‘Propaganda Fights’ and ‘Disinformation Campaigns’: the discourse on information warfare in Russia-West relations

ABSTRACT

This article scrutinises the role of discourses on the manipulative use of information for Russia–West relations. Debates on so-called information warfare have gained prevalence both in the West and in Russia. Applying a poststructuralist framework, the comparative analysis discusses how these discourses work, respectively, how they interact, and what this interaction implies for Russia–West relations. While the contemporary discourses facilitate a confrontational stance of both Russia and the West towards the respective Other, it is argued, first, that these dispositions are malleable. On the long run, Russia–West relations are thus not condemned to remain hostile. Secondly, both sides still speak to some extent the same language. However, if the current cooldown prevails, this common discursive ground may fade and give way to more fundamental confrontational stances. Finally, by revealing each other's contingency, discourses in both countries make it appear less natural which interpretation is ‘true’ or ‘right’.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse analysis
• Poststructuralism
• comparative research
• Russia-West relations
• information warfare
• identity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Tom Casier for his advice and support as well as two anonymous reviewers for their thoughts and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Mario Baumann holds an MLitt in International Security Studies from the University of St Andrews. He is currently reading for his PhD at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies. In his research, he focusses on the interaction of interpretations in Russia and the European Union. His wider interests include Discourse Analysis, Poststructuralism, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.

Notes

1 The deterioration of Russia-West relations has been subject to a vast array of studies employing different approaches. Handy overviews offer Forsberg (2018) and Götz and Merlen (2019).

2 See Annex 1 for all primary sources analysed.

3 The empirical findings for Russia are primarily representative of the RG sample. Given the big portion of Kommersant articles that do not correspond to RG articles, it cannot be claimed that both outlets articulate a very similar representation of the West. However, no coherent representation was identified within Kommersant articles which often included different perspectives.

4 Since Russia historically served an important reference point as external Other for the construction of a common (Western) European Self (Neumann, 1997, 1999), it is pertinent to focus on this European discursive tradition in order to trace the genealogy of contemporary representations of Russia in the German discourse.