MOSCOW, October 13Claims that Russia allegedly lost the information war to Ukraine are incorrect, says a study by the American research organization RAND. The authors of the report note that the most popular television program in Russia is “News of the Week” with Dmitry Kiselev.
“Our research shows that the popular discourse claiming that Russia lost the information war, while Ukraine won, oversimplifies the problem at hand,” analysts write.
They explain that the dynamics behind this belief are very subtle and context dependent. Rather than categorically stating that Ukrainian information campaigns were more persuasive than Russian ones, it should be said that it depends on the situation. According to experts, what matters is the audience targeted by specific messages and the broader context.
RAND Corporation is an American non-profit global policy think tank. The organization is believed to be affiliated with the Pentagon and the US government.
RAND's findings are based on an analysis of Russian and Ukrainian official communications. Moreover, if on the Ukrainian side they mainly considered statements by government officials and departments, in the case of Russia, experts also monitored television programs on state channels. In particular, these were the programs of the Rossiya 1 channel: “News of the Week” with Dmitry Kiselev (which experts, citing Russian data, call the most popular news program) and “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov.”
Researchers consider the dynamics of Ukrainian television channels to be more complex, because the top ten most popular ones belong to oligarchs. In this regard, RAND decided not to study their agenda.
Analysts conclude that Russia and Ukraine use different approaches in information campaigns: Ukrainian officials try to convey information to the population “very loudly,” sometimes using “inappropriate methods of communication.” Russian government officials, on the contrary, convey information more restrained.