6,219
Views
7
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

The paperboys of Russian messaging: RT/Sputnik audiences as vehicles for malign information influence

Pages 1849-1867 | Received 24 Mar 2021, Accepted 28 Jan 2022, Published online: 22 Feb 2022

References

  • Åkerlund, M. (2021). Dog whistling far-right code words: The case of ‘culture enricher’ on the Swedish web. Information, Communication & Society, 2021, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1889639
  • Arceneaux, K., Gravelle, T. B., Osmundsen, M., Petersen, M. B., Reifler, J., & Scotto, T. J. (2021). Some people just want to watch the world burn: The prevalence, psychology and politics of the ‘Need for Chaos’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. B, 376(1822), 20200147. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0147
  • Bennett, L., & Livingston, S. (2018). The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760317
  • Bjola, C., & Papandakis, K. (2019). Digital propaganda, counterpublics and the disruption of the public sphere: The Finnish approach to building digital resilience. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 33(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1704221
  • Colliver, C., Pomerantsev, P., Appelbaum, A., & Birdwell, J. (2018). Smearing Sweden: International influence campaigns in the 2018 Swedish election. LSE Institute of Global Affairs.
  • Crilley, R., & Chatterje-Doody, P. N. (2020). Emotions and war on YouTube: Affective investments in RT’s visual narratives of the conflict in Syria. Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
  • Crilley, R., Gillespie, M., Vidgen, B., & Willis, A. (2022). Understanding RT’s audiences: Exposure not endorsement for Twitter followers of Russian state-sponsored media. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(1), 220–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220980692
  • Cushion, S. (2021). UK alternative left media and their criticism of mainstream news: Analysing the canary and evolve politics. Journalism Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1882875
  • Deverell, E., Wagnsson, C., & Olsson, E.-K. (2020). Destruct, direct and suppress: Sputnik narratives on the Nordic countries. The Journal of International Communication, 27(1), 15–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2020.1817122
  • Eberle, J., & Daniel, J. (2019). Putin, you suck”: affective sticking points in the Czech narrative on “Russian hybrid warfare. Political Psychology, 40(6), 1267–1281. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12609
  • Elswah, M., & Howard, P. N. (2020). “Anything that causes chaos”: The organizational behavior of Russia Today (RT). Journal of Communication, 70(5), 623–645. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa027
  • Engesser, S., Ernst, N., Esser, F., & Büchel, F. (2017). Populism and social media: How politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, Communication & Society, 20(8), 1109–1126. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1207697
  • Gérard, C., Guilhem, M., & Loqman, S. (2020). RT, Sputnik et le mouvement des gilets jaunes: Cartographie des communautés politiques sur Twitter RT, Sputnik and the yellow vest movement: Mapping political Communities on Twitter. L’Espace Politique, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.8092
  • Glenski, M., Volkova, S., & Kumar, S. (2020). User engagement with digital deception. In K. Shu, S. Wang, D. Lee, & H. Liu (Eds.), Disinformation, misinformation, and Fake news in social media. Lecture notes in social networks (pp. 39–61). Springer.
  • Golovchenko, Y., Buntain, C., Eady, G., Brown, M. A., & Tucker, J. (2020). The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(3), 357–389.
  • Golovchenko, Y., Hartmann, M., & Adler-Nissen, R. (2018). State, media and civil society in the information warfare over Ukraine: Citizen curators of digital disinformation. International Affairs, 94(5), 975–994. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy148
  • Groll, E. (2014). Kremlin’s ‘Sputnik’ newswire is the BuzzFeed of propaganda. Foreign Policy, 10 November. Available from: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/10/kremlins-sputnik-newswireisthe-buzzfeed-of-propaganda/ [Accessed 2 March 2021)]
  • Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than You think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances, 5(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586
  • Hall Jamieson, K. (2018). Cyber war: How Russian hackers and trolls helped elect a president. Oxford University Press.
  • Hameleers, M., Bos, L., & de Vreese, C. H. (2017). “They Did It”: The effects of emotionalized blame attribution in populist communication. Communication Research, 44(6), 870–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650216644026
  • Heft, A., Mayerhöffer, E., Reinhardt, S., & Knüpfer, C. (2019). Beyond Breitbart: Comparing right-wing digital news infrastructures in six Western democracies. Policy & Internet, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.219
  • Hellman, M. (2021). Infodemin under pandemin: Rysk informationspåverkan mot sverige (The info-demic during the pandemic: Russian information influence activities against Sweden). Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, 123(5), 451–474.
  • Holt, K., Figenschou, T. U., & Frischlich, L. (2019). Key Dimensions of Alternative News Media. Digital Journalism, 7(7), 860–869. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1625715
  • Hoyle, A., van den Berg, H., Doosje, B., & Kitzen, M. (in press). Portrait of a liberal chaos: RT's antagonistic strategic narration about the Netherlands. Media, War and Conflict.
  • Humprecht, E. (2019). Where ‘fake news’ flourishes: A comparison across four Western democracies. Information, Communication & Society, 22(13), 1973–1988. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1474241
  • Hutchens, M. J., Hmielowski, J. D., & Beam, M. A. (2019). Reinforcing spirals of political discussion and affective polarization. Communication Monographs, 86(3), 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2019.1575255
  • Keating, V. C., & Kaczmarska, K. (2017). Conservative soft power: Liberal soft power bias and the ‘hidden’ attraction of Russia. Journal of International Relations and Development, 22(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-017-0100-6
  • Keuleers, F. (2021). Choosing the better devil: Reception of EU and Chinese narratives on development by South African University students. In A. Miskimmon, B. O'Loughlin, & J. Zeng (Eds.), One belt, One road, One story?. Palgrave studies in European union politics (pp. 167–194). Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news. Journalism Practice, 10(7), 891–901. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2016.1163237
  • Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Liu, L., Hino, A., Westerwick, A., & Johnson, B. K. (2019). Context impacts on confirmation bias: Evidence from the 2017 Japanese snap election compared with American and German findings human. Communication Research, 45(4), 427–449. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqz005
  • Lecheler, S., & Egelhofer, J. L. (2021). Consumption of misinformation and disinformation. In H. Tumbar, & S. Waisbord (Eds.), The routledge companion to media disinformation and populism. Taylor & Francis Group.
  • Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwartz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and Its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612451018
  • Linvill, D. L., & Warren, P. L. (2020). Troll factories: Manufacturing specialized disinformation on Twitter. Political Communication, 37(4), 447–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1718257
  • Mayerhöffer, E., & Heft, A. (2021). Between journalistic and movement logic: Disentangling referencing practices of right-wing alternative online news media. Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.197491
  • Mejias, U. A., & Vokuev, N. E. (2017). Disinformation and the media: The case of Russia and Ukraine. Media, Culture & Society, 39(7), 1027–1042. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716686672
  • Müller, P., & Schulz, A. (2021). Alternative media for a populist audience? Exploring political and media use predictors of exposure to Breitbart, Sputnik, and Co. Information, Communication & Society, 24(2), 277–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1646778
  • Nisbet, E., & Kamenchuk, O. (2019). The psychology of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and implications for public diplomacy. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 14(1-2), 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-11411019
  • Noppari, E., Hiltunen, I., & Ahva, L. (2019). User profiles for populist counter-media websites. Journal of Alternative and Community Media, 4(1), 23–37. https://doi.org/10.1386/joacm_00041_1
  • Peisakhin, L., & Rozenas, A. (2018). Electoral effects of biased media: Russian television in Ukraine. American Journal of Political Science, 62(3), 535–550. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12355
  • Petersen, M. B., Osmundsen, M., & Arceneaux, K. (2018). The “need for Chaos” and motivations to share hostile political rumors. PsyArXiv. September 1.
  • Ramsay, G., & Robertshaw, S. (2019). Weaponising news RT, Sputnik and targeted disinformation. King’s College.
  • Rawnsley, G. (2016). Introduction to “International broadcasting and public diplomacy in the 21st century”. Media and Communication, 4(2), 42–45. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i2.641
  • Rawnsley, G. D. (2015). To know us is to love us: Public diplomacy and international broadcasting in contemporary Russia and China. Politics, 35(3-4), 273–286. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12104
  • Schwarzenegger, C. (2021). Communities of darkness? Users and uses of anti-system alternative media between audience and community. Media and Communication, 9(1), 99–109. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i1.3418
  • Szostek, J. (2018). Nothing is true? The credibility of news and the conflict in Ukraine. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(1), 116–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161217743258
  • Thorbjørnsrud, K., & Figenschou, T. U. (2020). The alarmed citizen: Fear, mistrust, and alternative media. Journalism Practice, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1825113
  • Tsfati, Y., & Peri, Y. (2006). Mainstream media skepticism and exposure to extra-national and sectorial news media: The case of Israel. Mass Communication & Society, 9(2), 165–187. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327825mcs0902_3
  • Tucker, J., Guess, A., Barberá, P. M., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D., & Nyhan, B. (2018). Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. William + Flora Hewlett Foundation.
  • Turcsanyi, R., & Kachlikova, E. (2020). The BRI and China’s Soft Power in Europe: Why Chinese Narratives (Initially) Won. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 49(1), 58–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/1868102620963134
  • Wagnsson, C. (2020). What is at stake in the information sphere? Anxieties about malign information influence among ordinary Swedes. European Security, 29(4), 397–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2020.1771695
  • Wagnsson, C., & Barzanje, C. (2021). A framework for analysing antagonistic narrative strategies: A Russian tale of Swedish decline. Media, War & Conflict, 14(2), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635219884343
  • Watanabe, K. (2018). Conspiracist propaganda: how Russia promotes anti-establishment sentiment online. Paper presented at ECPR General Conference 2018, Hamburg, Available from: file:///C:/ Users/s-9426/Downloads/Sputnik05ECPR.pdf [Accessed 8 May 2020].
  • Wojcieszak, M., & Kim, N. (2016). How to improve attitudes towards disliked groups: The effects of narrative versus numerical evidence on political persuasion. Communication Research, 43(6), 785–809. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215618480
  • Wojcieszak, M., & Warner, B. R. (2020). Can interparty contact reduce affective polarization? A systematic test of different forms of intergroup contact. Political Communication, 37(6), 789–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406
  • Wright, K., Scott, M., & Bunce, M. (2020). Soft power, hard news: How journalists at state-funded transnational media legitimize their work. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(4), 607–631. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220922832
  • Zimmermann, F., & Kohring, M. (2020). Mistrust, disinforming news, and vote choice: A panel survey on the origins and consequences of believing disinformation in the 2017 German Parliamentary Election. Political Communication, 37(2), 215–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1686095