Suchergebnisse

On 2 March 2022, in response to framed and anti-Western narratives surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Council of the European Union legally banned two Russian state-sponsored media outlets, RT and Sputnik, within EU borders. The decision of the Council divided opinion. While the ban indeed limits the reach of these Russian 'organs of influence', it also infringes on fundamental human rights within the EU. It is therefore pertinent to scrutinise if the benefit of prohibiting the Kremlin's antagonistic narration is worth the sacrifice of impeding fundamental principles of democracy. How proportional and how necessary is the ban? The current article assesses these questions from a psychological and legal perspective. It argues that while the decision to ban RT and Sputnik is legally sound, the justification for the decision would benefit from a more elaborate explanation of balancing the different (colliding) fundamental rights, not least since the disruptive effect of the RT and Sputnik narration is unsettled. Moreover, instead of a blanket ban, a less stringent and more nuanced approach could be more appropriate, affording the ability to appropriately sanction RT and Sputnik while remaining proportional and mitigating a possible backfire effect.

The reach of illiberal international propaganda outlets rests on citizens in democratic countries as recipients and potential disseminators. However, little research has scrutinised the audiences for such platforms. Why do audiences in democratic states consume content from such outlets, and how far do they actually align with it ideologically? The present research seeks to address this gap. Building on and extending the recent research findings of a large-scale survey, interviews with Swedish media consumers were conducted between 23 March and 13 April 2022, providing a unique close-up on a group of media consumers who stated that they consumed, among other alternative media, the Russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik as part of their media diet. The findings, elicited through interviews and the Q-sort method, challenge previous research that presents this audience in a one-dimensional way. First, we investigate their alignment with different political narratives, identifying three different profiles. Although only one profile generally aligned with the RT/Sputnik messaging, almost all the participants appreciate the content and share it on social media. Secondly, we examine their rationale for consumption, revealing a diverse array of motivations, and leading us to theorise four distinct consumption profiles: Distant Observers, Reluctant Consumers, Media Nihilists and Establishment Critics. We interpret these results and discuss their broader implications, before reflecting on the complexities of characterising audiences consuming authoritarian international broadcasting.

Hostile political actors can use antagonistic strategic narration as a means of marring the image of targeted states in the international arena. The current article presents a content analysis of narratives about the Netherlands that were published by Russian state-sponsored media outlet RT between 2018 and 2020, capturing a period of heightened tension between the states. The authors distil and describe six overarching narratives used to portray the Netherlands as a state of liberal chaos. They analyse them using a framework of strategies underpinning Russian state-sponsored media's narration, and interpret their strategic functions within the context of recent Dutch–Russian relations. Finally, they provide directions for future research, such as expanding on nuances within Russian media's negative portrayals of different states or exploring the possible psychological responses this narration may elicit in the Dutch domestic audience.

AbstractThe effects of exposure to Russian propaganda have long been feared; however, academic research examining responses is scarce. This study aims to investigate the responses of Russian speakers in Latvia to a narrative propagated by the Kremlin‐sponsored media outlet Sputnik Latvia that narrates Latvian government policy as Russophobic. The potential to entrench existing ethnopolitical divisions has been highlighted as a possible effect of Russian speakers consuming this narration. We adopt a comprehensive, mixed‐method research approach, where we first provide an analysis of the content of Sputnik Latvia's Russophobia narrative in its recent output. Then, using this analysis, we examine how Russian‐speaking participants respond to this content in a preregistered survey experiment and a focus group. Theoretically, we orient around the rejection‐identification model. This predicts individuals to generally experience lower well‐being after perceiving group‐based discrimination, but that embracing the stigmatized identity can help maintain well‐being despite this perceived devaluation. Our results showed that even brief exposure to Sputnik Latvia's Russophobia narrative led to higher levels of perceived discrimination and group identification in Russian speakers. However, we found no significant effects on well‐being, which deviates from extant literature on discrimination. We discuss the reasons for this and suggest future directions.