FIGHTING AGAINST ‘RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION’ IN PUBLIC POSITIONING OF WESTERN INSTITUTIONS: ANALYSIS OF OFFICIAL SITES OF NATO AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

The purpose of the article is, based on an analysis of the content of the official websites of NATO and the EU, to assess the public representation of the fight against “Russian disinformation” as a direction of activity of these leading Western institutions, its organizational infrastructure and semantic emphasis. The focus of the research attention is not so much on the specific measures taken by these institutions to counter “Russian misinformation”, and their actual effectiveness, but on the specifics of their positioning in public space: how the concept of “Russian misinformation” is interpreted on the websites of NATO and the EU and their individual bodies, designed to withstand it, in what form the audience is presented and what political goals achieved. To do this, the relevant sites, their sections or individual pages are considered and their content at the time of the study is analyzed (summer 2019). As a result of the study, it was concluded that the opposition to “Russian misinformation” is aimed at publicly exposing the official position of the Russian Federation as not worthy of attention, based on false information and “propaganda myths”. In addition, invariable destructive motives in relation to Western democratic institutions and social stability are thus attributed to the Russian leadership, which reinforces the image of Russia as an immanent hostile to the liberal world force seeking to destroy it from the inside. This is an integral part of the general campaign aimed at deconstructing the international subjectivity of Russia, its right to act as a full-fledged participant in international relations with its worthy position.