VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS Miglė Musteikytė

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VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS HUMANITARINIŲ MOKSLŲ FAKULTETAS UŽSIENIO KALBŲ, LITERATŪROS IR VERTIMO STUDIJŲ KATEDRA

Miglė Musteikytė

LIETUVOS VAIZDAVIMO RUSIJOS NAUJIENŲ PORTALE „RuBaltic.Ru“ TYRIMAS TEKSTYNŲ LINGVISTIKOS METODAIS

Bakalauro baigiamasis darbas

Anglų filologijos studijų programa, valstybinis kodas 612Q30004 Anglų filologijos studijų kryptis

Vadovas (-ė) doc. dr. Jurgita Vaičenonienė ______(parašas) (data)

Apginta doc. dr. Rūta Eidukevičienė ______(parašas) (data)

Kaunas, 2020

REPRESENTATION OF LITHUANIA IN RUSSIAN NEWS PORTAL “RuBaltic.Ru”: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS

By Miglė Musteikytė

Department of Foreign Language, Literary and Translation Studies Vytautas Magnus University Bachelor of Arts Thesis Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Jurgita Vaičenonienė 3 June 2020

SANTRAUKA

Dezinformacijai internete augant, gebėjimas atpažinti propagandą bei netikrą informaciją tapo naudingu įrankiu. Šis darbas skirtas išnagrinėti su Lietuva susijusios propagandos atvejus naujienų portale „RuBaltic.Ru“. Tyrimo tikslas - išanalizuoti Lietuvos įvaizdžiui kurti naudojamas kalbos vartojimo ypatybes. Pagrindiniai darbo uždaviniai - nustatyti lingvistines struktūras ir diskurso aspektus naudojamus propagandiniams bei ideologiniams tekstams kurti. Tikslui pasiekti, tekstai buvo analizuojami kelias skirtingais skerspjūviais. Analizė atlikta remiantis 38 straipsniais publikuotais naujienų portale „RuBaltic.Ru“ nuo 2013 iki 2018 metų. Duomenys buvo analizuojami tiek kokybiniu tiek kiekybiniu požiūriais. Kritinė diskurso analizė padėjo nustatyti, kaip kalba yra naudojama siekiant perteikti tam tikrą informaciją. Tekstynų lingvistikos metodai ir tekstų analizavimo įrankis Voyant Tool padėjo nustatyti tam tikrų žodžių dažnį bei temas, dažniausiai naudojamas skleisti propagandos turinį. Analizės rezultatai parodė, kad naratyvas yra formuojamas supriešinant faktus apie Lietuvą ir faktus apie Rusiją. Portalo autoriai kuria Lietuvos įvaizdį pasitelkdami ideologijas – Lietuva yra vaizduojama kaip agresyvi, tačiau silpna valstybė, kuri valdoma diktatūrinio režimo principais. Taip pat buvo nustatyta, kad ideologiniai tekstai kuriami naudojant įvairias lingvistines bei retorines struktūras – prielaidas, užuominas bei metaforas, kurios kuria neigiamą Lietuvos įvaizdį. Tyrime padaryta išvada, kad propagandos diskurse faktai dažniausiai pateikiami netiesiogiai, nes autoriai, kurie geba subtiliai pateikti neigiamas Lietuvos savybes, yra publikuojami dažniau nei kiti.

SUMMARY

Russia and Lithuania have been fighting for power for extended period of time. As disinformation on the Internet keeps growing, the ability to identify propaganda and fake information in texts is becoming especially relevant. This thesis concentrates on the analysis of Lithuania-related Russian propaganda in news portal “RuBaltic.Ru”. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the way news portal “RuBaltic.Ru” uses language to represent Lithuania. For this reason, the main objectives are to determine linguistic structures and discourse aspects used to create propaganda and ideologically controlled texts. In order to achieve the goal, the texts were analyzed from several different perspectives. For the present analysis, 38 articles from 2013 to 2018 were collected from “RuBaltic.Ru” news website. The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. To determine the manner in which language is used for the purpose of sustaining dominance, the methods of critical discourse analysis were applied. The methods of corpus linguistics and Voyant Tool software were used for text analysis and to learn the frequency of certain nodes as well as identify the most common themes for spreading propaganda. The conducted analysis suggests that the narrative is shaped by polarizing Lithuania and Russia-related facts. The authors use ideologies to represent Lithuania as an aggressive yet week country that is ruled under dictatorship. It was determined that propaganda helps to gain power as well as control and provide best results when used implicitly since ideologically controlled articles are created by employing various linguistic and rhetorical features, such as presuppositions, implications and negative metaphors that help to portray Lithuania in an unfavorable manner. The conclusion is that, in propaganda discourse, facts are usually presented indirectly as the authors, who manage to implicitly discuss negative characteristics of Lithuania, are published more frequently.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SANTRAUKA ...... i SUMMARY ...... ii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ...... iv 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2 DEFINING APPROACHES TO ANALYZING DISCOURSE ...... 3 2.1 The concept of discourse analysis ...... 3 2.2 Critical discourse analysis...... 4 2.2.1 Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework ...... 4 2.2.2 Language and power ...... 5 2.2.3 Language and ideology ...... 6 2.3 Media discourse ...... 7 2.4 Political discourse ...... 8 2.5 Propaganda discourse...... 9 3 ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA IN “RuBaltic.Ru” NEWS PORTAL ...... 12 3.1 Data and methods ...... 12 3.2 Representation of Lithuania vs. Russia in news headlines ...... 13 3.3 Representation of Lithuania vs. Russia in news articles ...... 15 3.3.1 Representation of Lithuania (Them) ...... 15 3.3.2 Representation of Russia (Us) ...... 17 3.4 Characteristics of Russian propaganda in news articles ...... 18 3.5 Themes of Russian propaganda in news articles ...... 23 4 CONCLUSIONS ...... 31 REFERENCES ...... 33 APPENDIX A. Lithuania and Russia-related evaluative statements ...... 35 APPENDIX B. Reporters’ full names ...... 43 APPENDIX C. The corpus ...... 44

iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Corpus statistics ...... 12 Table 2. Sub-corpus statistics ...... 13

Figure 1. Discourse as text, interaction and context (Fairclough 25) ...... 5 Figure 2. Frequency of referent regions in headlines ...... 13 Figure 3. Explicit references to Lithuania and Russia ...... 15 Figure 4. Frequency of recurrent reporters...... 19 Figure 5. Recurrent themes in the articles ...... 23

1 INTRODUCTION

Propaganda and information warfare are not new concepts, but their relevance has increased due to the growth of media outlets online. With the increase of media power, it has become quite difficult to understand which published information is true and which is not. The phenomenon of ideology and power in the media has also received a lot of attention from the acknowledged scholars (Walton 2007; Van Dijk 2008; Wodak 2011). In Lithuania, previous research on propaganda explored its characteristics and the content as a whole. There are studies that suggested research models for analyzing propaganda (Buinauskas et al. 2016), analyzed hostility (Kasčiūnas 2018; Keršanskas 2016) and focused on offensive language in Russian propaganda (Maliukevičius 2015). Although many aspects of this phenomenon are being studied and receive a lot of attention both in Lithuania and abroad, there is still a lack of in-depth research on analyzing Russian propaganda directed at Lithuania with regards to the use of linguistic structures or other opinion formation devices. Therefore, this thesis will contribute to identifying instances of ideological control and propaganda by determining how language is used to spread disinformation and which aspects of discourse indicate propaganda in the context of Lithuania and Russia.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the use of language to represent Lithuania and influence the opinion of the readers in news portal “RuBaltic.Ru”. To obtain the aim, the following research questions will be answered: 1. What linguistic structures are used to create ideologically controlled texts?

2. What aspects of discourse best reflect propaganda in texts?

3. How do these structures and aspects contribute to the representation of Lithuania?

To answer these research questions, 38 Lithuania-related articles from news portal “RuBaltic.Ru” were collected in the time span ranging from September, 2013 to December, 2018. Daukšas’s Debunk initiative suggested the search line “site:rubaltic Lithuania”, which provided 347 entries but only 38 of them were applicable. In total, the corpus contained 55 807 tokens and 6 665 types, and the sub-corpus for the analysis of headlines consisted of 358 tokens and 209 unique words. The data will be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively in accordance with methodological guidelines of critical discourse analysis to reveal how the language is used to gain power and control through ideological texts. In addition, the notion of ideological square (Van Dijk) will be discussed in the context of Lithuania vs. Russia. Then, such aspects as why some authors are published more frequently and does propaganda rely on logic or emotions will be analyzed according to Walton’s (2007) approach. Finally, the methods of corpus linguistics will be applied to determine aspects of discourse that help to identify propaganda in news articles. Thus, an open access software for text

1 analysis, Voyant Tools (www.voyant-tools.org), created by Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell, will be used to identify lexical choices and main themes that contribute to creating propaganda against Lithuania.

The thesis consists of introduction, theoretical overview, analysis, conclusions, a list of references and appendices. The introductory part describes the topic, defines the aim, introduces research questions and outlines the structure of the analysis. The theoretical part consists of five sections and is based on theoretical approaches of critical discourse analysis regarding correlation between language, power and ideology as discussed in Fairclough and Van Dijk (sections 2.1-2.2). Theoretical overview also discusses the use of media as a tool to spread propaganda (section 2.3) and the use of arbitrary power in political discourse (section 2.4). Finally, the last section (2.5) introduces the differences between propaganda and fake news. The practical part of this thesis consists of five sections. The first section (3.1) presents the data and methods of analysis. Each of the following sections analyze the data with a view to different approaches – ideological representation of Lithuania and Russia (sections 3.2-3.3), characteristics of propaganda in the context of Lithuania and Russia (section 3.4) and themes of Russian propaganda in Lithuania-related texts (section 3.5). The last chapter delivers the conclusions, answer research questions and provides recommendations for further research.

2 DEFINING APPROACHES TO ANALYZING DISCOURSE

This chapter will provide a theoretical framework relevant to the study of propaganda in online newspapers written in English but owned by Russia. The approach of critical discourse analysis will be used as a tool to analyze data in this thesis. The relevance of power, control and ideology in the media and politics will be discussed, and the differences between fake news and propaganda will be introduced.

2.1 The concept of discourse analysis The amount of literature on discourse analysis suggests that it is a widely discussed concept in linguistics (Schiffrin 5, Stubbs 12). Due to the development of the field, there is a variety of interpretations depending on the researchers. Schiffrin (5) claims that discourse can be defined in two ways: a definition in accordance with the formalist paradigm (discourse as sentences) and a definition in accordance with the functionalist paradigm (discourse as language use). Formalism and functionalism are “associated with very different views of the nature of language” (Leech 46). For instance, formalists treat language as a mental phenomenon while functionalists believe that it is a societal phenomenon: At the risk of great simplification, we can say that functionalism is based on two general assumptions: (a) language has functions that are external to the linguistic system itself; (b) external functions influence the internal organization of the linguistic system.[…]Formalist views, on the other hand, argue that although language may very well have social and cognitive functions, these functions do not impinge upon the internal organization of language. (Schiffrin 22) The most common definition of discourse is based on the formalist view that discourse is “language above the sentence or above the clause” (Schiffrin 23, Stubbs 1). Zellig Harris was a structuralist, who used the term discourse analysis as a title in his scientific paper on methods for analyzing connected spoken or written language (1). According to Schiffrin, in structural approaches, discourse is considered superior to the sentence or higher than any other unit of text (24). Functionalist view is based on the idea that “the study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use” (Schiffrin 31). Discourse as language use is regarded as a system through which functions are perceived (Schiffrin 32). Schiffrin claims that language, culture and society are blended by interaction: “they stand in a reflexive relationship with the self, the other and the self-other relationship and it is out of these mutually constitutive relationships that discourse is created” (134). In other words, discourse analysis is a method that studies the way language and social context correlate with each other.

2.2 Critical discourse analysis T. Van Dijk defines critical discourse analysis (CDA) as “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (466). He also clarifies that CDA is not a method of discourse analysis and refers to it as critical discourse studies (CDS), a multidisciplinary field that combines discourse, cognition and society (466). The focus of CDA is not social and political context but rather problems and issues that occur in society and in politics. Fairclough and Wodak treat CDA as social practice which indicates “a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s) which frame it” (258). They claim that dialectical relationship goes both ways: situations, institutions and social structures form the discursive event and it also forms them (258). Simply put, dialectical relationship is not only socially shaped, it is also socially shaping, and CDA analyzes both of those sides of language use (Fairclough 55). He also adds that all linguistic phenomena are social phenomena and social phenomena are linguistic phenomena: Linguistic phenomena are social in the sense that whenever people speak or listen or write or read, they do so in ways which are determined socially and have social effects. Even when people are most conscious of their own individuality and think themselves to be most cut off from social influences […] they still use language in ways which are subject to social convention. (Fairclough 23) Thus, society has a great impact on language use and determines the manner in which people talk in both private and public surroundings. Social phenomena are linguistic, on the other hand, in the sense that the language activity which goes on in social contexts is not merely a reflection or expression of social processes and practices, it is a part of those social processes and practices. (Fairclough 23) To explain this aspect, Fairclough provides an example stating that although disputes between political parties are seen as the outgrowth from real practices of politics, they are not: they are politics, because those disputes and conflicts are a part of language (23). Thus, language is a social practice as much as social processes are linguistic.

2.2.1 Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework In 1989, Fairclough introduced his three-dimensional model which has served as the main framework of CDA for many researchers (see Figure 1). He regarded discourse as text, interaction and context stating that “discourse refers to the whole process of social interaction of which text is just a part” (24). In other words, CDA is not only production, interpretation and analysis of texts, it is the analysis of “relationship between texts, processes, and their social conditions” (Fairclough 26).

Social conditions of production Process of production

Text Process of interpretation Interaction

Social conditions of interpretation Context

Figure 1. Discourse as text, interaction and context (Fairclough 25) In accordance with these three dimensions of discourse, Fairclough suggests three stages of CDA: description, interpretation and explanation: 1. Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text. 2. Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction – with seeing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation. 3. Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context – with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects (Fairclough 26). In other words, description is the stage that analyzes vocabulary, grammar and other structures of both written and spoken texts (Fairclough 111). Interpretation, or discursive practice, deals with the processes of text production and interpretation that is based on one’s background and assumptions (Fairclough 141). Lastly, the explanation stage, or social practice, refers to processes of text production and interpretation regarding institutional and societal context as well as power relations and ideologies (Fairclough 162). Therefore, the analysis in each of these stages is very different because “what one sees in a text, what one regards as worth describing, and what one chooses to emphasize in a description, are all dependent on how one interprets a text” (Fairclough 27). Propaganda is a type of discourse that needs to be described, interpreted and explained, thus, the analysis will be based on these three dimensions suggested by Fairclough.

2.2.2 Language and power According to Van Dijk, power is the concept used to organize the relationships between discourse and society (16). He explains social power as follows: The explanatory concept we use to define social power is that of control. One group has power over the other group. More specifically, such control may pertain to the actions of the (members of the) other group: we control others if we can make them act as we wish (or prevent them from acting with us). (17) Van Dijk suggests that power can be coercive or mental. The former is plain force, bodily forcing others to behave against their will. However, social power is mental rather than coercive. It mentally controls people’s actions, intentions and purposes and that is achieved in less obvious and direct ways.

To put it differently, symbolic power is used to make impact on people’s mind (Van Dijk 17). Another, more subtle, way to control people through text ant talk is persuasion. Instead of commanding, people of higher rank simply ask or suggest something, and others obey them (Van Dijk 18). He also provides an instance how politics uses the media to influence and persuade citizens to act in a certain way (19). However, in the media, people are usually manipulated through text and talk using hegemony. Van Dijk defines the term as social power that “makes people act as if it were natural, normal or simply a consensus” (19). Commands and requests are not necessary as people are influenced through the media, propaganda, various campaigns and other forms of public discourse (Van Dijk 19). In other words, discourse is used to control the minds of less powerful groups. However, Van Dijk argues that “discourse is not only a means in the enactment of power […] but at the same time itself a power resource”, because the powerful are able to control not only material resources but also symbolic ones, such as knowledge, respect and even public discourse (20). In such manner, powerful groups are inclined to praise themselves and conceal the information that depicts them negatively. Alternatively, they tend to do the exact opposite to their opponents and the ones who refuse to support them (Van Dijk 22). In the media, control is exercised in a less explicit way and often includes many different aspects of discourse namely intonation, vocabulary choice, speech acts and other devices. The scholar suggests that power itself is not bad and gives an example of teacher- student and parent-children relationship. The problem, as Van Dijk claims, is the exploitation of that power, the domination when the “power is being exercised primarily in the interest of the powerful, and against the interest of the less powerful” (24). As it was mentioned above, CDA is the approach that deals with power abuse in social and political context, and one of the ways to gain control over society is propaganda.

2.2.3 Language and ideology Another concept that connects discourse and society is ideology. According to Van Dijk, ideologies are developed and spread by the powerful, dominant groups to justify their dominance (25). The aim of ideology is to persuade the less powerful to assume that such social practices are natural and inevitable: Implied in such an analysis is that dominated groups do not know what is good for them: as a result of propaganda and manipulation, they have a representation of their own position that is inconsistent with their own best interests, a state of mind traditionally referred to as false consciousness. (Van Dijk 25) Another approach to ideology is that it coordinates the behavior of individuals in a group, especially in situations of threat and competition, as in such circumstances, lack of cooperation may result in a loss of power and defeat (Van Dijk 26). Simply put, the powerful uses ideology to preserve control and stay relevant in complex situations. According to Van Dijk, ideologies control both discourse and social practices of groups (26). 6

Fairclough treats ideology as “meaning in the service of power” and claims that ideologies propose different presuppositions of texts that cause relations of dominance and power (14). Furthermore, ideological power depicts one’s actions and practices as natural and “common sense” (Fairclough 33). For instance, politicians and institutions are said to be functioning ideologically as their practices are regarded as universal and common sensical, in such manner, control and dominance are maintained (Fairclough 33). In other words, their actions are taken for granted, which sustains those relations of power. In the media, ideology helps to represent the world, social identities and social relations such as relations of class, relations between powerful politicians and the rest of the population (Fairclough 12). According to the scholar, ideology is the most effective when it is kept invisible and, in the news, that is attained by making ideologies implicit: Invisibility is achieved when ideologies are brought to discourse […] as the background assumptions which on the one hand lead the text producer to “textualize” the world in a particular way, and on the other hand lead the interpreter to interpret the text in a particular way. (Fairclough 85) Thus, texts themselves are not ideological. They have hidden cues that make the reader interpret those texts in a preferred way, for “ideology is truly effective only when it is disguised” (Fairclough 107). Van Dijk argues that text is made ideological through different structures, such as morphology, syntax and, most importantly, semantics (203). Semantic representations, or propositions, determine how the information is understood and interpreted, hence, ideologically controlled (Van Dijk 204). The researcher also introduced the notion of “ideological square” that deals with the way groups control text and talk in order to sustain their dominance and power: 1. Express/emphasize information that is positive about Us 2. Express/emphasize information that is negative about Them 3. Suppress/de-emphasize information that is positive about Them 4. Suppress/de-emphasize information that is negative about Us. (Van Dijk 267) Simply put, members of social groups tend to emphasize their good qualities while suppressing negative ones. This is a common practice in such instances as conflicts between countries or political parties. Concealing the facts and shaping the reality is one of the functions of ideologies that help social members stay powerful and relevant (Van Dijk 207). Therefore, Van Dijk’s approach will be applied to identify ideologically controlled texts in the media that de-emphasize Lithuania through propaganda.

2.3 Media discourse Media discourse is one of the main concepts in CDA, as the mass media is a powerful tool used to make impact on people’s beliefs and values. Although the media is often associated with television, in this thesis it will be defined in broad sense including the press. Mass media works as a mediator between the author and the audience (Irwin 70). As Fairclough claims, the media has a significant 7 power to represent things in certain ways by using different language (2). In addition to this, Fairclough also provides three sets of questions for analyzing the language of the mass media: 1. How is the world (events, relationships, people etc.) represented? 2. What identities are set up for those involved in the programme or story (reporters, audiences, ‘third parties’ referred to or interviewed? 3. What relationships are set up between those involved (e.g. reporter-audience, expert- audience or politician-audience relationships)? (Fairclough 5) Therefore, the media language can be analyzed in terms of representations, identities and relations. It is often assumed that texts in the media mirror reality, however, it is up to the reporters to decide the way reality should be represented. Specific details are included or excluded, left implicit or made explicit (Fairclough 104). In other words, degrees of presence are differentiated: “absent – presupposed – backgrounded – foregrounded” (Fairclough 106). In media texts, presuppositions are the means used to construct reality and convince people that what they are reading is real and common sensical (Fairclough 107). According to the scholar, all texts carry both explicit (what is said) and implicit (what is presupposed) meanings (107). The other two aspects for analysis are identities and relations (Fairclough 125). Media discourse deals with interaction between three categories: reporters, audiences, and other public members (Fairclough 126). As Fairclough claims, the process of analyzing construction of identities and relations is simultaneous as these two processes are inseparable: “how a reporter’s identity is constructed is in part a question of how reporter relates to an audience” (126). Therefore, the way relations are constructed in the media determines relations of power and dominance in a society. As it was mentioned above, media is the most influential tool used for manipulating people, thus, it is often used by politics to spread misleading information and sustain their dominance.

2.4 Political discourse Political discourse is one of the main concepts regarding power and control, and the most common way politics reach out to the society is through the media. Political texts in the media are not only reports on recent events, they have ideological effect and often make impact on people’s values and beliefs (Schaeffner 4). Schaeffner and Chilton also mention that the study of rhetoric is a part of political science, because many people tend to believe that political groups use language in a persuasive and manipulative way (201). The scholars distinguish four strategic functions that focus on political details when analyzing text and talk: 1. Coercion 2. Resistance, opposition and protest 3. Dissimulation 4. Legitimization and delegitimization. (Chilton and Schaeffner 212) As it was mentioned above, coercion usually deals with physical force, but sometimes it is used in political discourse as a legal sanction when politicians represent self and others through controlling

8 the use of language, for instance, censorship. Resistance, opposition and protest strategies are used by the opponents to counteract coercion in forms such as media, graffiti and other linguistic structures. Dissimulation is a strategy related to the control of information and can be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative dissimulation is used to prevent people from receiving negative information that could ruin politicians’ image while qualitative dissimulation deals with denial, implicit meanings and lying. The function of legitimization is to gain more power and make others obedient through positive self-representation, ideologies and so on. Delegitimization works in an opposite manner by presenting others negatively using accusations, insulting and other speech acts (Chilton and Schaeffner 212-213). The analysis of political texts in terms of these four strategies shows “what social and political positions the text is assuming or producing between the party and the public, the party and the opposition, or the country and other countries” (Chilton and Schaeffner 226). This paper analyzes the way Russia represents Lithuania, therefore, it is necessary to identify political details in texts as political discourse and propaganda are closely related concepts.

2.5 Propaganda discourse

In 2017, British newspaper “The Guardian” designated the term fake news as the word of the year (Flood 1). Although the term is quite new, it has been defined by many. For instance, Klein and Wueller describe it as “the online publication of false statements of fact” (6) while Oremus thinks of it as stories “invented entirely from thin air […] completely fabricated […] and have no actual basis” (1). Gelfert proposes that “fake news is the deliberate presentation of (typically) false or misleading claims as news, where the claims are misleading by design” (108). However, his definition is based on Rini’s, who defines fake news as follows: A fake news story is one that purports to describe events in the real world, typically by mimicking the conventions of traditional media reportage, yet is known by its creators to be significantly false, and is transmitted with the two goals of being widely re- transmitted and of deceiving at least some of its audience. (Rini 1) Simply put, fake news is purposely meant to be fabricated and deceptive. According to Gelfert, fake news is also species of disinformation (110). Wardle and Derakhshan suggest that disinformation is false information shared with malicious intentions. Both fake news and disinformation are a type of informational manipulation, created to cause harm on purpose (Bayer et al. 28). Thus, the terms are often used interchangeably as they both refer to the content created to manipulate people. According to Walton, the term propaganda carries many negative connotations and the message of it is intentionally manipulative and deceptive (384). The scholar also defines the concept of propaganda as “the output of some interest group or organization that is pushing a particular viewpoint in a way designed to promote it to a mass audience” (Walton 384). For instance, a report or an article described as propaganda “is not an objective presentation of the facts, or a balanced

9 account of both sides of an issue, but is a biased argument with a "spin" where some "cause" or particular viewpoint or interest is being advocated” (Walton 385). However, Walton claims that definitions of propaganda as a tool to persuade people and change their beliefs are secondary. Although persuasion is a part of propaganda, the ultimate goal is to get people doing something and their compliance with action (Walton 394). The researcher refers to it as “persuasion dialogue”: The aim of propaganda is not just to secure a respondent's assent to a proposition by persuading him that it is true, or that it is, supported by propositions he is already committed to. The aim of propaganda is to get the respondent to act, to adopt a certain course of action, or to go along with, and assist in a particular policy. (Walton 394) Thus, propaganda is a type of goal-directed discourse that can be identified in accordance with ten characteristics: 1. Dialogue structure 2. Message content 3. Goal-directed structure 4. Involvement of social groups 5. Indifference to logical reasoning 6. One-sided argumentation 7. Involvement of persuasion dialogue 8. Justified by results 9. Emotive language and persuasive definitions 10. Eristic aspect (Walton 396-399) According to Walton, even if there are other ways of identifying propaganda in a text, these ten characteristics are essential (400). Nevertheless, propaganda is not necessarily irrational and fallacious. Walton describes it as an argumentation “not directed towards the truth of a matter” and quotes Garner, who treats propaganda as “convenient fictions” (410). In other words, logical thinking and rational judgment can be used to spread propaganda, however, if these means do not work, then other methods of persuasion are used, namely group-oriented appeal to people, popular myths or stories (Walton 411). Therefore, propaganda is not inherently bad, it is a type of discourse that needs to be recognized and evaluated. Although fake news, disinformation, and propaganda are manipulative in nature, the former is designed to deceive people and the latter is used for persuasion. Simply put, fake news is not exactly the same as propaganda.

The theoretical overview of approaches for analyzing discourse reveals that all social processes are linguistic and should be analyzed with a view to critical discourse analysis, a concept that deals with power abuse and similar issues in society and politics. It has been also determined that the mass media, the most power tool to control the masses, is used to construct reality through presuppositions, hence, implicitly. In addition to this, one of the means of indirect persuasion in the media is propaganda, a type of discourse that covers not only such deceptive concepts as disinformation and fake news but also includes ideologies that function in disguise and benefit the powerful by helping sustain their dominance. This paper aims to demonstrate how Russia depicts 10

Lithuania in the media and manipulates opinion through propaganda. As it was mentioned above, propaganda helps to influence people to act or think in a certain way. Therefore, Walton’s ten characteristics for identifying propaganda and Van Dijk’s “ideological square” will be used as conceptual frameworks for investigating news articles that are ideological, manipulative, and shape the reality in a more convenient way.

3 ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA IN “RuBaltic.Ru” NEWS PORTAL

The information war between Russia and Lithuania has been going on for a long time. According to Timothy Thomas, information warfare is “the purposeful training or persuasion of an enemy to get him to do something seemingly for himself but in actuality doing something that benefits you” (104). Russia has been using the media to generate power not only in Lithuania but also in other countries, especially in the Baltic States. Information warfare experts claim that although the concept of disinformation is not as popular here as it is in Western countries, Lithuania is well prepared to fight it (Donara Barojan 1). In other words, there is a lack of companies in Lithuania that deal with information war. For this reason, influenced by the geo-political climate in Lithuania in 2018, Viktoras Daukšas started an initiative Debunk.eu, a combination of an analytical tool based on artificial intelligence that spots “trending and potentially harmful information narratives […] within two minutes from real time” and a team of volunteers – “debunkers” – that are eager to prevent the spread of Russian disinformation in Lithuania (Daukšas qtd. in Chivot 1). Daukšas’s initiative contributed to generating the data from “RuBaltic.Ru”, a propaganda website written in English but owned by the Russian Federation.

3.1 Data and methods As it was mentioned above, the initiative Debunk has helped to collect the data for the analysis. A feature from Google that allows to find all articles with certain keywords from a specific site was used. “RuBaltic.Ru” is, as they call themselves, the analytical portal that focuses on the development of post-Soviet countries, especially the Baltic States. The site was started in 2013 and belongs to entities from Kaliningrad and Moscow (Naylor 80). Hence, to collect the data, the search line was “site:RuBaltic.Ru lithuania” (provided by Debunk initiative) which generated 347 results that contained the word “Lithuania”. Nevertheless, only 38 articles on the website were fully translated to English. The database for the corpus-driven analysis consists of articles written from 2013 to 2018. A corpus of 38 texts was created. The details of the corpus are given in Table 1 below. Table 1. Corpus statistics Words (tokens) 55 807 Unique words (types) 6 665 Articles 38 In the following section, the representation of Lithuania in headlines will be analyzed. A headline sub-corpus was created to understand lexical choices regarding Lithuania in news portal headlines and compare the frequency of words “Russia” and “Lithuania” in both the articles and headlines. Broader details of the headline sub-corpus are given in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Sub-corpus of headlines statistics Words (tokens) 358 Unique words (types) 209 Headlines 38 The data was manually analyzed. First, the key themes were recognized which allowed to determine what topics are the most common. Then, evaluative statements that indicate persuasion or de-emphasize Lithuania were collected. Simply put, the data was classified in accordance with Van Dijk’s notion of ideological square: emphasizing positive information about Russia/negative information about Lithuania and de-emphasizing negative information about Russia/positive information about Lithuania. One of the aims of this work is to determine linguistic structures and aspects of discourse used to create ideologically controlled texts, thus, Voyant Tools (www.voyant- tools.org), a web-based application for text analysis created by Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell in 2003, was used to identify vocabulary choices related to Lithuania and illustrate whether it is semantics, morphology or other aspects that contribute most to creating persuasive/manipulative texts.

3.2 Representation of Lithuania vs. Russia in news headlines This section focuses on the way Lithuania is represented in news headlines on “RuBaltic.Ru” site. In news discourse, every publication is ideologically shaped and controlled by the powerful groups. In other words, texts in media discourse always carry two meanings: implicit and explicit. Different aspects of discourse, such as presuppositions, implication and other propositional structures in headlines were influenced by national ideologies in Russia. As Van Dijk suggests, national ideologies are depicted through the model Us vs. Them. (201). In this particular case, it is implied that Russia is good, and Lithuania is bad.

Frequency of referred regions in headlines 20 17 15

10 7 7 4 5 3 0 Lithuania Baltic Baltics Europe Russia

Figure 2. Frequency of referred regions in headlines

The diagram (see Figure 2) displays how many times a certain country or region name was used in headlines. Out of 38 headlines, 3 have a word Russia and 17 have a word Lithuania in them. To include the inflected forms and derivatives, search nodes russ* and lithuan* were used. The rest

13 of the headlines contain either baltic (7), baltics (7) or europe (4) referents. Thus, there are 35 Lithuania-related headlines an only 3 related to Russia. Significant number of examples shows that the headlines are usually created with emphasis on Lithuania’s negative characteristics. (3.1) Russia Forgot About the Sanctions (2017-06-27) (3.2) Lithuanian Blogger: Repressions are the go-to weapon for the criminal regime of Lithuania (2018-05-16) (3.3) Lithuania Remembers Holocaust Victims while Glorifying Their Killers (2018-09-21) (3.4) Nazi Criminals Are Honored in Lithuania (2017-11-06) (3.5) Lithuanian Media Propose Killing Dissenters (2016-02-09) (3.6) An elite’s neurosis: Lithuania on the verge of an internal political crisis (2013-11-13) These few examples allow to understand how Russian reporters shape the narration regarding Lithuania in media discourse. Lexical choices such as “propose killing”, “criminal regime”, “glorifying killers” among others, accuse Lithuania of being a country with no democracy, where power and control are used arbitrarily. A single instance of emphasizing information that is positive about Russia “Russia forgot about the sanctions” creates an image that Russia is good and willing to look away from certain regulations. Van Dijk’s ideological square could be employed to emphasize negative information about Lithuania/de-emphasize positive information about Lithuania and emphasize positive information about Russia/de-emphasize negative information about Russia. It can be seen that “RuBaltic.Ru” portal tends to focus on devaluing Lithuania rather than praising Russia. However, after comparing the statistics of the headline sub-corpus and the statistics of the article sub- corpus, the difference in frequency was significant. The frequency of terms russ* and lithuan* in the headline sub-corpus is 3 and 17. The frequency of the exact same terms in article sub-corpus is 331 and 640, respectively. In headlines, Lithuania is mentioned much more often than Russia, but in the articles the difference is not as distinct. The ratios between titles and actual texts are different, because, as it was mentioned earlier, in headlines, Lithuania is given all the attention. Yet in the articles, the reporters vary expressing negative features about Lithuania with expressing positive features about Russia: (3.7a) Certainly, east partners will be blamed for it. (3.7b) It is always easy to blame all of your problems on a neighbor. (3.8a) And if public harassment with destruction of property does not “neutralize the collaborationist”, then the “heavy artillery” comes in – harassing the dissenter’s relatives. (3.8b) There is a criminal group which rules Lithuania. In other words, in texts, Russia is mentioned almost as frequently as Lithuania, because the Russian nation (Us) is depicted as a victim (3.7a, 3.7b) while Lithuanians (Them) are a country of tyrants (3.8a, 3.8b). Therefore, the following section will introduce examples and focus on representation of Lithuania in ideologically biased texts.

3.3 Representation of Lithuania vs. Russia in news articles News articles in “RuBaltic.Ru” display a clear differentiation between the Republic of Lithuania and the Russian Federation. The analysis of articles in regard to Van Dijk’s ideological square indicates the tendency to degrade Lithuanians while victimizing Russian minorities in the country. The diagram below illustrates the frequency of Russia and Lithuania-related terms in the corpus.

Explicit references 800 640 600 400 331 200 0 Lithuania Russia

Figure 3. Explicit references to Lithuania and Russia

In addition to nodes lithuania (290) and russia (157), the frequency displayed in Figure 3 also includes inflected forms and derivatives such as lithuanian (264), lithuania’s (46), lithuanians (38), lithuanization (2) as well as russian (153), russia’s (12), russians (7) and russophobia (2). The following sections will expand upon contrasting evaluative statements regarding the two countries. The examples in sections below were collected from all 38 articles and illustrate recurring references to Lithuania and Russia.

3.3.1 Representation of Lithuania (Them)

Historically, Russia and Lithuania have a long history of political, military and other conflicts. Due to the development of the media, the conflicts turned into information war. Collected evaluative statements were classified which resulted in five major categories that Lithuania is represented in: Lithuania is a “failed state”, Lithuania belongs to America, Lithuania is not a democratic country, Lithuania violates media rights and Lithuania supports Nazism.

1. Lithuania as a “failed state” A failed state is defined as a “state, utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community” (Helman and Ratner qtd. in Thiessen 1). The reporters of “RuBaltic.Ru” tend to consider Lithuania a failed state and mock the country claiming that it “looks like a Sahara Desert”. (3.10) the country has no future; demographic catastrophe; most suicides; culture is weak; language is weak; people are emigrating; on the brink of extinction; demographic wasteland; depopulation, emigration and poverty.

Collocations like these portray Lithuania as a country that is almost extinct. Such expressions as “Lithuania is a deep countryside of Russia”, “some kind of Lithuania” show that article authors feel superior to Lithuanians and believe that people would have nothing if it were not for Russia. This example also illustrates Us vs. Them model, where Russia is a grand and powerful country and Lithuania is a small entity that does not have a lot of impact.

2. Lithuania as America’s “puppet state” The tension between Russia and the United States of America is not a new concept either. Conflicting ideologies of two powerful countries has been the reason for many conflicts. According to the Russian ideology, Lithuania is dependent on America and acts according to their lead at all times. (3.11) American puppet; always picking team America; America’s puppet; the habit of following Washington’s orders; support all what America says; dependent on Washington. In this case, the lexical choice of the word puppet is not a simple metaphor meaning marionette. According to Krystyna Marek, a puppet state is a country that is legally free but, in reality, fully depends on external power (178). In this case, the reporters believe that the relations between Lithuania and the United States are not based on alliance but rather on superior-subordinate communication.

3. Lithuania as an authoritarian country According to Russian reporters that come from a conservative and authoritarian country, Lithuania is ruled under a dictatorship. Comparing Lithuania to North Korea and Lithuania’s former president to North Korea’s dictator – “Grybauskaite’s “terrorist state” resembles Kim Jong-un’s”- makes Lithuania look like a country with no democracy. (3.12) going the authoritarian way; Lithuania is a template of yesterday’s Soviet Union; system has not changed; non-democratic; holding the power at any cost; blocking opposing opinions; discrediting everything that compromises state ideology. These collocations, among others, make implications that Lithuania is an authoritarian country and not a lot has changed there since the Soviet occupation. Russia’s ideological understanding is that certain individuals in Lithuania rule the whole country and nobody here has any rights or freedom of speech.

4. Lithuania violates media rights In 2013, Lithuania banned First Russian Channel due to stories regarding January 13th events. In 2015, Lithuania also banned another Russian channel due to inciting hatred on Ukraine. Right after that, many articles occurred claiming that there is no freedom of expression in Lithuania and information in the media is highly selective. (3.13) incapable to draw coherent information policy; transmitting one-sided, impartial information; information totalitarianism, limiting the media due to different

views, banning TV channels, suspend the channels that demonstrate alternative historical point of view. The portal creates a picture that, in Lithuania, the information spread through the media is as restricted as it is in North Korea. Such expressions as “choosing the way of North Korean information policy” imply that the media is controlled, and only preferential information is published.

5. Lithuania as a pro-Nazi country Neo-Nazism is an ideology that follows the principles of the Nazi, such as nationalism, anti-Semitism, or racism among other issues. In the past, Jews made up a large part of population in Lithuania, however, as a result of holocaust, most of them were killed. In the news portal, Lithuania is still said to be fond of Nazism and its followers: (3.14) not only justify and glorify the Nazi criminals of the past, but they also commit Nazi crimes today; conducting military actions against ethnically and culturally distinctive from the rest of the country; a country where swastika got legalized as an “ancient Lithuanian folk symbol”; the president lobbied the honorable reburial of the Lithuanian Activist Front leader, who sanctioned a Jewish pogrom that killed a thousand people. As Russian reporters tend to imply, Lithuania “glorifies the killers” and “prosecutes Jewish resistance fighters”. Such expressions create an image that not a lot has changed since 1940s and Lithuania is still a country that follows nationalist ideology, commit crimes against humanity but also pretends to be democratic.

Given these points, it is clear that reporters at “RuBaltic.Ru” are focused on presenting Lithuania in the worst possible way from being a failing country to having North Korea’s level of dictatorship. The categories that Lithuania is usually presented in along with negative statements illustrate two ends of ideological square: expressing negative and suppressing positive information about Them.

3.3.2 Representation of Russia (Us)

The data shows that the portal shapes a view that Russophobia is a widespread concept in Lithuania. There are 331 tokens related to Russia in the corpus and a majority of them create implications that Lithuania spreads propaganda about Russia ant not the other way around. Although all collocations carry the same idea that Russia is a victim and treated unjustly, the statements can be put into two categories: threatening and disrespectful.

1. Lithuania threatens Russia and its people Fairclough has said that ideologies work best when they are implicit (107). Collocations in the example below carry hidden cues that Russian people cannot feel safe in Lithuania as they are constantly “treated like enemies” and harassed for being a minority.

(3.15) a mechanism of controlling Russia; informational war against yesterday’s neighbors-enemies; Lithuania stabbed Russia in the back; aggression to prove identity; the harassment of minorities; treated like enemies; “Russian aggression”; boost NATO and harm Russian interest; a geopolitical game against Russia; blackmailing Russia; fighting Russia is the rite of passage in power. Vocabulary choices such as “enemy”, “aggression”, “harassment” and “blackmail” make the readers imply that Russia is a victim and Lithuania is a tormentor. However, it is quite paradoxical that such powerful country feels intimidated by Lithuania, a state they call “a deep countryside of Russia”.

2. Lithuania’s disrespect towards Russia and its people Russophobia is defined as irrational hatred and prejudice towards the Russian nation (Steele 1). It is a political ideology that Russians often employ to emphasize allegations made by other countries. In this case, they state that “Lithuania’s political system is built upon anti-Russian views” and claim to feel betrayed and devalued by Lithuanian people. (3.16) Soviet symbolism forbidden; “2-minutes-of-hate” broadcasts about closest neighbors; breaking every connection with the Soviet past; hated USSR; anti- Russian hysteria; always complain about Russia; anti-Russian sentiments; ban on the correspondence with Russian citizens; anti-Soviet cult. Statements like these allow to understand the position Russians put themselves in. To clarify, the country plays the victim and use ideological power to spread propaganda and gain affection from others. All things considered, it can be stated that news reporters tend to present Russia as peaceful and depreciated, from being “stabbed in the back” to being hated because of Lithuania’s aggression. The categories that represent such stance of Russia illustrate the other two ends of ideological square: suppressing negative and expressing positive information about Us.

3.4 Characteristics of Russian propaganda in news articles This section focuses on characteristics for identifying propaganda in texts. As said by scholars, propaganda is not necessarily bad, although it is often used for deceitful purposes. Just like in ideologically controlled texts, persuasion is also a part or propaganda as the ultimate goal of such texts is to convince people to act or think in a certain way (Walton 108). Russian propaganda against Lithuania is a concept that started during wars years ago. Walton has determined 10 characteristics that help recognize propaganda in texts, therefore, news articles against Lithuania will be analyzed in accordance with them.

1. Dialogue structure Propaganda works as a communicative discourse between two participants – the proponent (active) and the respondent (passive). If the proponent could be anyone from an individual to a big group of

18 people, the respondent is usually the mass audience (Walton 109). In this work, the proponent is the authors of texts, the respondent is people – the target audience – and “RuBaltic.Ru” website is the medium between the two. In other words, the reporters are active members of this communication practice and the readers are the passive ones. The data shows that, in the context of propaganda against Lithuania, some reporters publish articles more frequently than others.

Frequency of recurrent reporters

15 12 10 9 6 5 5 3 2 1 0 A.N. S.R. A.I. A.S. AN.ST. O.M. O.P.

Figure 4. Frequency of recurrent reporters.

The initials instead of full names were given in Figure 4 for full names are listed in Appendix B. It is evident that some reporters publish texts more often. However, the reasons for that can only be speculated, but, in propaganda discourse, it is a common practice to choose the authors who can affect and persuade the audience the most.

2. Message content The content of propaganda message is always said to have a detailed argumentation that can be presented either verbally or pictorially (Walton 109). It is clear that argumentation starts with a claim and then the narration is shaped through arguments and verbal illustrations. The data suggests that articles on “RuBaltic.Ru” depict Lithuania in a creative manner as the authors tend to use figurative language: (3.17) looking like a Sahara Desert; demographic wasteland; banana republic; pissing into the wind; catastroika; Trojan donkey; Lithuania – a puppy, Russia – a bear. Such phrases show that vocabulary choices in terms of message content are meant to degrade Lithuania as they all carry negative connotations. In other words, the message content – the argumentation – is intended to spread propaganda through a vast array of epithets that depict Lithuania from the negative side.

3. Goal-directed structure Propaganda as a practice of communication between two parties is always goal oriented. The proponent’s goal is to manipulate the respondent into behaving in a specific manner – supporting the ideas of particular group, following the regime and so on. (Walton 110). According to the data, the

19 goal of Russian propaganda is to promote their ideas, gain acceptance and weaken every argument that might put Russia in a compromising position: (3.18) enemies are not in Kremlin, they are in Seimas; an incurable case of suppressing Russia; system built upon anti-Russian views; Russia offers best deals; harm Russian interest; Lithuania cannot distinguish truth from lies and information from propaganda; Lithuania transmitting one-sided information, Lithuanian always complain about Russia, Lithuania has problems. Examples above illustrate that Russia tends to be portrayed as innocent and non-aggressive country, while Lithuania is depicted as inadequate and hostile. To clarify, the articles on “RuBaltic.Ru” are intended to achieve the same goal, but they are structured either around focusing on positive features of Russia or negative features of Lithuania.

4. Involvement of social groups In propaganda discourse, the proponent is an individual who speaks on behalf of the powerful, such as a country or a political party, while the respondent is the mass audience (Walton 110). Social groups can also be involved to strengthen the argumentation. In this particular case, reporters tend to involve social groups to enhance the effect of the portrayal of a country. For example: (3.19) disloyal citizens, collaborationists, criminals, anti-Soviets. In articles, Lithuania is associated with groups listed in the example above, while Russia is said to have “obliging citizens”. Thus, the involvement of social groups that are associated with obstructive behavior in propaganda articles benefits Russia by implicitly making impact on people’s believes and decisions.

5. Indifference to logical reasoning Propaganda texts are created to “move a mass audience to certain direction”, and that is often achieved by appealing to emotions rather than presenting logical argumentation (Walton 110). When the author of propaganda texts has a clear goal, he typically does not bother to check if claims, facts and evidence are logical or even real. For instance, it is common knowledge that Lithuania is a free and democratic country, and yet the articles depict it as an authoritarian state, where “occupation doctrine turned it into analogue of North Korea” and “skeletons are hidden in the closets of Lithuanian authorities”. However, publishing such information does not mean that the reporters at “RuBaltic.Ru” do not know the real situation, they simply do not rely on logic as it is a lot more beneficial to use figurative language and affect people’s emotions rather than look for evidence to verify their claims.

6. One-sided argumentation In propaganda discourse, the facts are not critically discussed for both sides, they are irrational and presented in the absolute favor of one side (Walton 110). Nevertheless, the data shows that writers do not present arguments in favor of any side, instead, they focus on the arguments against. To illustrate: 20

(3.20)“Criminal cases based on false accusations, listening to the telephone calls, shadowing, pressing the leaders of the protest movement out of the country, attempts of public slander of anti-fascist by posting deceitful information in the Internet and, finally, killing those dissenters”. This is one of many paragraphs that are centered around the idea of Lithuania as a horrible country. As has been said, propaganda is meant to manipulate people into thinking or feeling in a particular way. Thus, when the readers are not presented any other point of view, they become easily convinced and believe anything. In this case, the authors shape the narration focusing entirely on arguments against Lithuania.

7. Involvement of persuasion dialogue As the ultimate goal of propaganda is to encourage people to support a particular party, the proponent uses persuasion to make the masses committed long-term (Walton 111). Persuasion dialogue can be understood from two different perspectives. First, any propaganda text is a persuasive dialogue by nature because, as it was mentioned above, propaganda is a communicative practice between two entities. However, “RuBaltic.Ru” takes on a different approach and uses persuasion dialogue in a literal way to conduct interviews. The interviews carry the same message as all other articles, but they also reveal how the reporter tries to provoke the interviewee. (3.21) -Before the start of the presiding, Lithuanian experts said that Lithuania’s main goal for this semester is raising the number of internet search engine requests with the word “Lithuania in them. Do you really think that is smart? -I think that is a very good idea. Lithuania is a wonderful country with great and hardworking people. -Yes, but on the political level, very strange things started happening. Let’s look at the media: the ban on the First Baltic Channel, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” had to remove the Soviet awards from its brand cover, then there was information that the Kremlin is preparing an information provocation against president Grybauskaite, searched and interrogations of journalists and so on. The amount of search inquiries with Lithuania in it probably grew, but did it really help the country’s image. The extract (3.21) from the interview proves the point that the interviewer uses persuasion to manipulate the interlocutor into agreeing with him. The questions are formulated in a way that, at first, the facts are introduced and then followed by the actual question. The phrasing of questions is also important - “do you really think that is smart?” or “did it really help the country’s image?” – the lexical choice of the word “really” in both questions suggests that the interviewer is biased. Besides, when the interviewee disagrees and claims that he actually likes Lithuania, the reporter presents many counterarguments why Lithuania should not be liked. Therefore, it can be stated that the authors of “RuBaltic.Ru” portal use persuasion dialogue as a speech act to set the audience against Lithuania.

8. Justification by results The proponent justifies propaganda by convincing the audience that results will benefit them and that support for their side is necessary to “combat or guard against danger” (Walton 111). In other words, the goal of propaganda is introduced as moral and righteous. However, sometimes the results are not justified explicitly. In the previous sections, it was established that the goal of Russian propaganda is to gain more followers so that the authorities have more power. If that was to be said explicitly, the results would not be as good. Thus, the proponent uses semantics to hide true intentions and make it look like what has been said is right. To clarify, the portal creates a picture that Lithuania is a country, where horrible things happen to people – “different point of views are persecuted”, and Russia is a country that suffers from Lithuania’s behavior – “was stabbed in the back”. Naturally, the society tends to do “the right thing” and support the good side, in this case, the victim. In such manner, the ultimate result is more people fond of Russia and against Lithuania.

9. Emotive language and persuasive definitions As it was mentioned above, propaganda texts intend for emotional appeal. Hence, emotive lexical choices are used to praise one side and devalue the opposing one. (Walton 112). Persuasive definitions are used to create either a positive or a negative meaning to a word by changing what is stands for but leaving its “evaluative meaning” (Walton 112). Emphasis of good features of Russia and bad features of Lithuania is reflected upon throughout the paper. In the section above (3.4.8), it was mentioned that people tend to support the side they pity. Thus, propaganda works well when people are affected through their emotions. For this reason, the authors of texts select words that carry negative meaning, such as “harassment”, “enemies”, “terror”, “aggression”. In terms of persuasive definitions, they help to strengthen the effect of ideological texts. In the corpus, Lithuania was referred to as “demographic wasteland”: (3.22a) Wasteland – a barren and unused area of land. (3.22b) Wasteland – uninhabitable and useless area that people are abandoning. Here, depicting Lithuania as a wasteland makes implications that people in Lithuania are either dying or emigrating, and the country is “on the brink of extinction”. Therefore, it is lexical items that appeal to emotions, shape the narration, implicitly spread propaganda and help to attain the desired results.

10. Eristic aspect In propaganda discourse, argumentation is carried out through eristic dialogue. Simply put, it does not matter what is the truth, it implies that one side is good and all those who do not support it are bad (Walton 113). The eristic aspect is best reflected in the instances of Russian writers accusing Lithuanians of spreading propaganda: (3.23) blocking opposing views; facts are hidden; no rational or realistic arguments; “what’s convenient – we’ll admit, what’s not convenient – we will denounce”.

The examples above depict Lithuania as a country, where people with opposing opinions are dealt with. In other words, it is implied that propagandists in the state are aimed at winning rather than being logical or rational. It has been established that propaganda along with ideological texts are usually structured around dichotomies such as Us vs. Them or Good vs. Bad, and eristic dialogue is one of the means to build these polarizing stances. Taking everything into account, Walton’s characteristics of propaganda and Van Dijk’s ideological square approach the texts differently but the results are quite similar. In the context of Russia and Lithuania, both propaganda and ideological texts are aimed at increasing the power of the authorities through lexical choices and other means of persuasion.

3.5 Themes of Russian propaganda in news articles In the previous sections, it was established that reporters shape the narration about Lithuania through ideological texts and put emphasis on its negative characteristics. In addition to this, this section will analyze the most common themes used to portray Lithuania on “RuBaltic.Ru” website. As the texts were manually analyzed, it was determined that eight themes were more frequent than others and were repeated at least three times (see Figure 5).

Recurrent themes in the articles 8 7 7 6 6 6 5 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 1

Figure 5. Recurrent themes in the articles

The biggest number of articles were about the political system (7), the energy sources (6), and the Nazi and the holocaust (6). Other articles were focused on the media (4), Europe (4), the historical events (4), the Baltic States (3), relationship with the United States of America and other subjects (2) that were not as frequent as the ones above.

1. The political system Many political systems in the world exist, but there are three biggest ones: democracy, monarchy, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Legally, Lithuania is a democratic country, yet the data shows that reporters on “RuBaltic.Ru” think different. In corpus, the frequency of the node politic*

23 is 181. As has been said, the portal creates a picture that Lithuania is ruled under authoritarian regime or, as they call it, “dictatorship of democracy”: (3.24) Why did Lithuania turn from the leader of the democratic perestroika to the North Korea of the EU? There are no straightforward statements that Lithuania is not democratic. For instance, the example above once again calls Lithuania the North Korea of the European Union. Thus, the reporters presuppose that the audience knows the policy of North Korea and implicitly applies that to Lithuania. Besides, when talking about the political system in Lithuania, the reporters tend to use sarcasm and irony: (3.25) It looks like a farce of hated USSR that Lithuanian special services tap the most “interesting” telephone calls and it is not actually against their new democratic laws. The phrase “new democratic laws” in the context make implications that the-so-called democratic country justifies using measures that are not democratic at all. In 2013 and 2014, around the presidential election time in Lithuania, several articles focused entirely on Dalia Grybauskaite, now former president of Lithuania. The articles were also among the first ones to depict Lithuania as an authoritarian state and the president as a dictator. (3.26) During president Smetona, the police were making sure that no one spoke Polish on the streets, during Grybauskaite they take off bilingual street signs and forbid Polish geographical names and even Polish last names are demanded to be written in a Lithuanian manner. The example above compares Grybauskaite to Smetona, the first president of Lithuania, who was a nationalist and ruled the country under totalitarian regime. The reporters also speculate about Grybauskaite’s past – her father, studies, and supposed involvement with KGB. (3.27a) Maybe it has something to do with how suspiciously long Grybauskaite studied in her university? (3.27b) These facts must also be scarier than the information that the father of the current Lithuanian president Polikarp Grybauskas worked in the NKVD. Such lexical items as “suspiciously” or “scarier” along with the twisting of facts show that reporters try to appeal to emotions and invoke doubt.

2. Nazi collaboration When Lithuania was occupied by the Nazi, most of the Jews in the area were killed. 23rd of September is National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. Around that time, a lot of articles are published that portray Lithuania as an anti-Semitic country fond of Nazi collaborationists. The frequency of search nodes jew, nazi and collaboration are 42, 78 and 57, respectively. (3.28)Lithuania’s state policy on exonerating and glorifying Lithuanian Nazi collaborationists is a blunt violation […] creating the ideal conditions for anti- Semitism, racism, xenophobia and related intolerance.

(3.29) Lithuania aims to show that they share the pain and tragedy of the Holocaust victims, but peculiarly, this is juxtaposed with glorifying collaborationists, who have been found guilty of atrocities against the Jews. Once again, any positive feature, in this case, care for the Jews, is covered with something adverse like praising the killers. Moreover, the data shows that there were attempts to treat genocide and the actions of Soviet Union as equal: (3.30)…an intrinsic part of the state ideology, which is built upon the theory of three occupations and the “double genocide” of Lithuanians, which was allegedly carried out by the Soviet Union just as much as the Nazi forces. In this particular example, the emphasis is put on Russia and not Lithuania. However, the word “allegedly” gives away that the reporters are not inclined to agree with presented information, hence, try to arouse doubt. In the articles regarding the Nazi and the holocaust, the Forest Brothers, men who were Lithuanian partisans during Soviet occupation, are accused of being Nazi collaborationists. (3.31)…accused of the crime of Holocaust denial. The knives are being sharpened around the infamous leader of the Forest Brothers Jonas Noreika. Here, the emphasis is on Lithuania. The data shows that the Forest Brothers are referred to as “the killers that Lithuania glorifies”: (3.32) In Lithuania itself, the topic of Forest Brothers is not debated. Any statement differing from the official point of view may lead to a criminal case and time and prison. In this instance, the themes regarding the Nazi and the authoritarian political system intertwine. Simply put, it is the attempt to convince the masses that Lithuania is a pro-Nazi country that abuses power when an opposing point of view is presented.

3. The energy In 2014, a decision was made to build a liquified natural gas terminal (LNG) in Klaipėda. That meant that Lithuania will no longer need services of Gazprom, a multinational energy corporation based in Russia and the largest supplier of natural gas in Europe. The event was given a lot of attention from the Russian media, including “RuBaltic.Ru”, as right around that time articles like “Hopes and Reality: Western Experts are Against LNG Terminals on the Baltic” (2014-04-21), “Lithuania Has Finished Building the Myth of Energy Independence” (2014-11-07) were released. In the corpus, the word energy is mentioned 83 times, while the frequency of nodes gas, Gazprom and LNG is 135, 26 and 56. In the context of energy supply, Lithuania is again depicted as a country, where the authorities behave as they please: (3.33) Realizing that the taxpayers will choose the cheaper product, Lithuania’s government recalled the communist overcoats and decided to use methods of coercion in the “best” tradition of the recent totalitarian past.

The story behind this is that Lithuania is said to care about “political price” instead of economic and willing to pay more money despite that “Russia offers the best deal” and the “advantages of Russian gas are obvious”. In 2018, when the dispute was settled, more articles on this topic came out and, as the data suggests, the reporters’ position was different. If previously the focus was on Lithuania and its “stupid and cowardly” actions, now the emphasis is on Russia, “the enemy”. (3.34) Lithuania holds a grudge against Russia and Gazprom. “Holds a grudge” imply that Lithuania resents Russia although no damage was done. Besides, the articles on gas and energy show that Russia and the United State are also in conflict, and Lithuania is brought into that for supporting the West, or as it was phrased in the article “putting America first”.

4. The media In section 3.3.1, it was discussed that Lithuania is depicted as a country that violates media rights. All articles regarding the media elaborates on the same subject – Lithuania’s ban on certain Russian channels. In the corpus, the frequency of media-related words is as follows: media – 59, channel – 32, journalists – 44. Although articles like “Pressuring the media in the Baltic States is the sign of weakness” (2013-12-03), “Who did the Baltics learn the prohibition policy from” (2015-02-13) are centered around the media and its issues, they are also meant to reflect the politics in Lithuania. The First Russian channel was banned for being propagandistic about the events of January 13th. Right after that, an interview discussing the ban and the actual events was published: (3.35) What happened in Russia in 1993, was the same as in Vilnius in 1991. Common political chaos of the turning point. I hope I’ll be allowed to go into Lithuania after saying these words. By the way, many of my journalist friends from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have already left the Baltic States, because you can’t express yourself about many things there. Such expression as “hope I will be allowed to go into Lithuania” creates an image that people are banished from the country for having an opinion that is different from state’s ideology. Lithuania is also blamed for “putting a ban on profession” and controlling the journalists. (3.36) the journalists who service this construction, they make a living off of it. And those who don’t service it don’t get paid, so they’re forced to leave. In other words, it is implied that the way the journalists are treated depends on whose side they support. If they are in favor of the opposing viewpoint, they are implicitly forced to leave Lithuania. (3.37) Incapable to draw a coherent information policy, the Baltic elites are resorting to the last argument – censorship and limiting information – thus, aligning themselves with the most totalitarian regimes where the political instruments are bans. As it can be seen from the example above, even in media discourse, any policy adopted by Lithuania is compared to the totalitarian regime. In other words, although the article seems to be about the television or the press, its real meaning and the main idea are hidden between the lines.

5. The European Union Relations between the European Union and Russia are quite strained, especially since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine. In the corpus, 256 words are related to Europe, including the abbreviation EU. However, articles in the database primarily focus on Lithuania in the context of Europe. To specify, the reporters try to convince people that Lithuania does not belong in the European Union due to different visions and political systems. (3.38) On 14 May 1993, Lithuania became a member of the Council of Europe – an organization whose goal is to protect human rights and support democracy. But nowadays the Lithuanian Republic is more akin to North Korea. The ruling class has started a hunt on journalists, public figures and politicians who speak out against the government, pointing out their clear failures, mishaps and crimes. Here, Lithuania is again compared to North Korea despite being a member of European Union. The reporters claim that the ruling system in Lithuania, where “a Facebook post can get you two years of prison in this Council of Europe member-state” is not compatible with Europe’s goal to protect humanity. (3.39)… pinned his hopes that the leadership of EU would help Lithuania to “step over their phobias and begin to think in a European way”[...] old Europe couldn’t imagine that it’d be North Korea who’d come to Lithuania instead of Europe. It can be seen that the reporters try to strengthen their position against Lithuania by putting it in the context of two contradictory regions - Europe and North Korea. Simply put, the portal creates a picture that Lithuania’s actions are more conservative than liberal and do not fit in Europe.

6. The history The history of Lithuania and Russia is marked by conflicts and acts of aggression. The anger and hatred from the past events are the reason for hostility today. Reporters that write about the history of these two countries put emphasis on certain topics, in this case, the Soviet occupation and KGB. The frequency of nodes KGB and Soviet is 35 and 120, while references to a certain year are given 153 times. Interestingly enough, one day prior to the 25th anniversary of the restoration of Lithuania’s independence, an article “How modern Lithuania came from a KGB uniform?” (2015-03-10) was released. First, the article describe the movement of perestroika or, as the reporters call it, “catastroika”, and then the emphasis is put back onto Lithuania and “Sąjūdis”. As it transpired, reporters believe that “Sąjūdis” and KGB are two closely related entities. (3.40) I realized that the Sąjūdis creators, as it turns out, were KGB bodies. Vytautas Landsbergis, the man who led “Sąjūdis”, is associated with KGB just like the former president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, is associated with the authoritarian regime in the country. Additionally, Landsbergis is said to be “president Grybauskaite’s political mentor”: (3.41) Yes, he put her there, he brought her through…because he is a KGB guy, just like she is.

Not only do they speculate about two people are not really related to each other, the journalists also postulate that the history of Lithuania is based on lies: (3.43) When it was decided that the radio and television was to be taken under control, […] Butkevičius took the so-called Lithuanian Border Guard and placed them on the rooftops – they were the ones who were shooting. He admitted this several times. However, after spending two years in prison, he remembered that he didn’t do it. But before that, in several interviews, he admitted to doing it. That is how Lithuania’s history was written. The example above makes implications that Lithuanians are responsible for the killings of January 13th although they tend to be “in denial”. The data shows that there are two sides for any story, and for this reason, it is convenient to depict Lithuania through historic events because speculations on who is the bad one help to disturb state’s ideologies, hence, cause doubt.

7. The Baltic States Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – the Baltic States – are often considered as one entity since the reporters tend to portray the Baltics in a similar manner. In corpus, the frequency of lexical items related to the Baltic States are as follows: Baltic (218), Latvia (135(, Estonia (81). Not only are these countries represented similarly, they also share the same attitude towards Russia. (3.44) The Baltic experts keep emphasizing this: the Baltic countries are being killed by their own politicians, one should not look for Latvia’s and Lithuania’s enemies in the Kremlin, but in their own Seimas, government buildings and presidential residences. The example above is an attempt to divert attention away from Russia by putting emphasis on Lithuanian and Latvian politicians’ actions. The rulers are claimed to be killing their countries, causing depopulation and slowly approaching extinction: (3.45) Depopulation and lack of real social policy is the true and biggest threat to the Baltics’ existence. The journalists from “RuBaltic.Ru” are confident that the actions performed by the Baltic States is a response to Russia or, as they call it, “a mythical Russian threat”: (3.46) But there is but one “threat” to the Baltic “elite”. The Russian threat. In the fight against this mythical threat, they kill their countries and people. They have almost killed them already. As the data suggests, Lithuania along with Latvia and Estonia are thought to be dying out. Besides, the countries are depicted as desperately trying to fight against Russia and win an imaginary battle that does not exist in reality.

8. The United States In section 3.3.1, it was established that Lithuania is depicted as America’s marionette. Throughout the articles, America is mentioned 117 times and often with regards to Russia. Thus, if articles related

28 to European Union and other themes put emphasis on Lithuania, then articles centered around the United States are focused on Russia. (3.47) Washington acting of their own accord with the anti-Russian measures may lead to “Widespread unforeseen consequences”. The reporters do not explain what the “consequences” are but still try to set European countries against America by claiming that “under the guise of anti-Russian sanctions, the United States are imposing sanctions against Europe”. However, the expression “anti-Russian” is constantly being repeated, hence, shows that from reporter’s point of view Russia is a victim that is being bullied by aggressive countries. What is more, Lithuania along with other countries are mocked for supporting the United states. (3.48)…they could theoretically take another option: join all of “progressive humanity” in the fight against “chauvinist, racist and sexist Donald Trump.” Meaning – support liberal Europe in its fight against conservative America. But that is a hard task, when Donald Trump is the US president and your direct superior, and the habit of following Washington’s directions in everything is dyed into their bones after decades of their time as American puppets. Russia’s dislike towards America and its allies is quite known. However, the aggression is not explicit, instead, the portal tries to manipulate the audience into feeling pity for them. Similarly, they attempt to humiliate Lithuania by representing it as inferior in the context of United States. Therefore, it can be stated that some themes are easier to spread propaganda through than others. In the case of “RuBaltic.Ru” website, reporters find it more convenient to portray Lithuania in the context of political conflicts, historical disagreements and in relation to other countries. In other words, it can be stated that the portal represents Lithuania through events that refer to power abuse in political discourse.

Given the points analyzed in the analytical part, it can be stated that news portal “RuBaltic.Ru” tends to represent Lithuania through propaganda discourse. However, the presentation of facts can be interpreted in accordance with several different perspectives. From one point of view, the image of Lithuania is created via ideological beliefs that Lithuania is an authoritarian country, a failed state or that it belongs to the United States. The conducted analysis also revealed that articles about Lithuania are created as a means of persuasion because they meet all ten characteristics as proposed by Walton (2007). For example, they present one-sided information, employ eristic dialogue for opposing views and contain emotive language as well as persuasive definitions, hence, focus on emotions rather than logic. Besides, it was also noted that some reporters are published more frequently than others, which allows to state that some of them are better at twisting the facts in a more convenient way. Additionally, the way reporters formulate questions during interviews also suggests that they are biased and only present partial information about Lithuania. In some articles, Lithuania was negatively depicted in relation with other countries, like a puppet of the United States, 29 or in the context of other major events such as building their own gas terminal. However, the majority of articles were written with a view to historical conflicts and political system of Lithuania, both of which represent it as a country ruled by dictators where people are killed for the smallest matters.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This thesis analyzed instances of propaganda found in Lithuania-related articles from news portal “RuBaltic.Ru”. The aim of this thesis was to determine how language is used to create ideologically controlled texts, identify aspects of discourse that best represent propaganda and analyze the most common themes for depicting Lithuania. Regarding ideological news texts, both the articles and the headlines are created in accordance with ideological square, hence, polarized. Polarization is achieved by emphasizing positive features of Russia and negative features of Lithuania. Results of the analysis allow to claim that ideologically controlled texts are created by employing the opposing point of views that are presented through presuppositions and implications. In terms of Lithuania, reporters make implications that it is an aggressive country, where the authorities not only threaten Russia and its people but also do not hesitate to kill their own. Russia, on the other hand, is presented as a victim that suffers from Lithuania’s actions, which only helps to emphasize how harmful and destructive Lithuania is. To strengthen the effect of ideologies on the audience, reporters tend to use figurative language along with carefully selecting lexical items. The analysis of characteristics of propaganda brings to conclusion that Lithuania-related propaganda texts are created in accordance with both direct and indirect features. Although lexical choices, such as, emotive language, persuasive definitions and negative connotations play an important role, characteristics of propaganda go beyond that and also include aspects like eristic and persuasive dialogue. In other words, propaganda discourse is not necessarily focused on what is said but more on the way of saying it, thus, the means of persuasion are implicit rather than explicit. The analysis suggests that reporters not only use degrading message content but also try to provoke interviewees and trick them into saying adverse things about Lithuania. Thus, in news portal “RuBaltic.Ru”, the narration about Lithuania is shaped by certain reporters that are indifferent to logic and provide one-sided information to persuade the audience that Lithuania is a failing country and soon will become extinct. In terms of representation of Lithuania, both linguistic structures and discourse aspects intertwine. The results also showed that, in the context of Lithuania and Russia, reporters tend to choose some topics over others. Lithuania was usually represented in themes related to political conflicts, historical events and in relation to other countries. Most of the attention is given to discuss the political system as well as the rulers of Lithuania that are regarded as oppressors and tyrants. Whether the theme of the article is energy supply, Nazi collaboration or involvement with KGB, the emphasis is still put on the idea that Lithuania’s ruling system resembles North Korea’s. That is to

31 say, political discourse, regardless of the theme, is the background for portraying Lithuania as an incompetent and failed state. All things considered, it can be stated that news portal “RuBaltic.Ru” depicts Lithuania by emphasizing its negative characteristics. The analysis showed that reporters grasp the concept of propaganda well and use it as the main means of persuasion to shape people’s beliefs regarding Lithuania. Nevertheless, the research was conducted with a few limitations. First, the data was collected only from one portal and only in English. Other news portals as well as other languages could be considered for future research. Besides, the database consisted only of 38 articles, thus, a larger number of articles would provide more tangible results.

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APPENDIX A. Lithuania and Russia-related evaluative statements

Source: RuBaltic.Ru The statements were collected in accordance with relevancy to representation of Lithuania and Russia. Month Title Evaluative statements from articles 2013 Sep Rahr: EU will support the Lithuanian diplomacy limited resolution of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania growth of disappointment on Tymoshenko's release Lithuania rejects its own ideas a mechanism of controlling Russia does not share European consensus support all what America says Lithuania move countries out of Russian influence hangs in air Oct Post-Soviet Thermidor: do Lithuania is a template of yesterday’s Soviet Union the Baltic States refuse a democracy? system hasn’t changed despite membership in EU, still staying in Soviet Union public slander by posting deceitful information Lithuania turned to the West breaking every connection with the Soviet past Lithuanian social services tap telephone calls looks like a farce hated USSR going the authoritarian way non-democratic holding the power at any cost a sad smile “2-minutes-of-hate” broadcasts about closest neighbors blocking opposing opinions propagandistic fantasies fond of the worst Soviet practice Oct Historical road roller: Is political struggle Lithuania on its way to the ideological society? Lithuania in a fever of political scandals

suspending First Baltic channel Soviet symbolism forbidden the tension of Russian-Lithuanian relations control over loyalty Soviet ideology still in Lithuania Lithuanians disown their own suspend the channels that demonstrate alternative historical point of view occupation doctrine in Lithuania will turn into analogue of North Korea informational war against yesterday‘s neighbors-enemies false facts about Soviet aggression Nov What Grybauskaite is afraid raging scandal about looming Russian threat of… or Lithuania’s State Security Department shoots Putin supposedly directed secret service itself State Security Department can’t make up their mind falsified documents information on Soviet past is all lies and provocations anti-Russian hysteria Grybauskaite has soviet biography loyal to Moscow Lithuania keep people guessing skeletons hidden in the closets of Lithuanian authorities Nov An elite’s neurosis: Lithuania is far from its best state Lithuania on the verge of an internal political crisis. speculations of Russian mass media open conflict political neurosis facts are hidden no rational or realistic arguments banning Russian mass media justified with holy war with Kremlin propaganda Lithuania at war with their own European partners a stage play to cancel out inconvenient events brewing tension inside Lithuania friends with KGB

Dec Alexandr Lyubimov: different points of view are persecuted Pressuring the media in the Baltic States is a sign of Lithuania is the North Korea of EU weakness the policy of bans with the press a sign of weakness harsh disappointment political cynicism Lithuania as provocateur of Jan 13th events political chaos many have left Lithuania you can‘t express yourself in Lithuania propagandists of their state Lithuania stabbed Russia in the back Jews burnt in Lithuania one-sided approach Lithuania dependent on Washington deep countryside of Russia Lithuania proves its identity with aggression Lithuania as a sanitary cordon between NATO and Russia always complain about Russia Soviet Union invested much money in Lithuania Dec Historian: The Baltic collaborationists collaborationists’ dreams of independence were naive a brilliant propaganda machine what’s convenient – we’ll admit, what’s not convenient – we will denounce. the biggest source of mistrust in the EU blame all of the problems on your neighbor

2014 Jan Historic Memory: Why discrimination of the Polish community Lithuanian Government Doesn’t Like Lithuanian the harassment of minorities Poles Poles are persecuted treated like enemies a campaign of terror

Lithuania began creating concentration camps for refugees forcible assimilation of minorities Feb Expert: President of Lithuania’s decisions are absurd Lithuania Is a Strange Person for Poland stupid regulations a country that has problems people are emigrating culture is weak language is weak Apr Hopes and Reality: Western cowardice Experts are Against LNG Terminals on the Baltic Russian aggression Nov Lithuania Has Finished Lithuania use methods of coercion Building the Myth of Energy Independence tradition of the totalitarian past advantages of Russian gas small and lack of export 2015 Feb Who Did the Baltics Learn the battle with enemy voices the Prohibition Policy From? banning TV channels Lithuania incapable to draw coherent information policy aligning themselves with totalitarian regimes transmitting one-sided, impartial information rolling back the freedom of speech not the most democratic country absurdity anti-Russian sentiments choosing the way of North Korean information policy fail to confront enemy propaganda Eastern despotates using soft power to form its own positive image Grybauskaite’s terrorist state resembles Kim Jong Un’s ban on the correspondence with Russian citizens information totalitarianism lack of respect for its own population

cannot distinguish truth from lies and information from propaganda Feb Sevim Dağdelen: The boost NATO and harm Russian interest Baltic Governments’ Behavior Towards the Press limiting the media due to different views Is Cowardly glorification of war criminals denial of Nazi crimes justifying repressive measures one-sidedness Lithuania fond of accusing the media a severe attack on the freedom of expression the behavior is most cowardly violations against freedom of expression shameful demonstrations a geopolitical game against Russia rarely condemn and denounce glorification of Nazism Feb What Ukrainians Liberated Where swastika got legalized as an ancient Lithuanian the Auschwitz Death folk symbol Camp? sanctioned a Jewish pogrom in Kaunas Mar The Search For National demand apologies from Russia Identity Leads To New Interpretations Of History Mar How Modern Lithuania anti-sovietists Came From a KGB Uniform? people forced to flee the democratic republic Sajudis creators were KGB bodies cooperated very tightly with the KGB Jun „Lithuanians Have Nothing - What do you think of the criticism from the Lithuanian Against Russians” politics for visiting Russia?

- I wouldn’t call it criticism. The Lithuanians have nothing against Russians. Jul The EU Admitted that the Lithuania is becoming a European outsider Baltics are Dying Out Lithuania is dying

chronically ill the myth of success story the country has no future serve only as a measure of failure

record-holder of depopulation demographic catastrophe most suicides on the verge of deprivation degradation Oct The European Court is anti-Soviet cult Against the Lithuanian National Myth alleged genocide state propaganda slaps to the Lithuanian government Oct Lithuanians Will Pay For forced to buy more expensive gas „Energy Independence” Russia offers the best deal

government blackmails its own citizens accusing Russia of blackmailing nothing but losses in the usual Lithuanian fashion 2016 Feb Lithuanian Media Propose repressions and attacks even today Killing Dissenters psychological pressure

full-on harassment harassing the dissenter‘s relatives physically assaulting people physical elimination living in a state of war hysterical levels in the society harassing independent media mass repressions ignorance from the Western allies written off as Russian propaganda 2017 Mar „Nord stream – 2“ will US punish European countries become part of Europe keep America dominant in the world the Lithuanian National energy association in protest withdrew from the European Eurogas because of the support of the majority of its members of the Russian gas

Mar Loyalty to the Anti-Russian fighting Russia is the rite of passage in power Course is the Only Ticket to Power in the Baltics an incurable case of suppressing Russia anti-Russian course political system built upon anti-Russian views anti-Russian foreign policy betraying the voters for power Apr Baltic Experts Predict on the brink of extinction Extinction For the Baltics becoming more and more desolate

demographic wasteland hard to call this Russian propaganda looking like a Sahara dessert strong emigration a demographic depression depopulation, emigration and poverty killed by their own politicians enemies are not in Kremlin, they are in Seimas the mythical Russian threat Apr US are Imposing Sanctions the habit of following Washington‘s directions Against Europe American puppet

always picking team America Jun Russia Forgot About the some kind of Lithuania Sanctions pissing into the wind

banana republic Russia doesn‘t give a damn Nov Nazi Criminals Are Lithuanian Nazi collaborationists Honored In Lithuania the topic is banned

prosecute Jewish resistance fighters discrediting everything that compromises state ideology everything is the Kremlin’s doing any statement differing from the official point of view turns into a criminal case crimes against humanity exonerating and glorifying Nazi collaborationists

Nov Why Lure „Europe’s Last America’s puppets Dictator” to Brussels? condemning Russia

Lithuanian media spread rumors they make up themselves Lithuania brewing thick conspiracy theories unseen height of absurdity 2018 Mar Efraim Zuroff: The Baltic the hiding of Nazi criminals States Are Trying to Rewrite the History of the persecuted Jews Holocaust glorification of Nazi supporters May Andrey Konoplyanik: The America first Baltics and Poland Hold a Grudge against Gazprom hold a grudge May Andrey Konoplyanik: The Baltic countries are just setting the stage […] this is Baltics Can’t Avoid the similar to the Soviet cartoon Baba Yaga is Against “Chinese Solution” in Energy Soviet regime legacy May Lithuanian Blogger: The group in power in Lithuania is a criminal group. Repressions are the go-to weapon for the criminal breaking the rules to gain absolute power regime of Lithuania don’t care for the country Jun Even the Migrants Won’t Lithuania being in this depressing list is no surprise for Help Europe on its anyone. Deathbed Nine out of ten countries „dying out” the most are the remnants of the Socialist camp, which could not find happiness in the EU. Sep Lithuania Remembers knives are being sharpened Holocaust Victims while Glorifying Their Killers Nazi accomplices “freedom fighters” The state is always ready to threaten public punishment on those who doubt the “heroism”. Dec A Disgraceful Anniversary: all-European disgrace in Lithuania 5 Years Ago, Europe Ended on the Vilnius Summit policy of values is a policy of hypocrisy politically correct smiles and talks of tolerance with a vested interest hidden in the closet

APPENDIX B. Reporters’ full names

Initials Full name Number of articles A.N. Alexander Nosovich 12 S.R. Sergey Rekeda 9 A.I. Alex Illyasevich 6 A.S. Alexander Shamshiev 5 AN. ST. Andrey Starikov 3 O.M. Oleg Miroslavov 2 O.P. Oleg Philips 1

APPENDIX C. The corpus Corpus statistics: Words (tokens) 55 807 Unique words (types) 6 665 Articles 38

Link to the corpus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_hd7LquJ2JANGNrkgU8VhHMCIybk7j4zwsgq82y4nE/edi t?usp=sharing