Fabricating a war? Russian (dis)information on Ukraine

Abstract

Propaganda has been an age-old part of warmongering. It is thus no surprise that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was preceded by, and continues to be fuelled by, propaganda transmitted by state-controlled Russian media. What is more unusual about the Russian (dis)information campaigns is the sheer volume of distorted narratives or complete fictional accounts about the conflict. This article explores the content and technologies of Russian information manipulation of domestic audiences in the context of the invasion of Ukraine. We also examine the bases for the sustained robust public support for the war within Russia during the first 12 months of the conflict, despite being based on mostly fabricated (dis)information. Relying on political psychology and communication theory we explain how emotions and associative memories have played an important role in the Russian public's sustained approval to the war. Our findings point to that in the absence of contrasted and independently-verified information, the volume, frequency, emotional intensity of slick, plug-and-play media packages on Ukraine have acted to displace and distort the average Russian's associative social monitoring processes.

The authors wish to acknowledge the funding by ‘Institutional responses to the changing European security order’ (inRESPONSE) [grant number PID2022-140133NB-I00], Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain. Elena Şimanschi completed this work in the context of the PhD programme in Politics, Policies and International Relations of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), supported by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) grant 2022FI_B_01071.