Blocking Russian state media: Is propaganda effectively blocked?

The beginning of the complete invasion of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine coincided not only with the increase of Russia's spending on the army and law enforcement agencies.
According to the data of the Ministry of Finance of Moscow, from January to March 2022, Russia allocated 17.4 billion rubles for financing the state media (of which 11.9 billion - in March), which is 3.2 times more than in the same period last year.
And in September 2021, the Russian Ministry of Finance proposed an increase in funding for state media in 2022 by 30 percent compared to 2021.
This "increase in the price" of state media services is not accidental, because today the state media are the dominant source of information in the Russian Federation.
With the strengthening of the position of state media houses, there is a de facto destruction of independent media: a significant part of them was blocked before the war in Ukraine, the others were banned immediately after the so-called "special operations".
Roskomnadzor also blocked Russians' free access to foreign social networks (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) in March.
But the biggest challenge for Ukraine today is not even the mood within the Russian Federation and the support of the war by its citizens. For a long time now, Russia has been using all possible measures to influence not only its citizens, but also the international audience.
This allows Russia to maintain a pro-Russian mood in other countries, and in critical moments - even to show its citizens the support of Western countries (such as recent rallies in support of the war in Germany). Although this is somewhat more difficult in the West due to the large number of alternative sources of information, Russia actively supports its state media abroad.
This text will provide a closer look at how this is happening and why the ban on Russia Today and Sputnik is an important but insufficient step.

Imposition of sanctions

It is now clear that the information field is also a war front, so some Western countries began defending their info space immediately after the start of a comprehensive Russian invasion. For example,   February 25 Poland and Estonia.
Shortly afterwards, on March 2, 2022, the European Council banned the broadcasting of TV channels and the distribution of Russia Today and Sputnik web content.
However, support for Ukraine at the level of the European Union does not yet ensure Ukraine's informative victory over Russian propaganda in Europe.

First, full implementation of this decision is impossible without the control of national regulators at the level of EU Member States.
Although the broadcasting of RT and Sputnik content has been blocked from open satellites in Europe, local service providers still have the technical capacity to include RT and Sputnik radio.
The map below shows countries inside and outside the EU where RT and Sputnik have completely or partially restricted broadcasting.
These are the countries where the broadcasting of RT and Sputnik is completely or partially banned.
Second, the content of the RT and Sputnik for Europe websites is available via VPN and distributed via social media. As a result, technology corporations have begun taking steps to limit access to Russian propaganda for these two sources:

- On February 28, Microsoft removed RT and Sputnik from the Windows App Store, and Meta restricted access to these Facebook and Instagram pages for EU users. Below we will look at how blocking for European users has affected RT and Sputnik's Facebook activity
- YouTube blocked RT and Sputnik for the EU and the UK on March 1
- On March 2, Apple removed RT and Sputnik from the global AppStore, and Google removed it from the Play Store in the European Union

Za neke zapadne medije još uvijek "nije tako jasno"

Ubrzo nakon izvještaja o blokadi Russia Today i Sputnika u EU, Međunarodni institut za štampu (IPI) izdao je izjavu o zabrinutosti. Glavna kritika je da:
• sve odluke o ograničavanju medijskih aktivnosti trebale bi se donositi na nivou nacionalnih regulatora, a ne direktiva;
• blokiranje ruskih medija na Zapadu moglo bi izazvati zabranu emitiranja zapadnih medija u Rusiji pa Rusi neće imati pristup pouzdanim izvorima informacija (iako će svjedočanstva zapadnih medija o Ukrajini biti cenzurirana prema ruskom zakonu o “lažnim” informacijama);

According to the IPI, a more efficient step in the fight against state disinformation is not a ban on propagating disinformation, but investing in "professionalism and pluralism of the media space and prosperity of independent journalism".
Blocking with similar arguments has been quite actively criticized by the Western media community: we see similar views among the authors of The Conversation, The Washington Post, EU Observers and others. It is for these reasons that Switzerland has refused to block the Kremlin's media at the state level, and Danish officials are worried that such a move could set a dangerous precedent for restricting freedom of expression in journalism.
These arguments are important for maintaining media transparency and independence in general. However, there are some important nuances as to why they do not apply to Russian state journalism.
First, it is worth mentioning the history of Russia Today. The Russian government has set up international state TV channels to “improve Russia’s image abroad” as well as, as Putin said in 2013, “an alternative” and “Russian voice in the Anglo-Saxon news space”.
How many more crimes against humanity must Russia commit in order to finally lose its right to vote in the international community?
Secondly, every medium, even the most responsible one, does not only cover objective reality. Any medium frames it - that is, it shapes the angle of its perception and puts it on the agenda of its audience.
By choosing events / phenomena and the way they are followed, the media form from thousands of events for their audience every day what is really worth their attention and should be considered in some way.
For the media, which are directly subordinate to the Russian government, the only available position is to justify the "justice" of the Russian war in Ukraine. The direct subordination of the authorities, whose crimes are officially condemned at the level of EU member states, makes it impossible to discuss RT and Sputnik, as well as any other media.
Absolutization of freedom of speech can lead to its loss.
The pluralism of opinion nurtured by Western democracies is possible in the conditions of equal dialogue of all participants in the public debate.
As early as 1945, the German philosopher Karl Popper formulated the paradox of tolerance - societies that tolerate discrimination can no longer be considered tolerant.
Intolerant groups will abuse the opportunity to spread their stories in order to oppress others. The Kremlin's program, broadcast by Russia Today and Sputnik, aims to reinforce the myth of Ukrainians as "Nazis" and justify a so-called "special operation" - a myth recently backed by pro-Russian demonstrations in several German cities.

Russian state media against European sanctions: Is blocking effective?

We dealt with the theoretical side of the problem: since Russian propaganda influences people's attitudes about the events in Ukraine, it should be blocked. But how effective is it?
We analyzed how much the activity of Russian state media on Facebook has changed after blocking Russia Today and Sputnik in a number of countries around the world.
To do this, we collected data from 50 pages of state media of the Russian Federation (including RT, Sputnik, pages of media groups "Russia Today", "ANNA News", "VGTRK", "Gazprom-Media", "National Media Group"), as well as interfax, Lenta .ru, TASS and a number of regional sites of these media).
Using Crowdtangle (Meta tool for social networks), we collected publications from February 1 to March 31, which distributed links on selected 50 pages.
From 1 February to 31 March, Facebook published a total of 236,413 links to Russian state media. But it should be noted here that Crowdtangle does not collect publications from personal unverified sites, nor from groups and sites with a small number of subscribers. Therefore, the actual coverage of the Russian state media is much higher than the stated figures. However, their number was uneven: almost 154,000 such links were published in February, and twice as many in March (82,000).
The chart below shows the dynamics of the daily number of publications of the two blocked pages Russia Today and Sputnik compared to the activities of other Russian state media (you can see a more detailed schedule for each page at this link).
Most active users have distributed publications with links to rt.com (17,617 posts), sputniknews.com (46..69 posts), arabic.rt.com (20,848 posts), aktualidad.rt.com (16,942 posts), ria. ru (14,203 posts).
It is important to note that after March 2 (the date of blocking Russia Today and Sputnik in the EU), the number of publications of blocked resources decreased quite sharply, but other state resources of Russia - a little slower.
Several other indicators show similar dynamics: if you look at the number of likes, disseminations and comments below the posts published during these two months, you can see that all these indicators are slowly declining.

Where and how is Russian state propaganda spreading on Facebook?

The most active Russian propaganda in these two months was spread by Facebook pages (61.8 percent) and Facebook groups (38.1 percent).
Public figures (verified accounts) published information from Russian state media only 193 times (0.1 percent). It is important that Facebook pages generate the largest number of views and interactions of users with content for state propaganda.
Yes, 98 percent of all reactions were left by users on the pages, and just under two percent - in Facebook groups. There were a total of 19,126 such pages, but in 2007 alone the Russian media published publications systematically - more than 10 times in two months.
Among Facebook pages, more than 50 percent of interactions with posts (likes, comments, reposts) belong to the group of Arab pages Russia Today (RT Arabic, RTarabic Sport, RT Arabic knowledge, etc.). So, only two pages, Rt Arabic and RTarabic Sport, reached almost 20 million Facebook users in February and March, posting more than 30,000 messages. Despite the restrictions, the Spanish, French, English and German sites Russia Today also provide a large audience for Russian propaganda.
All 20 pages with the largest reach of users are directly administered by Russia, and today they are not available to users from Ukraine and the EU.
At the same time, this means that their complete removal and blocking from Facebook will paralyze and significantly reduce the effectiveness of Russian international internet propaganda.
We have considered the main characteristics of the sites that disseminate information from the Russian state media, as well as analyzed the geography of the administrators of those sites.
It is important to note that most of the administrators of the sites that distribute Russian state propaganda are not from the Russian Federation itself. Of course, the Russians also administer these sites, but there are only 163 such administrators.
Instead, there are 166 administrators in France, 164 in Mexico, 89 in Armenia and 101 in the United States. Many administrators are located in South America (at least 474 in total) and in the European Union (370).
In addition, we analyzed the language in which publications with references to Russian state media are most often distributed. The most popular language is Arabic (33,860 posts), followed by Russian (26,805 posts) and Spanish (21,531 posts). Fourth and fifth place went to the French (12,484 posts) and the English (7,709). There are also the languages of the former Soviet Union (Armenian, Lithuanian, Tajik, etc.) and other European Union countries (Romanian, German, Polish, Italian, etc.).
724 / 5.000
Rezultati prijevoda
In general, due to restrictions, the activity of Russian state media on Facebook is gradually declining. However, it is important to note that, despite the decline in activity on a number of pages, we still see that Facebook is a place where Russian propaganda is spreading quite actively.
Specifically, on March 31, we recorded at least 2,040 posts about propaganda resources on Facebook. Of course, although that number is four times less than the maximum of 8,027 posts on February 24, it is still large enough to continue to influence public opinion abroad.
Russian propaganda continues to use all available tools to spread its narratives around the world. An example of such influence is, in particular, Russian propaganda which denies the mass killings of Ukrainians by the Russian army in Bucha.

Conclusion

Restrictions on the broadcasting and distribution of online content by state-owned Russian media Russia Today and Sputnik have had a positive effect. After blocking, the activity of these pages significantly decreased, as well as the activity of users interacting with their content on social networks. But we should not relax and believe that victory is ours.
The struggle continues because the amount of content and interaction with it is still greater than zero: for example, 31.3. information from the Russian state media was shared more than 2,000 times, and likes were shared more than 218,000 times.
Moreover, we have won a partial victory over Russian propaganda only in Europe and a few other countries. On the other hand, propaganda content in Arabic is still very widespread on Facebook and other social networks, and the propagandists themselves intend to dominate the media market in Africa.