Att hålla gränsen mot 'oönskade' narrativ: En jämförande studie av svenskt bemötande av rysk informationskrigföring
2019 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The following study is investigating the Swedish response to Russian information warfare through strategic narratives broadcasted by Russian state-controlled media as RT and Sputnik News. Thus, the study further questions if the Swedish response differs between which political subject area that was attacked by Russian state-controlled media, and how that response affects the Swedish states’ democratic principles. The research question is therefore both applying and elaborating Hellman and Wagnssons (2017) analytical framework for describing and categorizing European states’ responses to Russian disinformation, since they confirm that states can use different and opposite responses simultaneously, but not stretching the question to examine if there are differences in response due to dividing political subject areas. By constructing and applying a combined method of narrative analysis and ideal-type analysis the author conducts a study of four Swedish ministers’ responses in foreign-, defense-, justice- and migration policy to categorize them by using Hellman and Wagnssons (2017) four ideal-type responses: confronting, blocking, naturalizing and/or ignoring. The study confirmes that the Swedish ministers’ responses did differ between the political subject areas in the cases of this essay. The foreign and defense policy responses were characterized as confronting and therefore directly engaging with the Russian strategic narratives, which contrasted with the disengaging responses in the other two political subject areas. The justice policy response corresponded with the naturalizing ideal-type and the migration policy response corresponded with the ignoring ideal-type. The author discusses the political impact of mixing opposite ideal-type responses from Hellman and Wagnssons (2017) theory, since they separately and together signal different democratic principles which nonetheless creates a confusing and non-coherent Swedish response to the surrounding world.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2019. , p. 51
Keywords [en]
information warfare, disinformation, Sweden, Russia, propaganda, strategic narratives, media
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-8341OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-8341DiVA, id: diva2:1281615
Subject / course
Political Science with focus on crisis management and security
Educational program
Kandidatprogrammet
Supervisors
Examiners
2019-03-072019-01-222019-03-07Bibliographically approved