How can European states respond to Russian information warfare? An analytical framework

Hellman, Maria; Wagnsson, Charlotte

doi:10.1080/09662839.2017.1294162

Cited by 37 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Furthermore, ordinary people's reasoning on information influence is also of interest because they are the ones that many countermeasures seek to protect and prepare. There are no standard remedies to this problem and states resort to different, sometimes controversial, solutions that might infringe upon democracy, freedom and security (Hellman and Wagnsson 2017). Inviting ordinary people to express their thoughts on this kind of problem without presenting them with simple solutions yields knowledge that can facilitate an inclusive, nuanced and informed public debate.…”

Section: How To Grasp the Problem With Projection Of Harmful Informatmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is at stake in the information sphere? Anxieties about malign information influence among ordinary Swedes

Wagnsson

2020

European Security

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Scholars, states and organisations have warned that authoritarian regimes and other hostile actors are projecting information to inflict harm upon others. Yet, there is little agreement on the nature of this threat. This is mirrored in the plethora of labels in use, ranging from "disinformation" to "sharp power" and "information warfare". In order to investigate this menace further, we turn our focus to ordinary people's anxieties, since a better understanding of threat perceptions will also provide a better understanding of the problem. We conducted a comprehensive case study comprising focus group discussions (n: 97) and an extensive survey (n: 2046) among Swedish citizens. We asked: To what extent do people worry about information influence and why? What can this tell us about the nature of this problem or threat? The empirical results suggest that respondents were first and foremost worried about societal cohesion and democracy. They also identified a risk that information influence can undermine trust in societal institutions and the EU. Based on our findings, we suggest that "malign information influence" is an appropriate label to be used in future research. Finally, we propose directions for future systematic research on how malign information infuence is received and processed in different national contexts.

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Section: How To Grasp the Problem With Projection Of Harmful Informatmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is at stake in the information sphere? Anxieties about malign information influence among ordinary Swedes

Wagnsson

2020

European Security

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“…Strategic narratives may be formed and projected to serve various purposes, such as the justification of policy objectives or policy responses to economic or security crises, the formation of international alliances, or the rallying of domestic public opinion (Antoniades et al, 2010: 5-6;O'Loughlin et al, 2017: 50-51). Therefore, the concept of strategic narratives has been widely adopted in political communication and international relations (Dimitriu and De Graaf, 2016;Miskimmon et al, 2013Miskimmon et al, , 2017Ringsmose and Børgesen, 2011;Szostek, 2018), (information) warfare (Hellmann, 2016;Hellman and Wagnsson, 2017;Swimelar, 2017), and conflict studies (Wetoszka, 2016).…”

Section: Framework: Strategic Narratives and The Semiotics Of Fearmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse of fear in strategic narratives: The case of Russia’s Zapad war games

Ventsel¹,

Hansson²,

Sazonov

2019

Media, War & Conflict

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Modern military training exercises often include an information warfare component. Combat manoeuvres and weapon tests may be combined with large-scale information operations, including attempts at mass deception and cultivation of fear via strategic uses of narratives in media. The ways in which fear is constructed in strategic narratives deserve more detailed discursive analysis. In this article, the authors use the largest recent Russian war games on NATO's eastern borders, the 'Zapad 2017' military exercise, as an example to show how to interpret fear narratives. They identify and analyse three strategic narratives that were formulated by Russian official spokespeople in relation to the exercise and uncover some of their underlying meaning-making tendencies: the logic of antithesis, affirmation through negation and the rhetoric of moral victimhood. Their analysis sheds new light on the uses of fear discourses that are more sophisticated and indirect than straightforward threats or (rhetorical) demonstrations of power to inflict damage.

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“…These arguments can be summarised as follows: -Russia's principal aim in Syria is to fight international terrorism and support the legitimate government of President Assad in order to maintain Syria's sovereignty, while the US and its allies favour opposition groups linked to terrorists in order to overthrow Assad and effect 'regime change'. 10 Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has even directly inferred that the US is defending Islamic State. 11 'Blatant violations of international law' in Syria are compared to the interventions in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.…”

Section: The 'Information Counter-struggle'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Russia’s ‘Strategic Narratives’: The Case of Syria and the ‘Arab Spring’

Аверре

2019

Вестник Удмуртского Университета. Социология. Политология. Международные Отношения

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Russia’s governing elite promotes a distinctive set of strategic narratives to influence how it is perceived in the world and positively influence public opinion abroad, advancing a Russian vision of the international system, while aiming to reinforce its legitimacy at home. These narratives have often explicitly or implicitly challenged the narratives and policies of the Western liberal democracies, in terms of international legal norms, of social-ethical values and of Russia’s status in the international order. Western academic and policy sources have devoted increased attention to the Russian government’s use of information tools and strategies in support of its political and diplomatic efforts to promote these narratives. This article aims to examine how information management, carefully targeted at the operational level to promote Russian interests in specific situations, is linked with the dissemination of strategic narratives that seek to underpin key broader policy objectives in the case of the Arab Spring and the conflict in Syria.

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How can European states respond to Russian information warfare? An analytical framework

Cited by 37 publications

References 13 publications

What is at stake in the information sphere? Anxieties about malign information influence among ordinary Swedes

What is at stake in the information sphere? Anxieties about malign information influence among ordinary Swedes

Discourse of fear in strategic narratives: The case of Russia’s Zapad war games

Russia’s ‘Strategic Narratives’: The Case of Syria and the ‘Arab Spring’

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