Russian Propaganda in British Newspapers: Framing of Russia in the Coverage of MH17 Flight Crash Master’s Thesis Yuliia Verbunt Student number: 11181338 Graduate School of Communication Master’s Programme Communication Science Political Communication Track Supervised by dr. Jasper van de Pol June 18th, 2017 1 Abstract Russian government has launched a massive propagandistic campaign in Western informational environment to ameliorate European public opinion and to justify its annexation of Crimea, invasion into Eastern Ukraine, and especially the shooting down a civilian flight MH17. As little is still known about the impact of Russian propaganda onto Western media, I use a quantitative framing analysis to reveal how Russia was presented in the coverage of MH17 case by six daily British newspapers of different nature (quality and sensationalist) and ownership (owned by Russian Alexander Lebedev, international News Corp and purely British companies). The coverage of MH17 case in the UK is characterized by a decline of negative tone towards Russia as well as the decline of responsibility and Russian responsibility frames over time, weak conflict frame, absence of fake news frame and absence of critique while citing Russian sources. Ownership and newspaper nature played a significant role in the frame-building process: Russian owned newspapers and sensationalist newspapers were framing Russia in a more favourable manner, which could be the indication of their susceptibility to Russian propaganda. Key words: Russian propaganda, MH17, frame-building, organizational level of influence. 2 Russian Propaganda in British Newspapers: Framing of Russia in the Coverage of MH17 Flight Crash Introduction Officials of the European Union officially acknowledged the presence of Kremlin’s propaganda in the European media environment which aims to influence European public opinion and to create political support for Russian actions undermining the coherence of the EU foreign policy (EP, 2016). On the 23rd of November 2016, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution “EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties” (2016/2030(INI), which states the following (Article 8) : “Russian Government is employing a wide range of tools and instruments, such as think tanks and special foundations (e.g. Russkiy Mir), special authorities (Rossotrudnichestvo), multilingual TV stations (e.g. RT), pseudo news agencies and multimedia services (e.g. Sputnik), cross-border social and religious groups, … social media and internet trolls to challenge democratic values, divide Europe, gather domestic support and create the perception of failed states in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood”. Nevertheless, despite massive Russian attempts to influence opinions of EU citizens, polls show a clear deterioration of Russia’s image throughout the EU countries over the last years. Pew Research survey (2015) shows that 66% of UK citizens, 70% of Germans and French, and 80% of Poles have an unfavourable opinion about Russia. Still, widespread distrust of the Kremlin does not necessarily mean that Russian information activities are ineffective, as they also aim to confuse the audience and destabilize the political landscape (Russel, 2016). The majority of existing studies on Russian media warfare are focused on finding the evidence of Russia’s spreading propaganda, misinformation, fake news, lies and confusion in the 3 EU informational environment. For example, already in 2011, Borchers found the proofs of propagandistic nature of the coverage of Russo-Baltic relationships (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) by RT channel; the same style was confirmed in the coverage of Russia’s military intervention to Syria (Imamgaiazova, 2016) and to Ukraine (Evans, 2015), including the case of MH17 downing (Oates, 2014; Lopatynska, 2015). An increasing amount of disinformation, forged telegrams and fake news items have been detected in the Finnish (Aro, 2016) and Swedish (Kragh & Åsberg, 2017) informational landscapes, especially in at least two important areas: Swedish–NATO cooperation and Swedish/EU support for Ukraine. So far, little is known about the effects of Russian media warfare onto European media outlets. Lelich (2014) states that Russian propaganda is sometimes picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets and more often by social media, for example, German news sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014. Similarly, Kragh and Åsberg (2017) declare that wittingly or unwittingly Swedish newspapers have performed a role of interlocutors of the disinformation. Aro (2016) says that some international media outlets had to close the comment sections on their websites because of the attacks of Russian Internet trolls. Aro (2016) came to the conclusion that aggressive pro-Russia propaganda trolls in social media had an impact on Finnish citizens as some of them had stopped discussing Russian politics online or became really confused about what was true or false about the war in Ukraine. Kremlin is also conducting aggressive slander campaigns against oppositional journalists and media; “both in Finland and internationally there have been various cases in which pro-Kremlin influencers have intimidated citizens, journalists and researchers who have attempted to uncover 4 Russian info-war tactics.” (p.127). She is of the opinion that Russian propaganda is a threat to the national security of Finland and other countries, especially those where the system of education and public broadcasting tradition are less developed than in Finland. These conclusions are made based on qualitative academic or empirical research. Meanwhile, there is still no quantitative academic research focusing on the effects of Russian media warfare and detecting if the content of Western media outlets was sensitive towards Russian destructive informational efforts. De Vreese (2005) states that framing is an effective tool to study media content because framing is focused on the presentation of issues and the salience of different aspects of these issues. Studying the content through the evolvement of various frames around Russia (like responsibility frame, conflict frame, etc) could provide a more comprehensive picture of Russian image in Western media and thus reveal if there is an influence of Russian propaganda on democratic outlets. In this research, I will make the first academic attempt to examine through a quantitative content analysis if the presentation of Russia and frames around it were influenced by the Russian position in the British coverage of MH17 flight crash. British newspapers were chosen for several reasons. Firstly, the main broadcasting language of all Russian own foreign media is English, and the Headquarters of Russia Today and Sputnik are located in London. Secondly, British citizens were among the victims of MH17crash. Thirdly, British media landscape represents a rich variety of newspapers of different nature (tabloids and broadsheets) and of various ownership including Russian owned newspapers. The ownership and the nature of newspapers are important for this study as they are proved to influence a frame-building process (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Semetko & Vakenburg, 2000). 5 The case of downing the Malaysia airlines flight MH17 Amsterdam – Kuala Lumpur matches perfectly the purpose of this research. According to Oates (2014), Russia immediately developed an alternative strategic state narrative about MH17 crash shifting the blame to Ukraine. It launched global broadcasting and expensive online propaganda to dominate international debate surrounding MH17 crash (Sienkiewicz, 2015). Moreover, the ongoing investigation about the crash which lasts for almost three years gives a possibility to examine frames in a longitudinal perspective. I hypothesize in this paper that absence/decline of some frames as well as favourable tone towards Russia or citing Russian sources without any criticism could be an indication of Russian propaganda influence. Comparative analysis across different types of ownership and nature of newspapers should reveal which types of outlets were more favourable towards Russian position. The goal of this research is to answer the question of how has the framing of Russia been evolving in the coverage of MH17 downing across different British newspapers? Context In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea in the south of Ukraine and started an undeclared “hybrid” war in the eastern Ukraine (Hoskins & O'Loughlin, 2015). NATO is describing Russian tactics in Ukraine and the hybrid war as: “a new form of warfare ... combining an intensive information campaign, cyber warfare and the use of highly trained Special Operation Forces” (NATO STRATCOM, 2014, p. 4). As of 2017, Russia was still denying the presence of its troops in Ukraine, describing the conflict as a civil war. There are elements of both indirect (propaganda) as well as direct Russian involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, which are manifested by the constant presence of thousands of Russian troops and by arming, training and equipping Ukrainian insurgents (Gibney, 2015). 6 In the midst of this war, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down on the 17th of July, 2014 from the territory of eastern Ukraine, which is under the control of separatists. This crash is one the deadliest airliners shoot down, taking the lives of 298 people (193 Dutch citizens, 43 Malaysian, 27 Australian, 10 British and others). At the same