This is the official website of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) pre-conference "The Informational Influence of Autocracies Abroad", organized by the European Research Council (ERC) consolidator project RUSINFORM as a one-day event on 23th of Septmeber 2024 in City Hotel Ljubliana. All further information about this event will be published here.
08:30 – 09:00: Welcome and registration
09:00 – 09:15: Welcome note
09:15 – 10:45 Panel I: Theories, Conceptualizations and (Counter-)Tactics
10:45 – 11:15 Coffee break
11:15 – 12:30 Panel II: Social Networks as Intermediaries of Authoritarian Propaganda
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:45 Panel III: The Language of Authoritarian Propaganda
14:45 – 16:00 Panel IV: Strategies of and Responses to Authoritarian Propaganda
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 17:45 Panel V: The Audiences of Propaganda
17:45 – 18:30 Final remarks and discussion
Glazunova, S., Bruns, A., Hurcombe, E., Montaña-Niño, S. X., Coulibaly, S., & Obeid, A. K. (2022). Soft power, sharp power? Exploring RT’s dual role in Russia’s diplomatic toolkit. Information, Communication & Society, 26(16), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2155485
Lokot, T. (2023). Russia’s networked authoritarianism in Ukraine’s occupied territories during the full-scale invasion: Control and resilience. LSE Public Policy Review, 3(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.31389/lseppr.85
Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2014). Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. Routledge.
Nip, J., & Sun, C. (2022). Public diplomacy, propaganda, or what? China’s communication practices in the South China Sea dispute on Twitter. Journal of Public Diplomacy, 2(1), 43–68. https://doi.org/10.23045/jpd.2022.2.1.4
Pan, C., Isakhan, B., & Nwokora, Z. (2020). Othering as soft-power discursive practice: China Daily’s construction of Trump’s America in the 2016 presidential election. Politics, 40(1), 54–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719843219
The pre-conference is free of charge.
Free coffee, snacks and lunch will be provided for attendees.
The pre-conference will be followed by an evening dinner (on a self-pay basis).
The deadline for submissions has now passed, and letters of acceptance were sent out on 29 April, 2024
There is no pre-conference fee.
This is an offline event, so all accepted presenters will be required to present in person.
Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine has put the spotlight on the wide range of digital warfare tools that autocracies can use to influence public opinion abroad (see, e.g., Lokot, 2023). However, even before this war, authoritarian states such as Russia (e.g., Glazunova et al., 2022) and China (e.g., Pan et al., 2019) have sought to increase their soft power and exert foreign information influence by delivering their strategic narratives (Miskimmon et al., 2014) to foreign audiences.
This pre-conference aims to explore the past and present of authoritarian regimes' foreign propaganda, including the complex dynamics of its (co-)creators and disseminators, its content, strategies and audiences. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary techniques, the conference aims to generate a deep and nuanced understanding of what has often been referred to as authoritarian regimes' “public diplomacy” (with the latter concept being not unproblematic as such, particularly if it is used to describe practices that include deceptive, covert influence efforts, see e.g. Nip & Sun, 2022).
By organising this conference, we aim to provide a platform for lively scholarly discussion among researchers of the foreign propaganda of authoritarian regimes across the globe, including Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey. By bringing together this community of experts, we seek to facilitate the exchange of novel ideas and collaborative theorising on this timely topic. We welcome cutting-edge contributions on the following topics (among others):
We plan to support Ukrainian scientists who wish to participate in the event and whose paper will be accepted. Information about the support will be provided in the near future.
The event is organised by the European Research Council (ERC) consolidator project RUSINFORM on "The Consequences of the Internet for Russia's Informational Influence Abroad" (2019-2025), conducted at the University of Passau, Germany. RUSINFORM has received 2 million euros in funding from the European Union to study Russia's influence on foreign audiences, on transmission channels such as social networking sites and search engines, as well as the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Prof. Dr. Florian Toepfl (chair), Serge Poliakoff (vice-chair), Julia Kling (vice-chair).
This project is affiliated with the Chair of Political Communication with a Focus on Eastern Europe and the Post-Soviet Region.
The RUSINFORM project (organizer of the pre-conference) has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement number 819025).
