A Comparative Analysis of Political and Media Discourses about Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

The Introduction discusses the general objectives of the book. Three broad questions structuring the discussion are formulated: (1) Is there a sufficient amount of accurate media coverage of the situation on the battleground to allow citizens to have informed opinions and make informed decisions? (2) Does propaganda allow reshaping the war as people in the belligerent countries and abroad perceive it? (3) How do we measure the effectiveness of propaganda?

The chapter ‘Power Triad of Propaganda’ sets a conceptual framework for the subsequent discussion. Propaganda is viewed in a broader context of power relationships, as a particular technique of power. The broadening of perspective on propaganda allows more clearly distinguishing propaganda from the related concept, persuasion. This chapter also introduces a novel interpretation of propaganda using concepts borrowed from computer science, back and forward propagation. Back propagation implies tracking the response of a neural network to an object (a fact, in the circumstances). An error signal in a neural network is produced by comparing the network output with a desired response. Conversely, forward propagation allows tracking an original signal down to the object in a neural network (fact). Three key actors are involved in propaganda: the Principal (a member of the power elite), the Propagandist and the Propagandee. The propagandist plays the role of a gatekeeper in relations between people vested in power and their target audience.

The chapter ‘Studying War Propaganda’ discusses war propaganda in depth. It shows that although the public interest in understanding propaganda peaked during WWI and WWII, propaganda started most recently to attract scholars’ attention again during the past 10–15 years. Since the development of content analysis has studies of war propaganda at its origins, this chapter offers an overview of elements of this research method. Qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods (dictionary-based) content analyses are briefly introduced and compared. Although content analysis does not allow for establishing causal relations between variables, it is compatible with abduction, aiming to provide a range of plausible explanations, none of which is definite.

Background information about Russia’s war in Ukraine can be found in this chapter. The reader will be directed to the Revolution of Dignity of 2013–2014 in Ukraine that immediately preceded Russia’s invasion. Three ‘stories’ of the war, national (the Ukraine story), imperial (the Russia story), and geopolitical (it has several versions), can be better understood by considering the belligerents’ history of court durée, the period from 2014 to 2022, and their history of long durée. The case of Putin, the historian (his frequent historical references and arguments), is discussed. The chapter also contains a brief overview of the political and media landscapes in the countries covered by this study.

The chapter ‘Presidents’ Speeches’ compares political discourses about the war. The comparative content analysis using the original methodology allows for identifying keywords, making the discourses of the five political leaders distinguishable. Those keywords are indicative of leaders’ underlying messages. The three ‘stories’ of the war transform into three prevalent discourses: the discourse of a war of national liberation, an imperial war, and a proxy war. A historical comparison of political discourses suggests that President Putin’s discourse diverges from the discourses of other post-Soviet leaders (and his past discourse) and the Western leaders’ discourses. In a sense, Putin’s discourse of 2022–2023 constitutes a category in itself.

The chapter ‘Signals Lost and Recovered’ shows how the mass media and social networks propagate messages formulated by political leaders. Some messages appear amplified to the target audience, whereas others are almost lost in transmission. Implementing mass and social media restrictions does not guarantee that the resulting propaganda will be effective. The imposed restrictions may prevent ‘undesirable’ messages from being transmitted without ensuring the propagation of the ‘desirable’ ones. Putin’s initial emphasis on NATO’s eastward expansion as a justification for the war illustrates the latter. Putin’s subsequent messages, however, were delivered by the Russian mass and social media with fewer distortions, which is indicative that the effectiveness of Russian propaganda progressively increased. The opposite tendency characterizes the effectiveness of Ukrainian propaganda. The degree of alignment between President Zelensky’s messages and the messages transmitted by the Ukrainian media decreased as the war unfolded.

The analysis in the chapter ‘Searching for the Truth, Finding Truths’ suggests that political and media discourses about the war tend to be territorially segregated. This finding is consistent with the coverage of WWI and WWII. The scholars of war propaganda previously found that the truth seekers find different truths and the differences are territorially segregated according to national boundaries. However, it comes as a surprise in the context of transnational information flows and the global circulation of ideologies. The restrictions on access to information in Russia and particularities of nation-state building in Ukraine (this country is a relative latecomer in this process) revive the importance of the borders in the information space. The other notable finding reported in this chapter refers to a consistent character of political and media discourses about the war regardless of the situation in the battleground. With a few exceptions (Putin’s case is one of them), political leaders and the mass media alike tend to stay on message.

Social networks emerged as the most important source of information about the war in Ukraine and the second most important source in Russia, after the TV. Telegram offers a space where national borders are either absent or permeable. Neither Ukraine nor Russia blocks access to Telegram, which makes its case considered in the chapter ‘Propaganda in Social Media’ particularly interesting. A group of influencers called ‘voenkory’ in Russia rose to prominence after the start of the all-out war in both belligerent countries. As in the case of the national media, the groups of Ukrainian and Russian war bloggers form separate clusters. This study suggests that the growing popularity of the term ‘Rashism’ in Ukraine and some other countries can be attributed to the activities of Ukrainian war bloggers during the initial stage of the all-out war. They devoted significantly more attention to interpreting and promoting this concept than any other political leader or mass medium in the sample.

The conclusion returns the reader to the questions asked in the Introduction. The proposed analysis is indicative of the insufficiency of accurate media coverage of the situation on the battleground. Accordingly, the question as to what the war is about has multiple and mutually excluding answers. The choice between them depends less on experiments and the logic of abduction than on the comparative effectiveness of national models of propaganda. The conclusion also identifies the limitations of the proposed study and some directions for further research.