The End of Disinformation?
Rethinking deceit
I am sensing a slow but welcome change in perceptions in the UK/North America of the threat of Russian information manipulation (looking at the overall picture, so I shall allow myself some generalisations here).
A few recent works have focused on the impact of Russian information manipulation, taking the dangers more seriously and warning that the Russians might be securing an impact that is more substantial than we would previously admit.
This Hybrid CoE paper, for example, though relying in places on inference rather than causal evidence, argues that ‘Kremlin disinformation campaigns are (still) having a discernible and multi-dimensional impact on public opinion, despite recent discussions suggesting that the efficacy of these campaigns might be waning’. A recent piece by Ariel Cohen argues that Russian information manipulation is gaining traction around the globe, even though Russian messaging often rests on ‘unsubstantiated and absurd’ claims.
Wider acknowledgment of the threat and its severity is extremely helpful in countering what Russia is trying to do. Further educating societies is key in building resilience – this takes further research, resources, and more sophisticated approaches in how we respond. I also think that we need to take a step back and reconsider what the Russians are trying to do.
Dismissing the disinformation threat
I have complained before about the tendency to dismiss the impacts of Russian messaging. It is tempting to clip instances from Russian television and mock the absurd things that pundits say. This happens often on Xitter, and, to be fair, there is a lot of ridiculous stuff on Russian state television’s political talk shows, and on their news programming, that is tempting to clip and post.
More worryingly, there is also an ongoing effort within academia to apply propaganda studies to Russian messaging. Recent academic papers I have heard have discussed how Russian media tries to deceive audiences, and offered solutions as to how debunk Russian messaging.
This is concerning, because trying to understand Russian information manipulation through the prism of propaganda studies risks us missing the real intent and effectiveness of what the Russians are trying to do, and in turn could lead us to build the wrong mitigations. Laughing at isolated shots of Simonyan calling for some kind of nuclear explosion over Siberia – without context or explanation of the supposed intent of such messaging – are not helpful. And this could be counterproductive.
The fear is that Russians know that some of our response to their messaging is counterproductive, and that we are actually playing into their hands in some our reaction.
I am not convinced that deceit is always the aim of Russian information manipulation, and I think we require a wider reconsideration of the purpose, intent – and impacts – of what the Russians are doing.
Helpfully, some of the recent cautionary notices that Russian information manipulation might be more sophisticated than we think have come from Germany. Ralf Beste, head of the department for culture and communication at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office recently argued that Russian campaigns to undermine support for Ukraine ‘have grown significantly in scale, skill and stealth’. This piece by Linus Siebert warns of ‘a new and more menacing phase of Russian information warfare’ – Siebert does examine the threat to Germany, but identifies a danger that faces the entire continent.
Pressing repression
What if Russian information manipulation does not always or predominantly aim to deceive?
I have previously argued that Russian agents have shifted their focus, from trying to cover up or deflect attention from crimes, to actually admitting to malfeasance and pressing home their activity. This is a shift from former perceptions of the core aims of Russian information manipulation. Part of the UK Government counter-disinformation capability, that I helped build, started in 2018 with the initial premise that Moscow was trying to deflect responsibility from its involvement in the Salisbury attack against the Skripals.
My approach in government was a starting point and an attempt to build an initial capability. But looking back at the programmatic and strategic mistakes I made then, it is clear that some of my assumptions and understanding were naïve and certainly outdated. The Russian approach has significantly changed, and the war on Ukraine plays a large role in the evolution of Moscow’s intent and thinking. However, the changing nature of Putin’s rule within this has also played a crucial role.
To my mind, the need for the Moscow regime to extend its control over the domestic population and increase its influence over other external audiences has forced the Russians to a more blatant and repressive way in which it uses language. This seems to me highly significant in the way we understand and counter Russian messaging.
This requires a methodological rethink, not least of the ways in which we understand and define repression. Repression can have specific meanings in political science, and to my awareness is still a contested area. (One useful starting point is the description of repression as ‘the threat to subdue or act of subduing someone by institutional or physical force’.)
Russian messaging is to my mind taking on a more repressive function by signalling more clearly – rather than trying to obscure – state intent. However, in the wider context of the state’s ability to impose physical harm on its citizens, messaging takes on a more intimidatory and violent function. It aims to coerce a specific response from its target audience, using threats and fear as a key instrument in this.
These thoughts need to be iterated in a more systematic manner, of course (I am not a political scientist or sociologist), but I am minded by Jennifer Earl’s shift of focus from repression as ‘state violence’, to a definition that encompasses ‘any actions that “raise the costs” of organizing or “actually constrain or influence the ability to act”’. Kremlin messaging needs to become more aggressive and blatant in order to coerce, but also needs to signal the fact that it intends to – and has the ability – to coerce.
Earl also quotes Masha Gessen, who explains why Putin says things that are objectively (and to my mind obviously) untrue:
The exercise of saying something that is verifiably untrue but confidently putting it [out there] to be repeated and believed is itself an exercise of power. [It shows] that [what’s] much more powerful than controlling a government is controlling reality. […] You are showing that you have the ability to control what people do not just through carrots and sticks; […] that you have the ability to control how people understand the world.
As I have argued before, this is why the Russian presidential election figures were so blatantly ridiculous: they iterate to people that the Kremlin has the ability to post its desired results. The Presidential Administration was reportedly aware that people would never believe the final results – but deception was never their aim, rather the intent to signal power and deter further opposition.
This goes with the long transition in Putin’s vision of how his regime should rule: Putin no longer wants to be loved by the Russians, but wants to be feared. And the Kremlin messages clearly as to what their response should be.
Getting ahead of the Russians
Fear also has implications for foreign audiences: and this definitely seems to working in the UK and other government’s reluctance to increase support for Kyiv.
But I do not think that disinformation – in its tighter definition as the knowing dissemination of factually incorrect information – is not going to be a factor in how Moscow and its proxies organise and spread their messaging. However, I do feel that our responses should reconsider our approach that Russians intend to deceive, and rethink Moscow’s strategic intent and the deeper ways in which Russia tries to shape target audiences’ perception of the world.
This requires a holistic understanding of the threat, as well as a more integrated response. Government programmes are often focused on specific aspects of countering Russian operations, where even different departments within the same government are unable to coordinate responses through a lack of joined strategies, remits and capabilities.
As this Politico article puts it, ‘Russian disinformation [sic] is part of a broader constellation of long-term political warfare, and to compartmentalize it away from Moscow’s other “active measures” will only shift the scope of Russian intelligence agencies meddling in European affairs — not close it’.
Academic work is likewise often too particular, and is sometimes unable to translate its findings into policy recommendations that governments can use.
The depth and complexity of the Russian approach means that effective responses will necessarily be long-term, detailed, and require much more research – as well as the intellectual capability to integrate knowledge and present it in useful and useable ways. Part of that requires better strategic understanding of what the Russians are likely to try next. But we definitely need to rethink the perception that Russian messaging is ineffective, or that we yet know how to overcome it.