Disinformation as a Security Problem

The chapter introduces disinformation as a security problem performed by international news reporting that are used by authoritarian regimes. The concept of disinformation is defined and discussed in relation to other concepts in the field of information influence activities, such as propaganda, digital propaganda, network propaganda, rewired propaganda, and fake news. It is argued that disinformation is not merely used to denigrate a foreign country, but to cause domestic unrest and tension in the target state by instilling doubts about the authenticity of all information and sowing mistrust between citizens and the state. The Russian Federation is known to employ disinformation as part of its security strategy in this sense and the latter part of the chapter argues that narrative and framing analyses can disclose how such harmful narratives are constructed to target foreign states. A Swedish case study of Sputnik news coverage using narrative analysis showed consistent denigrating narratives between 2014 and 2018 (Wagnsson & Barzanje, A framework for analysing antagonistic narrative strategies: A Russian tale of Swedish decline. Media War and Conflict, 14(2), 239–257. https://doi.org10-1177/17506352119884343 , 2021). In an in-depth study of Sputnik and RT-coverage of 2019 and 2020 insights into the construction of such harmful narratives has been further developed making up this book. The chapter ends with a presentation of the structure of the book.