The disinformation site Russia Today has recently launched a section specifically for Switzerland. Since the beginning of the year, it has increased its content production by 10 times compared to 2023. Experts say Russia wants to destabilize Swiss society.
Illustration Olivia Meyer / NZZ
For decades, Russia has used disinformation as a way of skewing debates in the world’s free democracies, creating a constant background noise in the public discourse. Switzerland has been less affected than many other countries, but now the noise is getting louder in this country too.
An analysis of the Russian propaganda platform Russia Today shows the scale of the change. In late January 2024, RT’s German-language website introduced a separate section focusing specifically on Switzerland, as a search in the site’s internet archive shows. Since then, RT has increased its reporting on Switzerland by a factor of 10.
Experts are concerned about the sudden increase in Russian propagandists’ attention to Switzerland. In response to an inquiry, Aleksandra Urman, who studies the Swiss information landscape at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Zurich, writes: «We’ve never seen anything like this before.» Swiss citizens currently face an increased risk of being influenced by Russian propaganda, she says.
Roman Horbyk, a media researcher at the University of Zurich, says an information war is currently underway. Russia has been running disinformation campaigns in Western democracies for decades, he notes, with the aim of destabilizing these countries. He adds that Switzerland became the focus of Russian propagandists in January 2024, when the government announced that it would host a peace conference for Ukraine.
However, RT continued publishing an elevated number of articles about Switzerland even after the peace conference’s June conclusion. This suggests that Russia’s interests in Switzerland have fundamentally changed, Horbyk says. «Switzerland is now apparently increasingly becoming a country of focus for Russian propaganda,» says the researcher, who himself comes from Ukraine. In total, RT has published more than 200 articles on Switzerland this year.
Disparaging, distorted, inflammatory
The content of these RT articles follows classic Russian disinformation strategies. They portray a dismal picture of the country, in which it is apparently quite normal for foreigners to stab children, refugees to defraud the state, and the government to act arbitrarily and corruptly.
However, 0ne of the most frequent topics is the war in Ukraine. The reports often center on Ukrainian refugees, typically in a disparaging and distorted way. For example, in mid-October, one article carried the headline: «‹Gorge yourself, you freeloader!› Dissatisfaction with Ukrainian refugees grows in Switzerland.»
Another recurring theme is the Swiss media landscape. RT seems to be particularly fond of criticizing the 20 Minuten and Tages-Anzeiger newspapers. In addition, Swiss banks, the army and Switzerland’s neutrality policy often come off badly.
Media researcher Horbyk says the tone of the reporting is typical of Russian disinformation, intended to turn up the heat on simmering public conflicts by highlighting polarizing arguments and events.
The texts also exhibit another common characteristic of Russian propaganda, asserting that there is a contradiction between the legitimate interests of Swiss citizens and the provision of support for Ukraine. In September, for example, RT ran a headline reading: «Billions for Zelenskyy, austerity measures for Swiss children: Who is the Federal Council saving for?» It accompanied the piece with an image, most likely generated by AI, of a small child shouting at the Ukrainian president. The site contains numerous such texts, which are clearly intended to trigger strong emotions such as anger and powerlessness.
By surveying all the articles on RT and mapping them according to the similarity of their titles, it is easy to see how prominent the narrative of a declining Switzerland has become on the website. In the graphic below, click on the individual dots to see the articles’ headlines.
Data analysis methodology
The titles of all articles listed under the «Switzerland» tab on Russia Today were downloaded.
To generate the list of most frequently appearing topics, the article titles were examined for key words. For example, if the word «Ukraine,» «Zelenskyy» or «Crimea» appeared in the title, the text was counted as part of the «Ukraine war» topic.
To create the cluster diagram, an AI model was used to convert each of these headlines into a string of numbers. This numerical encoding is one way of representing the degree of conceptual similarity between the original headlines. The two-dimensional representation above was developed using the t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding or t-SNE technique, which is optimized for mapping the similarity of number series. The topic clusters were determined using the K-means algorithm.
In a statement, Russia Today describes the accusation that the site is circulating classic Russian disinformation as a «below-the-belt hit.» According to the publication, the separate section for Switzerland was set up in response to reader demand. Readers wanted a «broader perspective» in reporting, the statement asserts.
Growing reach
It is difficult to predict how successful RT will be with the Swiss population. In response to the NZZ’s inquiry, RT also writes that it is proud that its readership in Switzerland is constantly growing.
According to a 2021 study by the University of Zurich, RT was even at that time one of the largest disinformation portals in Switzerland. It estimated the reach of the platform to be similar to that of the websites of the weekly magazines Weltwoche or WOZ. (Weltwoche, a Swiss magazine often aligned with the national-populist Swiss People’s Party, today reaches about 136,000 readers, according to media research firm WEMF.) In addition, RT promotes its articles on social media networks. In this way, it also reaches people who are not explicitly looking for RT content.
However, another study by the University of Zurich from 2020 suggested that Russian propagandists have a harder time in Switzerland than in many other countries. One reason for this is that a relatively large number of people in Switzerland trust the traditional media, and therefore pay less attention to alternative news sources such as RT.
However, media researcher Horbyk recommends treating this insight with caution. «It is not RT’s aim to reach the vast majority of Swiss people,» he notes. Strategically, the Kremlin is focused more on using its purported controversies to stir up a small group of people, he argues.
In the United States, for example, individual members of Congress such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have been successfully drafted into supporting Russian interests. These figures have carried pro-Russian ideas into the mainstream of the Republican Party, Horbyk notes. «RT creates a gateway for one-sided, pro-Russian ideas. That is all that is necessary,» he says.
Swiss politician faces hostility after RT article
A case involving National Councilor Priska Seiler Graf of the Social Democratic Party shows that RT is having an impact in Switzerland. The platform wrote in mid-June that Seiler Graf wanted to give Ukraine the capacity to «bomb Russian cities.» The publication wrote that she had called for Switzerland to demonstrate its «military strength» toward Russia as swiftly as possible.
This was a pure invention. According to online portal Persoenlich.com, Seiler Graf, a former member of the Group for a Switzerland Without an Army, said the RT article was «so deceitfully constructed that many Swiss people apparently believe it.» She added that she had been «rudely attacked» several times because of the report.
Researchers have also identified a number of other effects likely to take place if the public reach of disinformation expands. For instance, in a report on influence activities and disinformation, Federal Council wrote that disinformation could undermine public trust in the media, in institutions and even in information itself over the long term. The report said such activities could also erode trust in the police and law enforcement by creating the impression that authorities were conducting biased investigations or acting arbitrarily, or that they had been co-opted by outside interests. Under a worst-case scenario, this could «lead to the radicalization of affected individuals,» the Federal Council report said.
What should be done?
Experts such as the University of Zurich’s Urman therefore say that the Russian propaganda and its effects need to monitored. «We need to determine how susceptible the population is to disinformation – and of course try to reduce this susceptibility,» she writes.
She says it is also important to promote public trust in traditional media, and to strengthen media literacy within the population. In countries such as Germany and the United States, both of which have been the focus of Russian propaganda for years, alternative news platforms are increasingly adopting pro-Russian stances. «If we in Switzerland succeed in strengthening trust in the so-called mainstream media again, channels like RT should also lose their appeal,» Urman says.
Meanwhile, the EU has imposed more radical measures: RT has been banned in the bloc’s member states since April of last year, so the website can no longer be accessed from Germany – or any other EU country. The EU Commission’s explanatory memorandum stated that propaganda campaigns «constitute a significant and direct threat to the Union’s public order and security.»
To date, Switzerland has prioritized the freedom of expression over the risk of disinformation. However, if the background noise of Russian propaganda becomes louder, it may be worth revisiting the issue of countermeasures once again.
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Source link : https://www.nzz.ch/english/russian-propaganda-machine-targets-switzerland-ld.1854279
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Publish date : 2024-10-29 08:20:00
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