THE POLICY INSTITUTE THE POLICY THE POLICY INSTITUTE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION | CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION & POWER OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION CENTRE FOR THE STUDY & POWER Weaponising news | WEAPONISING NEWS RT, Sputnik and targeted disinformation RT, SPUTNIK AND TARGETED DISINFORMATION SPUTNIK AND TARGETED RT, DR GORDON RAMSAY DR GORDON RAMSAY | DR SAM ROBERTSHAW DR SAM Dr Gordon Ramsay Dr Sam Robertshaw THE POLICY INSTITUTE | CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION & POWER | WEAPONISING NEWS RT, SPUTNIK AND TARGETED DISINFORMATION DR GORDON RAMSAY | DR SAM ROBERTSHAW 3 Weaponising news RT, Sputnik and targeted disinformation About the Policy Institute at King’s College London About the authors The Policy Institute at King’s College London aims to Dr Gordon Ramsay has been conducting and publishing solve society’s challenges with evidence and expertise, media and communication research for the past decade. by combining the rigour of academia with the agility He holds a PhD in Political Communication from the of a consultancy and the connectedness of a think tank. University of Glasgow (2011) and and is the co-author, Our defining characteristic is our multidisciplinary and with Dr Martin Moore, of UK Media Coverage of the multi-method approach, drawing on the wide range of 2016 EU Referendum Campaign and Monopolising skills in our team and the huge resource in King’s and Local News. He has co-developed the content analysis its wider network. research tool Steno with the developer Ben Campbell, and has previously published research on media regulation and policy at the Media Standards Trust, About the Centre for the Study of Media, the University of Westminster, and Cardiff University. Communication & Power Email: [email protected] The Centre for the Study of Media, Communication Dr Sam Robertshaw has a PhD in Politics from the & Power explores how news provision, political University of Glasgow. He has conducted research communication, public discourse, civic engagement on society-military relations in the UK and in Russia. and media power are changing in the digital age. His research has been published in Global Affairs and We do this through rigorous empirical research, and European Security. communication of the findings of this research to inform relevant academic and public policy debates and civic society responses, in order to help promote diversity, fairness, transparency and accountability in media and communication. The case study of Ukrainian news included in this report was conducted in collaboration with Texty.org.ua, a Kyiv-based data journalism agency that promotes transparency and accountability by developing high-quality data journalism, specialising in interactive infographics and web applications. Thanks to Professor Sarah Oates (Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland) for advice throughout the project and for reviewing interim drafts of this report, and to Dr Valentina Feklyunina (Newcastle University) for comments and advice on the final draft. This project was funded by the Open Society Foundation King’s College London Centre for the Study of Media, Communication & Power 4 Contents 1. Executive summary ...................................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Introduction: churnalism as information warfare .......................................................................................................9 3. Project sampling and methods ....................................................................................................................................15 Using Steno for content analysis ................................................................................................................................. 17 4. Flooding the Zone: RT, Sputnik and Russian framing of the Skripal incident ................................................................21 The Skripal incident .................................................................................................................................................... 23 Methods – identifying narratives and sources in Skripal coverage............................................................................ 24 RT and Sputnik coverage of the Skripal incident ........................................................................................................ 25 Sources and narratives in RT and Sputnik coverage of the Skripal incident .............................................................. 39 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................................ 44 5. Heads we win, tails you lose: projecting Russian strength ..........................................................................................47 Representing the enemy: RT and Sputnik coverage of NATO ..................................................................................... 50 Representing Russian military capability .................................................................................................................... 55 Russian military churnalism? ...................................................................................................................................... 62 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................67 6. Division and Dysfunction: How RT and Sputnik portray the West and construct news agendas ................................ 69 Political dysfunction as a metanarrative: how RT and Sputnik portray western politics.............................................71 Building agendas: RT, Sputnik and Immigration News ................................................................................................. 83 Content replication in Russian and UK news media: a two-way process ................................................................... 85 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................91 7. Case study: applying the methodology on Russian-language news in Russia and Ukraine ......................................... 93 Applying Steno to Russian-language news in Russia and Ukraine .............................................................................. 95 Results ........................................................................................................................................................................ 96 Summary – using steno for cross-national or multi-lingual analysis ...........................................................................97 8. Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................................. 99 Next steps .................................................................................................................................................................102 9. Russian disinformation and international media: background and context ....................................................................... 105 10. Appendices ..........................................................................................................................................................................................115 Weaponising News RT, Sputnik and targeted disinformation | Dr Gordon Ramsay | Dr Sam Robertshaw 5 1. Executive summary King’s College London Centre for the Study of Media, Communication & Power 6 Overview Project scope and methods This report contains three separate analyses of English- • In total, 151,809 online articles published by UK language news content published by RT and Sputnik national news outlets and 11,819 articles on the and its implications for news organisations in Western English-language sites of RT and Sputnik were democracies. These analyses are linked, but may be of analysed across two four-week samples from May- interest to different audiences. Together, the analyses June 2017 and March 2018. comprise a comprehensive analysis of how Russian state-linked news outlets play a variety of roles in • The search and tagging functions of the digital different situations, ranging from coordinating damage- content analysis tool Steno were used to conduct control messaging, to amplifiers of Russian prestige and large-scale content analyses of Russian English- aggregators of negative content about Western domestic language news output, and to determine key themes politics: and frames deployed by RT and Sputnik in their coverage of the Skripal poisoning, Russian military • Flooding the zone: RT, Sputnik and Russian capacity and Western democratic politics. framing of the Skripal incident. This analysis shows how Russian news outlets inserted over 130 • The ‘Steno-Similar’ text-matching tool, created for competing and often contradictory narratives into this project, allowed researchers to compare databases their extensive coverage of the March 2018 Salisbury of Russian and UK news content to determine the poisoning incident. The study shows how state- extent to which content produced by news outlets linked news outlets operate in a ‘crisis management’ based in one country was replicated