The Rīga-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (STRATCOMCOE) has two new reports out which may be of particular interest to audiences in the Baltic states. Both were published November 25.
The first report is titled Russia’s Information Influence Operations in the Nordic-Baltic Region and runs to a substantial 186 pages. It looks at Russia’s information influence operations since 2016 in eight countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden – the so-called ‘NB8’.
The chapter on Latvia is by Juris Jurāns, researcher at the Centre for East European Policy Studies, who “takes a thorough look at Russia’s influence operations vis-à-vis Latvia in the polit-ical, diplomatic, economic, and media domains. The author discerns the main narratives under-mining Latvian national interests and describes how those are promoted in society. Against the historical background of deteriorating diplo-matic relations between Latvia and Russia, the author outlines the increasing aggressiveness in portraying Latvia as a failed state and efforts to divide society over the problem of integrat-ing the Russian-speaking population.”
The second report is the slightly awkwardly-titled Do(n’t) Shoot the Messenger: Psychological Responses to Kremlin Narratives in Nordic-Baltic Audiences and runs to a relatively svelte 33 pages.
“The study seeks to experimentally test for trust and affective responses to two common types of Kremlin narratives in Nordic-Baltic audiences, providing a nuanced analysis of possible motivations underlying responses to these narratives,” says the introduction to the report, which examines five different audiences across four different states: Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia’s speakers of both Estonian and Russian as a first language.
Both reports make for an interesting read and are free to look at online and to download if you so desire via the links above.
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