Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? RT's Reporting on the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Russia Today (RT), the Kremlin-funded news organization, has become the focus of concern for its wide network of disinformation campaigns. Misinformation enables the rise of more Eurosceptic parties within the European Union (EU). To push back against RT’s disinformation campaigns, it is essential to understand what RT views as the most frictious themes in EU politics. This chapter studies RT reporting on the EU in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to understand these themes and how RT attempts to exacerbate anti-EU sentiment, and documents the shifting strategic narratives employed by the news organization. It finds that RT coverage prioritizes stories of positive cooperation between CEE countries and Russia, emphasizes negative coverage of the EU, and explicitly targets countries with preexisting strong relations to Moscow. As the EU struggles to create a compelling narrative to describe why the institution matters, particularly in CEE, it becomes ever more important to understand the regional and country-specific strategy of RT. The conclusions in this chapter should help inform the EU how best to communicate its value to CEE countries, enabling policymakers to craft a compelling narrative that speaks to regional and country-specific concerns while pushing back on RT’s campaign of disinformation and European disintegration.