IMI expert: Russian propaganda has switched vectors
Russian propaganda has updated their information strategy for this war, believes IMI expert Olena Holub, having monitored Russia's narratives.
"The primary change is the target audience of Russian propaganda. If earlier we have said that most of the narratives were targeting the domestic audience, now we see many messages that may have impact on Ukrainian society as well," says the expert.
Olena Holub remarks that the earlier narratives about Nazism in Ukraine, biolabs, Ukraine's political dependence on Western countries, or 'bombing the Donbas for eight years' are now much less promoted in the Russian media space. They have been replaced by narratives about the West's fatigue which leads to a drop in financial support for Ukraine, about the government's corruption and its willingness to fight the war to the last Ukrainian.
According to the expert, these messages may seep into Ukraine's information space, demotivating the Ukrainian society and working to exacerbate to emotional exhaustion of the already weary Ukrainian citizen.
"While the biolabs narrative did not earn much of a response from the Ukrainian information consumer, as it is easy to debunk and even make fun of it, the narrative about corruption will, of course, have a much greater impact on Ukrainian citizens and will be much more difficult to fight against," says Holub.
The expert believes that a shift in the tactics of the information campaign necessitates a shift in the methods of countering it.
"Say, when the adversary's military tactics change, we immediately look for new ways to counter these tactics; the same should happen in the information space," says Holub.
Read more about the Russian narratives monitoring here.
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