Browsing by Author "Sairanen, Mira"

According to the EU, Russia uses disinformation campaigns to destabilize European societies and undermine democratic processes. At the same time, concerns have been raised about a shift towards a ‘post-truth’ politics, in which the importance of facts and rationality in public discussions is declining and political contests are increasingly won by appeals to emotions, rather than fact-based arguments. These developments are seen to be harmful for democracy, which depends on an informed public. In this context, the EUvsDisinfo project was set up by the European External Action Service and tasked with exposing and ‘debunking’ Russian disinformation. The research draws on the literature on theories of truth, the link between truth and democracy, and the post-truth era to critically analyze the work of EUvsDisinfo. The interest is on how the project portrays the EU through its practice of ‘debunking’ disinformation about it. Through a content analysis of the ‘disinformation cases’ published on the project’s website, this thesis examines which kinds of narratives about the EU are considered disinformation, and how they are corrected. The thesis finds that EUvsDisinfo flags many common criticisms of the EU as ‘pro-Kremlin’ disinformation. Highly contested and political issues related to matters such as EU democracy, EU integration and sovereignty of member states are presented as forming part of ‘pro-Kremlin narratives’ aiming to undermine the Union.