Biopolitical Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia, France, Germany, and the UK: The “Post-Truth” Coverage by RT

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the COVID-19 crisis in Russia, France, Germany, and the UK, as covered by the Russian state media outlet RT (formerly Russia Today). I view the RT coverage through the prism of biopolitics and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to demonstrate multiple discrepancies in its “post-truth” knowledge production strategies. I argue that these strategies aim to expose the hybrid and controversial nature of biopolitical governance in Western democracies during the COVID-19 pandemic as they struggle to strike a balance between imposing social restrictions and safeguarding public health. I also show how the (post)liberal biopolitical debate on personal responsibility and state resilience in times of emergency could be applied by authoritarian regimes for self-description.

Dissemination of RT and Sputnik Content in European Digital Alternative News Environments: Mapping the Influence of Russian State-Backed Media Across Platforms, Topics, and Ideology

“…Similar to the results presented in recent studies (Glazunova et al 2022; Yatsyk 2022), we find that Russian-backed content plays at least some role in both left-, right-wing, and anti-system news-sharing clusters. However, for the German-language cluster, we do see much more prolific sharing of Russian-backed content in the right-wing clusters, which is in line with findings on RT Deutsch (Müller and Freudenthaler 2022).…”

“…In the Swedish and Danish language clusters, the share is slightly lower than the global distribution. One possible explanation is a strong relation between the anti-restriction/anti-vaxxer movements and alternative news in Germany and Austria, which RT successfully latched onto (Yatsyk 2022). The Russian–Ukraine war is also one of the most shared topics.…”

“…Regardless of the potentially misleading and manipulative nature of the published content, the effect of foreign media operations rests, to a large degree, on establishing foreign-backed media outlets as relevant information sources in the domestic news environments of other countries, not least on social media (Carter and Carter 2021; Richter 2017). While some studies have explored the dissemination of Russian-backed content for singular social media platforms or one RT/Sputnik outlet at a time (Carter and Carter 2021; Crilley et al 2020; Glazunova et al 2022; Yatsyk 2022), our study investigates multiple social media platforms and sites connected to RT/Sputnik.…”

Возможна Ли «демократическая Биополитика» Во Время Пандемии? Анализ Российских, Немецких И Французских СМИ

“…На фоне интеллектуальных баталий о разных биополитиках вклад массмедиа в продвижение биополитических проектов -правительственных, от бизнеса или от общественных активистов -анализируется лишь в единичных случаях [de Souza Júnior, 2021;Yatsyk, 2022]. Государство, реализуя биополитические проекты, использует СМИ (государственные и негосударственные) для информирования и просвещения населения, однако это не лишает массмедиа возможностей следовать государственной биополитике, ориентируясь на редакционную политику и профессионализм журналистов.…”