{"id":86748,"date":"2018-04-12T17:09:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T17:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uacrisis.org\/?p=66039"},"modified":"2018-04-12T17:35:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T14:35:03","slug":"66039-europe-russian-media-creating-enemy-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/66039-europe-russian-media-creating-enemy-image","title":{"rendered":"Image of Europe in Russian media: journalism or creation of enemy image?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article was originally published\u00a0in UA: Ukraine Analytica<\/a>. Full text with references is available here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article presents a short analysis of the research \u201cImage of Europe in Russian Media\u201d done by the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group of the Ukraine Crisis Media Center. Analysis of the Russian media context demonstrated that the way in which the Russian TV shows the Europeans to its own population has <\/em>impact not only on the relations between Russia and other <\/em>countries, but also on the Russians\u2019 readiness to support the policy of their president. Six narratives (Horrors of Life, \u201cThe Declining West\u201d, Protests, Terrorism, Refugee Crisis, Sanctions Imposed on Russia) are presented to confirm the propaganda agenda and manipulation aiming to form public opinion in Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Context<\/h3>\n

The launch of the official portal www. euvsdisinfo.eu in September 2017 has been hailed as a big victory in the fight against Russian propaganda. Its creators, experts of East StratCom Task Force, analyse content produced by the Kremlin\u2019s sources of information and provide recommendations directly to policy makers in European institutions. However, already in March 2018, the majority of MPs in the Netherlands\u2019 Tweede Kamer, House of Representatives, call<\/a> for closing the EU website, which is countering the Kremlin\u2019s propaganda, saying that \u201ccivil servants should not be in charge of checking on journalists\u201d.<\/p>\n

The very possibility that this resource will be closed is worrying and demoralizing news. What is even more unexpected, this proposal comes from the Netherlands, a country that has repeatedly become target of the Russian disinformation campaigns.<\/p>\n

Is it true that Europe sees no threat in the Russian propaganda machine? Or does democracy harm itself, unable to counter new methods, undermining its cornerstone?<\/p>\n

Four years ago, it was extremely difficult to talk about the Kremlin disinformation worldwide. Hybrid warfare and its toolkits yet needed to be exposed. Only few actors dared to call Russia an aggressor and social media were believed to be safe and free of propaganda. It seems a lot has changed since that time.<\/p>\n

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“the way in which the Russian state shows the Europeans to its own population has impact not only on the international and intercultural relations between Russia and other countries, but also on the Russians\u2019 readiness to support the policy of their president”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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First of all, in the global politics. Mr. Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 US presidential elections and the uncompromising position of French President Macron brought conversations about threats of information warfare back to public discussion. American experts have gone even further, calling Russian operations in Ukraine a new, 21st-century form of conflict \u2013 Fifth Generation Warfare, when the full spectrum operations is being used (\u201crunning from low-level information operations, through economic pressure, peacekeeping, insurgency and conventional military intervention\u201d) and the main aim is to create the situation of a permanent chaos, which is the best environment for achieving aggressor\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

It would seem we should already have moved from revealing and collecting facts of disinformation to counteraction, and developed a mechanism for response, or, at least, to a wide public discussion about where the dividing line is between freedom of speech and informational aggression. On the contrary, we have to prove once again why at least these platforms for denouncing disinformation are necessary.<\/p>\n

In Search of Arguments<\/h3>\n

Ukraine, undoubtedly, has been and remains the main \u201ctraining field\u201d where Russia tests its information warfare technologies. But very few experts are raising concerns about the fact that the Kremlin\u2019s biggest \u201ctest laboratory\u201d is its own country with 150-million-strong population, and these experiments are a threat not only for Russians, but for other countries as well.<\/p>\n

During the last six months, Ukraine Crisis Media Center (UCMC) experts, who have been at the forefront of the information war with Russia since 2014, have been analyzing internal Russian propaganda within the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group (HWAG). To prove that Russian propaganda has a much wider scope than the information war between the two countries in conflict, UCMC initiated a project aiming to illustrate to the Europeans how Russian state-controlled media show Europe to Russian people.<\/p>\n

The topic of the first research was the \u201cImage of Europe in Russian Media\u201d. It is obvious that the way in which the Russian state shows the Europeans to its own population has impact not only on the international and intercultural relations between Russia and other countries, but also on the Russians\u2019 readiness to support the policy of their president. For instance, if Russian TV channels were not regularly demonizing Ukraine and Ukrainians, there would be far fewer Russian volunteers willing to join the ranks of the so-called LPR and DPR.<\/p>\n

To understand why the issue is worth the attention of European countries, it is important to take into account the vulnerability of the Russian population to propagandistic content. According to a Russian social survey:<\/p>\n