herself as Lisa’s aunt. In the interview, she claimed that the police and media were concealing the truth about what had happened to Lisa. The interview was broadcast on the Channel One news bulletin that day and it was repeated once again, this time by the Russian correspondent Ivan Blagov, that Lisa had been raped by three men from the Middle East (See McGuinness, 2016). The story went viral and within 10 days had been viewed on Facebook one million times (Decker, 2021, p. 226).

At this point the scoop was picked up by several Russian state media outlets, including RT International, Sputnik, and RT Deutsch. More stories appeared with even more gruesome accounts of girls being raped by men from the Middle East while a passive and disengaged police force did nothing. The Lisa story was further disseminated by right-wing German groups through their social media sites, and it was later argued that AfD had capitalized on the discontent stirred up by the campaign.

By the time the Lisa story was revealed as a fabrication, it had already ignited strong reactions from prominent Russian immigrants, some of whom marched to the German chancellery in protest. These street protests, broadcast on Russian-affiliated media such as RT Deutsch, as well as other national and international media, involved emotional speeches and images of banners with appeals to treat children with respect and to keep them safe regardless of their nationality (RT Deutsch Jan 23 2016; Decker, 2021, p. 216). German-Russian minority communities stood side by side with far-right wing activists, and it was reported that such demonstrations took place all over Germany. Banners read for example “It’s not just about Lisa; we want order and safety restored in Germany”; “Together against chaos”; and “We trust the media less and less” (Decker, 2021, p. 227 with ref. to Gunkel & Sternberg, 2016), showing that the protests went beyond the case of Lisa and vented mistrust in public institutions more generally.

The case also reached the highest diplomatic levels when Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergej Lavrov accused the German police and legal system of not taking anti-Russian sentiments seriously due to political correctness (Meister, 2016). Lavrov commented on the Lisa case in a press conference:

We wish Germany success in dealing with the enormous problems caused by migrants. I hope these issues do not get swept under the rug, repeating the situation when a Russian girl’s disappearance in Germany was hushed up for a long time for some reasons. Now, at least, we are communicating with her lawyer, who is working with her family and with the Russian Embassy. It is clear that Lisa did not exactly decide voluntarily to disappear for 30 hours. Truth and justice must prevail here. (Sergej Lavrov, quoted in Decker, 2021, p. 227)

According to some commentators, the Lisa case was seen as a “wake up call” for Germany’s political elites and played a part in Germany’s deteriorating relations with Russia (Meister, 2016). The case also exposed the extent to which AfD and other far-right activist movements were able to use the disinformation campaign to their own advantage. According to Decker (2021, p. 216): “With the indirect aid of the Russian government’s foreign media apparatus, AfD has translated disaffection and resentment within the Russian-German community into part of its strategy for electoral success”.

France

French scholars have argued that, compared to most other European states, France’s friendly relations with Russia and before that the Soviet Union—especially among its leftist parties and in more recent decades with its right-wing parties—have left responses and countermeasures to RT and Sputnik disinformation less developed, and that disinformation has been downplayed as a security issue. Vilmer (2019) talks about a pro-Russian seam stretching from the extreme left to the extreme right. Three of the major presidential candidates in the first round of the 2017 presidential election—Marine Le Pen, François Fillon, and Jean-Luc Mélanchon—for example, favored lifting sanctions against Russia (Vilmer, 2019).

Since the revelations of Russian involvement in that presidential election campaign, however, disinformation has been seen as a greater threat. A few weeks after the election, the newly elected President Emmanuel Macron made what was seen as a strong statement against Russia in which he condemned RT and Sputnik for interfering in the campaign and referred to them as tools of Russian disinformation. In his statement, he accused the news media outlets of concealing their true purpose, which was to deceive French citizens in the run-up to the election.

Russia Today and Sputnik have worked as agents of influence during this campaign and have spread falsehoods about me and my campaign… It was a serious offense that foreign press organizations—called to do this by whom I do not know—interfered by spreading serious untruths during a democratic election campaign. In response I will yield to nothing in never giving in….Russia Today and Sputnik acted not as press organizations nor as journalists. They have behaved as agents of influence, of propaganda and false propaganda no more and no less. (President Macron, Versailles, 29 May 2017, translation by the author)

Although foreign interference and meddling in a presidential election would have had elicited a strong response from any government, and generated public statements, domestic investigations, and countermeasures, Macron had special reasons for his strong and openly accusatory language as it was his candidacy that had been the target of the disinformation campaign. This had begun several months earlier with the spreading of rumors, false information, and forged documents (Vilmer, 2019), but efforts to sabotage the campaign peaked with what came to be known as the Macron leaks.

These leaks involved the release of half a million tweets containing over 20,000 emails and large amounts of stolen data, including forged documents disseminated within 24 hours and sent from trolls and fake accounts (bots), all with the hashtag #MacronLeaks. This took place only two days before the second round of the elections when no media, political party, or think tank is allowed to publish political information that might influence the result. This denied the Macron campaign any opportunity to respond to or counter the information contained in the leaks.

However, it was later found that despite the large number of tweets and the timing of their release, the campaign had had little impact (Vilmer, 2019). Users who engaged with the campaign were found to be mainly foreign and not French (Ferrara, 2017). Lemke and Habegger (2022) studied the Macron Leaks by analyzing the RT and Sputnik Twitter feeds and independent accounts (so-called panel tweets) that were active during and after the presidential election. They found that the Twitter links to the initial stories by RT and Sputnik on the #MacronLeaks attracted little attention. The revised stories, however, which contained more substantial (mis)information about the leaks gained traction and increased activity on the internet between Twitter accounts. The number of tweets and retweets about the MacronLeaks were then considerable, indicating a high level of activity at both Sputnik and RT, which led Lemke and Habegger (2022, pp. 13–14) to argue that RT and Sputnik were viewed by the creators of the Macron leak hashtags as vessels for pushing the (mis)information provided.

Notwithstanding the Macron Leaks, in his study of RT and Sputnik’s coverage of the presidential election campaign, Zapico Alonso (2022) found negative coverage of Macron’s candidacy throughout. Macron and his candidacy were denigrated in articles and interviews. Macron was said to resemble a US agent backed by a rich gay lobby and there were allegations of an extramarital affair (see Vilmer, 2019, p. 4, Zapico Alonso, 2022, p. 37).

Russian state media disinformation about France is perhaps best known to center around opposition to the Macron candidacy, including through the Macron Leaks. However, the Russian state media outlets also focused their coverage of France on migration and reporting on strong anti-immigration sentiments. This is known to be a favored topic of the extreme right-wing parties. Mattelart (2018) analyzed the French-speaking edition of RT in one week of 2017 (June 29 to July 6) and found that RT gave ample support to the extreme right, including Front National and its leader, Marine Le Pen. Her critique of Macron was made in colorful language in several news articles, which in turn gave rise to comments from readers in even stronger language (Mattelart, 2018, p. 18). However, as in findings on analyses of Russian state media coverage of other Western countries, it was not uncommon for the RT and Sputnik newsrooms to support contrasting views, even diametrically opposed positions, between political elites quoted in the articles and readers’ commentaries. At times, conflicts took place between different political parties and representatives, giving the impression not of a climate conducive to open debate, but of chaos and disorder. With reference to reported disagreements between Le Pen and other right-wing proponents, it was found that a considerable number of comments published opposed Le Pen and disagreed with her projections of France as unruly and rebellious (p. 18). Mattélart sums up the main findings on the depiction of France by RT:

By glorifying Russian foreign policy and its leader, by vehemently criticizing the US government as well as the European institutions, (by) condemning with no less force the policies of the French president by distilling from them more or less elaborate arguments against immigration and elevating itself as a defender of a threatened morality, French RT has managed to seduce the public which, if one is to believe the commentaries published on the site, is more than willing to accept the theses conveyed by the extreme right. (Mattelart, 2018, pp. 20–21, translation by the author)

The image of France as a troubled society is therefore in line with RT and Sputnik’s coverage of other European states with migration as among the foremost causes for concern, along with declining morale and expressed sympathies for anti-immigration views, but differing in its depictions of exceptionally severe conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims. As in other countries, the political leadership is vehemently criticized and distrusted, and political parties and public institutions are seen as failing (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019; see also Lemke & Habegger, 2022, p. 21).

In contrast to most other studies, Mattelart (2018) reviews all types of news broadcast on French-speaking RT during the week analyzed. Thus the study also includes news reporting on topics other than those centered on France. It found a number of articles glorifying Russia and President Putin, contrasting Russian global policy with US policy and promoting a multipolar world order, in line one might add with the French foreign policy tradition. The international coverage in the French language edition of RT gave a voice to well-known international figures such as the Argentinian soccer player Maradona, who expressed his appreciation for Russia and President Putin (p. 12). To this were added stories ridiculing President Trump and denigrating officials in his administration. The European Union was not ridiculed as much as it was depicted as weak and malfunctioning, with Members of the European Parliament choosing to be elsewhere when Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission was invited to speak. Articles such as these stirred fierce anti-EU comments from readers who called for a “Frexit”. The migration crisis was reported in both a European and a specifically French context, and raised concerns about replacement theory, concern that the number of people with non-European backgrounds was about to surpass the number of native born Europeans (Mattelart, 2018).

It is noted above that RT and Sputnik have been found to capitalize on nationally sensitive political and social problems that tend to generate polarization, domestic unrest, and violence. In France, racial and social cleavages have found expression in rioting in the suburbs, anti-immigration sentiments and even terrorist attacks, all of which are the kind of topics RT and Sputnik tend to cover from a perspective closely aligned with the French far right. Added to this, RT and Sputnik were heavily engaged in the coverage of the Yellow Vest movement—a protest movement that revealed yet another social cleavage in French society, in this case between socio-economic classes. The protests began in November 2018 in response to the increased cost of living, due primarily to a rise in fuel prices, but grew into a movement calling for social and economic justice that coincided with Macron’s highly unpopular proposals to reduce the budget deficit. A study of RT and Sputnik Twitter feeds in the first month of the Yellow Vest campaign showed that RT and Sputnik content on Twitter was “relatively popular across a broad spectrum of the French political landscape, from left-leaning to far-right parties”. The Yellow Vest communities and their representatives, however, only rarely appeared in the feeds (Gérard et al., 2020, p. 2, See also Chap. 2).

The UK

In their quantitative framing analysis of RT and Sputnik’s coverage of the UK in sampled weeks from 2017 and 2018, Ramsay and Robertshaw find a majority of the 952 articles (and 1361 frames) to be framed as crime/violence alienation. This might be explained by the time periods chosen, which included terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, and the Skripal poisoning. Outside of these events, however, crime/violence framed news items did not dominate the coverage. It is therefore worth paying more attention to the high number of “social conflict” and “failure of government and political parties” frames. Social conflicts included issues such as “conflict and disagreement between ethnic, religious, racial and social groups” and “tensions related to immigration”, whereas government failure was about incompetence, governmental division, and scandal (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 73). Like the Swedish case, there were relatively few articles framed around partisan conflicts compared to those reporting on government failure (p. 74).

A major event in the UK—which brought the Russian state in direct confrontation with the British government, and which gave rise to large amounts of news coverage in RT and Sputnik as well as in the British and other international media—was the Skripal poisoning in March 2018. A former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal, and his daughter Yulia living in Salisbury were found to have been poisoned by a nerve agent (Novichok) known to have been developed by the Soviet Union. Investigations were started but it was not until six months later that the British police identified two suspects who turned out to be agents of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). In an analysis of the news coverage of RT and Sputnik (as well as the British media) in the four weeks immediately following the incident, researchers found a mix of competing, confusing, and contradictory narratives about the incident. It seemed as if the primary aim was to inundate the news feeds with as many narratives as possible to create confusion about how the events had unfolded (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 23).

Statements in the coverage (made in 138 of the 735 articles), concerning explanations of the circumstances leading up to the poisoning, its origin, the motives and the actors involved, as well as the unfolding of events, were found to be based on a broad range of sources, dominated by a few Kremlin sources, but all of which argued Russia’s innocence and speculated about why Western governments were blaming Russia. Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019) summarize the findings from their comprehensive analysis:

Narratives often appeared following public interventions by Western governments. Following Theresa May’s speech to the UK Parliament on 12th March in which Russia was accused and the nerve agent ‘Novichok’ identified, a flurry of narratives contesting the origins and existence of Novichok appeared on RT and Sputnik, and narratives framing the incident as defined by geopolitics and Western domestic political problems began to emerge. (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 22)

Another narrative that was often repeated told that Russian express willingness to cooperate with the British in the investigation had been turned down. Instead the UK and the West, often personified by Prime Minister Theresa May, one-sidedly accused Russia of being behind the poisoning despite there being no such evidence. Editorial statements by RT and Sputnik refuted the allegations made about Russia’s guilt (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 22).

Looking more closely at the news reporting, two British analyses of Russian and British news coverage demonstrate the extent to which mediatization processes played a role in the Skripal poisoning. They define the incident as a “disruptive media event” (Tolz et al., 2021; Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021; see also Dayan, 2009 and Katz & Liebes, 2007). Within the media events framework, Tolz et al. (2021) emphasize the commercial drivers behind the developments in the case. Although RT began covering the incident as a UK media-driven story, said to be detached from reality and to serve as a good illustration of the notorious hysteria of the media in the UK, the channel eventually fell in with the dominant storyline of most other national and international media, and broadcast an interview with the two suspects who had allegedly been ordered to speak to the channel by President Putin himself (Tolz et al., 2021, p. 2982). What might be supposed was an attempt to strengthen the credibility of the Russian state was a failure, however, as both international and domestic audiences doubted that the interviewees had told the truth. The credibility of the RT narrative thus fell and “RT’s continued use of mocking sarcasm, for example, by claiming that the main damage caused by the interview was to Salisbury’s image as a tourist destination” did nothing to restore the reputation or the credibility of either the Russian government or RT (Tolz et al., 2021).

In a similar vein, the study by Birge and Chatterje-Doody (2021) shows how RT and Sputnik made use of their respective editorial policies, “question more” (RT) and “tell the untold” (Sputnik), in order to contrast their approach to reporting on the incident with that of the British news media. Birge and Chatterje-Doody describe the Russian and British coverage as engaged in a “credibility competition” (p. 171) and assign the theme of “uncertainty” as a descriptive label of how the Russian state media covered the case. In reporting on the incident as a narrative of uncertainty, RT and Sputnik sought to divert attention from Russia and the investigation of the incident, and to portray the British media allegations as speculation. Drawing on BBC World, ITV News, and Sky News, where the Skripal poisoning was compared to the murder of Aleksander Litvinenko,Footnote 2 RT and Sputnik argued that the British media was more interested in exploiting the incident to create a thrilling spy story than in reporting the facts of the case (Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021, p. 178). British media sensationalism was contrasted with interviews on RT and Sputnik, where solid and reliable experts made rational and sensible suppositions about the incident.

When, six months into the investigations, two Russian suspects were identified by the British police, the framing of the story changed. The two men, said to be salesmen visiting the Salisbury cathedral at the time of the poisoning, were interviewed on RT by editor-in-chief Simonyan in what seemed to be an effort to further stress the uncertainties around the case; but it was an effort that failed judging by the comments from online audiences (Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021, pp. 182–183). Following the interview, the substance of the suspects’ links to the Salisbury case were all-but-ignored on RT, which instead began to focus on “light interest tangents” (Birge & Chatterje-Doody, 2021, p. 183). The coverage added humor and satire, and downplayed its critical edge, lending support to Ramsay description of RT and Sputnik coverage as “competing and often contradictory” (2019).

Nonetheless, the analyses of the Skripal case show how the news media stood at the center of a diplomatic and security political conflict between Russia and the UK, revealing not only political distrust and diplomatic conflict, but also distrust of each other’s media coverage. The UK government is depicted as lying, not to be trusted, and out to harm Russia. Russian spokespersons, experts, and diplomats, along with a few Western critics, make statements that back up the coverage, saying that the UK had “rushed to blame Russia without establishing the facts”, that there was “no evidence that Russia is responsible”, that the response was driven by Russophobia and by “biased UK/Western media inflaming tensions” and that the whole affair had been turned into a “witch hunt” where there was “no intention of proper investigation before blaming Russia” (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, pp. 25–27).

It is notable that the coverage was framed around Russia itself and its disrespectful treatment by the UK, including what were described as preposterous allegations about involvement in the poisoning. In this sense, the Skripal coverage differs from coverage of other topics in that here Russia itself tends to take center stage and less is reported about the UK. In contrast to the Nordic studies, for instance, the studies of the Skripal case find less coverage denigrating the targeted society, such as depicting the UK as a country riven by domestic unrest and as ungovernable. Instead, since the case directly involved Russian foreign relations, RT and Sputnik coverage appeared centered on defending Russia’s power position and international reputation at a time when a presidential election was upcoming and Russia was to host the FIFA Football World Cup. Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019), however, note that after Prime Minister May’s intervention, in which she accused Russia, stories were published that linked these accusations to a UK which had manipulated the few allies it could still rely on “into anti-Russian actions against their interests” and that was seeking to deflect attention away from the decline of democracy in the UK (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 28).

The United States

In the case of the United States, Russian disinformation by way of Russian state-affiliated media covers a vast array of topics and employs a number of formats. That said, three main areas stand out. The first concerns the Russian media coverage of the US election campaigns in 2016 and 2020, including the primaries (see e.g. Tucker et al., 2018 p. 28; Shekhovtsov, 2018; Benkler et al., 2018). Second, are the domestic conflicts around race, most frequently reported in recent years around the Black Lives Matter movement. Third, there is an anti-establishment theme that is not unique to the US, but particularly strong there, within which can be found a large variety of negative public attitudes and sentiments such as citizen mistrust of political leaders, conflicts between the president and other public bodies, accusations, and allegations and indictments against public figures in the administration. To this third group should also be added allegations of undemocratic practices, or conflicts over the US Constitution and its foundational pillars. Polarization is a motor in all of the themes. Tucker et al. (2018) argue that the US two-party political system makes it especially vulnerable to polarization being used by a foreign hostile power to cause harm by way of disinformation (Tucker et al., 2018, p. 61).

In their large-scale study of RT and Sputnik coverage in 2017 and 2018, Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019) list a number of topics sorted under the most frequent frames on coverage of the US: “violence/crime”, “government and institutional failure”, and “institutional conflict”. The institutional conflict frame, they write, “was dominated by coverage of conflicts between the President and other branches of government and public bodies” (p. 76) along with numerous other investigations that started after the 2016 election, such as those regarding Russian interference in the presidential campaign. RT and Sputnik argue that these investigations prevent the government from functioning properly. However, failures of public institutions are also given considerable attention with police misconduct, dysfunctional public health systems, and the failures of the US military most frequently reported. Carter and Carter (2021) mapped RT content by way of links to articles on Twitter. They found examples of conflicts in and between US states, and between the federal and state levels. Moreover, RT and Sputnik also report on violence, crime statistics, and gun crime in schools or tragedies where young children are perpetrators (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019, p. 77).

Added to the domestic perspective is coverage describing the US as the NATO bully that both complicates the workings of the organization and exerts pressure on other states to follow its lead, while forcing US weapon systems on them (p. 67). This is also a theme found in Carter and Carter (2021), where the US is as a superpower exercising its influence globally by ignoring international rules and norms. A quarter of the articles report on US allies and how they are plagued by terrorism, crime, and corruption. They also find a fair amount of bizarre, more or less believable and silly stories, which they refer to as “viral content”.

It is interesting to note that the Russian state media reporting on the US does not just cover polarizing, contentious issues at the top of the domestic news agenda, but also reports on NATO—an alliance that the US audience is known to ignore for the most part and which tends to raise little interest (Oates et al., 2020, p. 8). This differs from how RT and Sputnik usually report on Western countries but is a reminder that Russian geopolitical security concerns should also be seen as driving forces of the international coverage, and that future studies should pay more attention to this. The study on the Nordic countries presented above also found that the Sputnik coverage included a number of articles about NATO (see Deverell et al., 2021).

It is mentioned above that the disinformation produced by Sputnik and RT tends to target what can be thought of as national vulnerabilities or cherished values. Race can be seen to fit both those criteria in a US context. Race is a point of contention in the US past and present, and is closely connected to the principles of freedom and equality, which are similarly laden with heavy historical symbolism as well as topical questions on the political agenda and at the core of the US Constitution. In a study of Russian influencing operations on Facebook, Bradshaw et al. (2022) analyze the case of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, to identify the frames used by different Russian state-affiliated outlets (referred to as media properties). They pose two questions: “How do English-language Russian state-linked media properties cover civil unrest in the United States?”; and “Are there any differences between established broadcasters and newer, digital-first channels?” (p. 2).

The results showed that RT and Sputnik primarily produced negative frames of the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) whereas the newer media outlets supported the BLM. RT and Sputnik both depicted the protestors as violent and questions of racial justice in the US were described as hypocrisy (Bradshaw et al., 2022, p. 1). In line with previous research (see Graphika, 2020 and Stanford Internet Observatory, 2020), it was found that Sputnik and RT presented the protestors as “violent rioters and looters”, whereas the newer media sites drew attention to police violence against Black Americans (p. 3). When comparing the two sets of data—RT and Sputnik with the newer social media sites—differences were also observed with regard to the intensity of the interactivity with audiences, where the newer sites received more traffic than RT. The newer sites are more supportive of the US left, critical of the police and supportive of Black Lives Matter. RT and Sputnik instead stayed true to their right-wing national conservative positions, in this case being anti-BLM and pro-police (p. 3), while also framing the events as chaotic and reaffirming social divisions. The authors conclude that the Russian media are “playing both sides” (Bradshaw et al., 2022).

A lot of attention has been paid to Russian disinformation about the US in connection with the election campaigns of 2016 and 2020. Although it is not possible to determine exactly how RT and Sputnik coverage, their Twitter feeds, and other affiliated Russian state outlets influenced the outcome of the elections, most empirical studies assert that their coverage favored Trump with supportive reports, whereas his opponents received negative and derogatory coverage.

This is the view of Oates (2021), writing about the Russian disinformation campaigns of 2016 which gave support to Trump and disseminated damaging pieces about Hillary Clinton. She writes that: “it was often difficult to separate Russian propaganda from pro-Trump narratives” (Oates, 2020, p. 1). Oates argues that, as a libertarian media system, the US media is particularly vulnerable to the kind of information influencing attacks launched by the Russian Internet Research Agency at the time. The heavy emphasis on freedom of speech and a low degree of regulation of media content are two factors that increase this vulnerability. The principles on which a free and liberal media system is based also open the door for malign and harmful information flows, and developments in social media have facilitated dissemination of these flows (Oates et al., 2021).

In her book about Russian involvement in the US presidential elections of 2016, Kathleen Hall Jamieson reveals and analyzes a number of different ways and channels through which Trump’s election campaign was boosted by Russian state information agencies and news outlets while Clinton’s was delegitimized. Jamieson (2018, p. 164) refers to a US intelligence report published in January 2017, which concluded that:

Russia used trolls as well as RT as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton. This effort amplified stories on scandals about Secretary Clinton and the role of WikiLeaks in the elections campaign. [Such efforts sought to] undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017 quoted in Jamieson, 2018, p. 164)

The result of the 2016 presidential elections cannot be explained by Russian disinformation as a causal relationship. It is nonetheless important to identify the activities of Russian hackers, trolls, and social media influencers in order to learn about the exposure of election campaigns to foreign information influence and disinformation, and to enable national comparisons (see the sections about Germany and France above). In her study, Jamieson presents detailed accounts of such activities.

One of the major interventions that it is alleged was made by Russian information services took place when Russian hackers gained access to stored Democratic Party emails and other data and had them distributed through WikiLeaks at a highly opportune moment for the Trump campaign. At the time, this material had a large impact on the media agenda, and it was also found to have influenced the moderators of the presidential debates (Jamieson, 2018, p. 6). Jamieson alleges collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian disinformation agencies, which released a large number of emails from the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters only a few hours after the Washington Post posted what came to be known as the Access Hollywood story. This story showed Donald Trump boasting about his abuse of women and the accompanying tape, a recording from 2005, verified the views he expressed in crude language. Chair of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus is said to have urged Donald Trump to drop out of the campaign immediately after the recordings became known. However, only half an hour after publication of the Washington Post story, Wikileaks released the “cache of emails stolen by Russian operatives from the account of Clinton campaign director John Podesta” (p. 162) and all media and consequent public attention was redirected to the Democrat campaign. There was also all sorts of disinformation spread about Clinton, such as that her campaign chief was part of a secret cult (Jamieson, 2018, pp. 6–7), or that Clinton was funded by ISIS supporters, and was corrupt and physically unwell—all with WikiLeaks as the source (Jamieson, 2018, p. 62 with ref. to Woodward, 2018).

In the presidential election campaign of 2020 it was instead the Democratic candidate Joe Biden who was targeted with negative reporting, including during the primaries when RT and Sputnik gave their support to Bernie Sanders, who is politically to the left of Biden. The news reports identified Biden as a representative of the establishment with links to both Washington and Wall Street, and as being at odds with his electorate, using rough language when meeting with voters and repeatedly making blunders when speaking to an audience (Burrett, 2020, p. 12 in Oates et al., 2020). He was also tainted by allegations of interference in the justice system in Ukraine on behalf of his son. In one RT report, the Ukrainian prosecutor in the case, Viktor Shokin, is quoted as saying that Biden might be behind an attempt to poison him and bribery in connection with the case. In contrast, Sanders is presented as a victim of anti-socialist prejudice, “the people’s champion”, with the Russophobic US mainstream media working against his candidacy (Burrett, 2020, p. 12). Burrett’s analysis of the Russian coverage finds depictions of a dirty primary election campaign in the Democratic party with dishonest candidates seeking to frame one another and play tactical games behind the scenes. The various accusations, leaks, and outbursts framed the election process itself as a dysfunctional elite project with angry or disappointed voters appearing occasionally to air their mistrust and dislike (Burrett, 2020, p. 13).

Biden continued to be portrayed negatively in the ensuing presidential election campaign. Oates et al. (2020) conclude their study about the links between US websites and RT/Sputnik coverage by identifying a strong narrative alignment between Fox News tweets and RT/Sputnik coverage with regard to the coverage of Biden and his presidential campaign. They write that Sputnik and RT depict Joe Biden as “a placeholder for leftist conspiracy” as well as “corrupt” almost to the same extent as Fox News, while the narrative “Joe Biden is senile or sunsetting and a sexual deviant” appeared more often in RT and Sputnik than on Fox News (Oates et al., 2020, p. 10).

The analysis of the Russian coverage of the US primaries for the 2020 presidential election gives more detailed information about the epithets used to define the Democratic party candidates. It also discusses the image of the US constructed by the Russian state-affiliated media, which can be described as a US with a weak political system marked by hypocrisy and failing democracy, and a deeply divided population politically (Burrett, 2020, p. 14).

Looking at the treatment of candidates in Russian (RT) and Chinese (CGTN) news coverage over an extended period during the 2020 election campaign, Moore and Colley (2022) found in their analysis of RT, over a six-week period between September 29 and November 10, 2020, that over half the sampled articles focused on Donald Trump, whereas Joe Biden featured in about one-third. However, it was not just that Trump received a lot more attention; he was also by far the favored candidate (p. 8). The Biden family was accused of being a family of criminals; Joe Biden of being physically and mentally frail and his son, Hunter Biden, repeatedly referred to as corrupt and involved in scandals. When the two candidates are compared, Trump is held to be the people’s strong man and praised on everything from foreign policy achievements to bodily constitution, having succeeded in combating the Covid-19 virus (p. 8). Furthermore, the RT coverage was found to support Trump with regard to his outlook on the US political and social situation. In line with the Trump campaign, the channel presented the electoral process as fraudulent, and the US as in a state of chaos as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and the “riotous American Left”, using the Trump campaign’s reference to “Antifa”.Footnote 3

In line with the work of Jamieson (2018), Moore and Colley (2022) find ample evidence for RT’s far-right leanings, giving examples of positive depictions of the far-right Proud Boys group, referred to as “good husbands” and defenders of democracy and freedom of speech. Tensions between Afro-American communities and others in the US are paralleled with extensive coverage of US so-called culture wars, with “legacy media” as the key target for criticism along with the technology corporations Facebook and Twitter. Moore and Colley refer to RT in this context as “a domestic culture warrior” (p. 17). Added to this are unsympathetic depictions of celebrities with liberal leanings who are seen as naive, weak, and unwilling to defend conservative values (Moore & Colley, 2022, p. 11).

The findings of Moore and Colley’s study are in many respects similar to those of other analyses of RT coverage (Hoyle et al. 2023; Yablokov & Chatterje-Doody, 2022), such as on how the international channel reports as if it were a domestic news outlet taking an inside perspective (see Chap. 2). The presenters are said to use terms such as “our society” and “our media” when reporting on conditions in the US. This, write Moore and Colley, “strengthens RT’s attempt to appear as an authentic domestic US voice rather than a foreign news outlet” (pp. 11–12), which is further underlined by the omittance of references to Russia in its news reports. “It frames issues in a partisan way that mimics US right-wing news media, giving the impression it is a domestic participant in US culture wars, fighting against ‘woke’ liberal elites rather than an external observer” (p. 18). The coverage of the US presidential election thus reflects an anti-establishment position and argues wherever possible against Big Tech industry, the mainstream media, celebrities, and the so-called Washington elite (Moore & Colley, 2022, p. 17).

Ukraine

A considerable amount of research has been conducted with regard to Russian disinformation about Ukraine centered on the events that began with the street protests in 2013 (referred to as the Euromaidan uprising since it began on the Maidan square in Kyiv following President Yanukovych’s refusal to sign European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement.), which erupted following the decision by president of Ukraine Viktor Yanokovych not to bring the country closer to the EU by signing an Association Agreement. When the regime used force to put a stop to the protests, they spread from student communities mainly in Kyiv across the country and became a movement against the authoritarian regime. Yanokovych was ousted but the country was left internally divided with pro-Russian separatists in the east and a pro-EU government in Kyiv. In February and March of 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and, while many Western countries and others condemned the annexation, excluding Russia from a number of international organizations and imposing economic sanctions, hostilities continued in the east. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting a full-scale war. This is not the place to do justice to the role of disinformation in either the run-up to the Russian annexation of Crimea or its invasion of Ukraine. Instead, this section presents the findings of various studies on Russian disinformation in a state it considers to be part of its sphere of influence, with which Russia and its population share a past but, due to which, it finds itself in direct confrontation with Western and European ideals and values (see Claessen, 2023; Chaban et al., 2023).

In her analysis of Russian television coverage (Channel One) between 2012 and 2014—before and after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Khaldarova (2021) found that the framing of Ukraine went from a fraternal depiction as Russia’s little brother to a hostile “other”. Drawing on narrative theory and applying Wagnsson and Barzanje’s narrative strategies (2021) to Russian e-news platforms, Chaban et al. (2023) found similar projections of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship. The strategic narratives that shaped the Russian discourse were an antagonistic communication strategy. Ukraine was moving away from Russia, turning into an other, in this case as a result of seeking visa-free access to the EU, and “emerges as a wretched international player and a worthless partner”, as well as “a contemporary antagonist of Russia” (Chaban et al., 2023, pp. 15–16).

In Khaldarova’s study, turning into a hostile other is connected to the Euromaidan protests and pro-EU movement, and the Russian news reports began to define the protestors as aggressive ultra-right radicals, personifying them as fascists and “heavily-built men with covered faces wielding clubs and other weapons”. It broadcasts reports that stressed the destruction the protestors left in their wake (Khaldarova, 2021, p. 14). A terminology reminiscent of World War II became more frequent as references were made to “genocide” and “mass graves”.

The Ukrainian government was associated with the terms “junta” and “neo-Nazi” (p. 15). News coverage on Channel One was found to have undergone a gradual narrative turn from positioning Ukraine as a subordinate younger sibling in need of Russian benevolence to depicting it as a distrusted and deceptive actor with a growing acceptance of ultra-right groups and “fascists”. In Chaban et al. (2023), the narrative speaks of betrayal as Ukraine becomes increasingly pro-European. Shortly before the outbreak of the Maidan upheavals, both the Ukraine government and pro-EU Ukrainians are reported as being reckless and irresponsible, “fuel[ling] anti-Russian hysteria”, and allowing members of ultra-right parties into parliament. As the protests continue, the Ukrainian government and the pro-EU protestors are no longer foolish, naïve, and misguided, but increasingly referred to as fascists and “monsters”. These depictions became more pronounced after clashes in Odessa in May 2014 when many people died. The more radical the language, the more antagonistic the representations of the pro-EU Ukrainians. Khaldarova writes:

The channel also began employing dehumanized characterizations, such as ‘monsters’ in reference to Ukrainians….The radical groups’ members were distinguished from other Ukrainians only when it was necessary to emphasize that people in Ukraine (especially Russian speakers) were suffering from the massive spread of fascism in their country. (Khaldarova, 2021, p. 14)

Visuals further stressed the contrasts between pro-EU Ukrainians and Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians. In their study, Grigor (Khaldarova) and Pantti (2021) analyzed Channel One visuals in combination with texts and verbal commentary for a period of six months in 2014 that overlapped with the larger study referred to above. Their analysis shows that the Russian news coverage highlighted the suffering of civilians, mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians, due to the war, and their struggles to survive or flee. There were numerous images of worried, crying, or sad-looking mothers holding their children close. Intermingled with these stories were also fake reports of mothers talking about Ukrainian atrocities and brutality (Grigor [Khaldarova] & Pantti, 2021, p. 150).

In the fall of 2014, Channel One added a military dimension to its coverage by paying special attention to the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian troops, often labelled fascists, were reported to have destroyed Soviet monuments and World War II war memorials. When Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in eastern Ukraine, blaming the Ukrainian army fitted well with the established narrative of Ukraine as the hostile other (Khaldarova, 2021, p. 16). Overall, the narrative about Ukraine is one in which Russians are devastated, and suffering under a Russo-phobic and fascist government. The visuals reinforce this message (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2021, p. 150; see also Hutchings & Szostek, 2015).

It should be noted that the coverage of Ukraine is set in a different context compared to how RT and Sputnik report on European states and the US. In their comparative study of European countries and the United States, Ramsay and Robertshaw (2019) decided to include Ukraine due to its “unique position as a target (and subject) of Russian propaganda” (p. 72). Ukraine can be seen as a case where disinformation is targeted at a country under extraordinary political and military pressure (p. 72). However, whereas the other states analyzed in this context are unquestionably part of the Western sphere, despite its ambitions to position itself as Western and European, Ukraine is not perceived as such from a Russian perspective. Furthermore, the Russian military invasion made Ukraine a different case from the countries not subject to military aggression. This does not exclude Russian news coverage from being used for disinformation to destabilize the country. On the contrary, this is why Russian and pro-Russian news outlets have been banned from Ukraine.Footnote 4 However, proper exploration of disinformation under these circumstances calls for a different research design than that which the current study can offer. Studies on war journalism tend to highlight a number of difficulties with news coverage and information flows during armed conflict, some of which are somewhat similar to the disinformation discussed in this book, others of a different nature.

However, research has found that the strategies of Russian disinformation used against Western Europe, most notably in the US presidential election of 2016, were first developed and tested during the Russian aggression against Ukraine (Doroshenko & Lukito, 2021, p. 4664). In a study on the so-called 4D strategies, dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay (see Snegovaya, 2015), which originated in Cold War Soviet propaganda of reflexive control, Doroshenko and Lukito show that all four strategies were used by way of Twitter and Internet Research Agency (IRA) handles, supported by offline Russian news. They write: “Russian media supported the IRA’s disinformation campaign by characterizing the Ukrainian government as illegitimate and brutal, using derogatory terms such as ‘the fascist junta’ and ‘Banderites’, referring to Ukrainian WWII independence movement leader Stepan Bandera” (p. 4666)

African States

Russian disinformation in African states has perhaps not been highlighted to the same extent as it has in Europe, but French scholars have shown that RT France and Sputnik have significant audiences in several French-speaking countries in Africa. In fact, RT is much more popular in the French-speaking countries of Africa than it is in France (Limonier, 2019). Sputnik is the more popular and widespread of the two. Limonier suggests that this might be due to Sputnik’s more local targeting strategies, using content grounded in local media or blogs (pp. 8–9). He writes that Sputnik has inherited a “certain tradition of sensationalism which is well-adapted to modern techniques for optimizing visibility, such as clickbait”, a phenomenon where the number of visits to websites is used for marketing purposes and where content is sensationalist in order to attract large numbers of visits (Limonier, 2019, p. 9).

From empirical studies it seems that use of the Russian international channels, in contrast to what has been found in Europe and the US, is more geared to winning hearts and minds than denigrating, smearing, and weakening African societies. It is worth stressing that the Russian state media’s coverage of the Sahel region, for instance, does not show domestic perspectives on the situation in the African states or in hexagonal France. Instead, the coverage contains stories with negative projections of France with reference to neo-colonialism and past colonialism (Audinet, 2021, p. 69), but there is little coverage of domestic frailties, violence, and conflict (see e.g. Limonier, 2019; Audinet, 2021). So much so that the term public diplomacy might be a better choice of word than disinformation, since it connotes the type of non-confrontational strategic communication in which Sputnik and RT are engaged in with the African states. At the same time it should be noted that the popularity of RT and Sputnik in Africa is also due to the successful adoption of Russian media content by African actors who use it to advance their own political agendas (Limonier & Laruelle, 2021, p. 417). Analyses of RT and Sputnik news content in French-speaking African states find that it tends to legitimize the Russian presence in Africa and, as part of that endeavor, to sow doubts regarding the usefulness and achievements of the French contingent in the region (Limonier, 2019). When they appear in the news coverage, France and its deployed forces tend to be presented as failing or performing badly in their fight against terrorism in support of the Sahel governments. In comparison, the Russian forces are reported to have been more successful.

Limonier writes that: “RT and Sputnik news agencies have succeeded in their aim to obtain the ‘normalization’ and institutionalization of their position as part of the media landscape of French-speaking Africa” (Limonier, 2019, p. 19). At the same time, the study finds considerable differences between countries with regard to the frequency with which RT or Sputnik content is accessed or disseminated, and the type of news content that is spread. With regard to politically relevant content, Algeria, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast were shown to be among the French-speaking countries with the largest number of sites on which RT and Sputnik could be found. On the content of the news, the study calls for more research but lists the situation in the Middle East, and Syria in particular, Israel, and Palestine, as well as news of a more local character.

One geopolitically hot topic reported on by Sputnik France and RT France was Operation Barkhane, which was launched in 2014 as an anti-insurgency military operation in the Sahel region to support the governments of Chad, Niger, the Central African Republic (CAR), Burkina Faso, Mauretania, and Mali to maintain control of their territory. After a coup d’état in Mali in 2021, the French government decided to pull out and the operation ended in November 2022. Audinet found in his study of RT France and Sputnik France coverage of the operation that both reported critically about the French forces and their presence in the Sahel region (Audinet, 2021, 59pp). The study of news reports from the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2020 showed that, contrary to what has been found in most other studies on RT and Sputnik, two-thirds of the articles were fact-based, written in an analytical style and neutral/impartial with regard to the French presence in the region. Around one-fifth of the articles were polemical or sensationalist, with news criticizing the management of the operation and the lack of political strategy, which was said to have aggravated the terrorism it was meant to reduce. As little as 10% denigrated the French presence in the area. These negative and critical news stories, however, were often satirical, sarcastic, and ironic, and the problems with the operation were reported as connected to the French colonial past. There is for example an RT video showing a sick soldier collapsing next to President Macron on a visit to the base in N’Djamena, having just sung the Marseillaise (RT France Dec 24 2018, referenced by Audinet, 2021, p. 65).

There seems to be little if any of the kind of disinformation found in RT and Sputnik coverage of European countries involving distorted messages, lies, and derogatory depictions of leaders or of deteriorating societies (p. 69). Audinet’s case study on CAR, where the coverage was produced mainly by Russian journalists, tells a different story with regard to topics and frames, but shares with the former case the format of fact-based and analytical news (2021). One of the major themes in the coverage is the competition for power on the African continent, in which France is losing influence, which is demonstrated by a number of news stories that deal only with the Russian presence and engagements in CAR, completely ignoring French significance and influence (Audinet, 2021, p. 72 referring to Sputnik France 20 April, 2018 and 10 December 2018). There are reports on summits between the Russians and the French in regard to CAR as well as political statements referring to the Russian presence in Africa, with a senior French diplomat warning against what he refers to as “la présence de mercenaires russes en Centrafrique” [The presence of Russian mercenaries in the Central African Republic] pursuing an anti-French policy in CAR (Audinet, 2021, p. 72 referring to Sputnik France January 24, 2019). Only occasionally are there articles attacking the French position using emotional language and a hostile tone. The journalist behind the greatest number of chronicles and editorials contrasts Russian stability with French chaos and mocks “l’hystérie élyséenne”, interpreting French presidential outbursts as a response to the alliance forming between CAR and Russia (Audinet, 2021, p. 76).

In Sum

This chapter has presented research that has used mainly qualitative methods to study Russian disinformation through Sputnik and RT in various European countries, the United States, and some African countries. The review found similarities in several respects. Much of the coverage is of domestic news about the target country and includes, in almost all cases, conflicts and problems related to immigration, social unrest, and public mistrust of the authorities and governments. In countries such as France, Germany, and the United States, studies of disinformation activities during election campaigns have shown that RT and Sputnik tend to support right-wing conservative candidates and parties, have sought to denigrate leftist and centrist candidates, and seek to sabotage information flows. In coverage where Russian interests have been at stake, analyses have shown that RT and Sputnik not only denigrate the target country, but also defend Russian security interests.

The studies about the Skripal poisoning and the downing of flight MH17 were two such events where the Russian authorities made use of RT and Sputnik to create coverage in their defense and in so doing engaged in disinformation. By contrast, other studies of news output during an extended period that focus on day-to-day coverage found Russian foreign policy and political views largely absent from the news. Even if studies of separate cases, crises, and election campaigns make relevant and insightful contributions to our understanding of disinformation, the disinformation that they reveal should not be defined as occasional or disparate campaigns. The kind of disinformation that is carried out by state international news organizations represents an everyday practice with harmful narratives being produced and disseminated on a daily basis on whatever topics set the news agenda at that particular moment.