Description
Russian leadership uses state-sponsored news media outlets to project ‘antagonistic strategic narratives’ into international audiences of targeted societies. Destabilising cognitive and emotional responses of these narratives are often discussed, but there is little causal evidence demonstrating these effects. This work-in-progress study will use survey experiments to find evidence of such responses. It will test a transdisciplinary framework that fuses a framework of narrative strategies adopted by Russian media with pertinent social psychological theory about threat perceptions. To build on earlier content analyses of Russian narration about the Netherlands and Sweden, we will show Dutch or Swedish participants an article about their own country that is demonstrative of a particular narrative strategy. The participants will then indicate their short-term responses on an array trust and emotional variables. This study will provide initial insights into potential causal relationships between Russian state-sponsored narratives and specific cognitive or emotional responses. The study therefore lays the foundations for future research into more long-term cognitive or emotional effects of Russian antagonistic narration, and later, for research that may develop possible interventions against Russian hostile information influence.
