Suchergebnisse

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.