Russian Public Diplomacy Today: RT and Kontrpropaganda – EVENT CANCELLED

**In an effort to curtail the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the area, all events at Boston University have been cancelled effective immediately. Please visit the University's - COVID-19 website - for more information.**

Join us for a presentation by CSE Visiting Researcher Elizaveta Kuznetsova, Research Fellow at City, University of London. Discussants: Vesko Garčević, Igor Lukes,

It has become an established narrative in International Relations that Russia under President Putin operates with a Grand Strategy to undermine the Western and particularly US hegemony. Its primary arm of public diplomacy RT has been deemed an epitome of Russia’s renewed international propaganda efforts with innovative persuasive techniques and widespread international influence. In her presentation, Elizaveta shows that such assumptions are often overstated and fall short of the empirical facts behind RT and its rise. By contrast, Elizaveta explores how RT manages a hybrid role within a decentralised structure. She highlights that the channel’s methods of persuasion have emerged out of the Soviet kontrpropaganda tradition. Through extensive empirical analysis, interviews with the network’s staff and archival work Elizaveta showcases the lack of direction or an overarching goal behind the operations of the network and its attempts to ‘muddle through’ the changing political environment and internal structural changes while at the same time exploiting the negative publicity that the various Western media outlets have been conveniently providing in the recent years.