Authors

Discussion

When Russia invaded Ukraine, experts argued for the importance of delivering facts about the war to the Russian public. The proposed measures varied from targeted advertising to platforms allowing international public to reach Russians directly via messages. This strategy failed. While some Russians actively protested the war, most were either questioning alternative information as fake or distancing themselves. Why? Just as people in other authoritarian regimes, Russian citizens live in a peculiar information environment. While they encounter tremendous amount of propaganda, they still have access to plenty of information which challenges the regime’s narratives via digital media. I argue that when regime propaganda cannot rely on full dominance in a highly saturated information space to persuade citizens, more subtle effects of propaganda come to the fore. Relying on qualitative interviews with Russian citizens, I show that this response is partly explained by the reflexive rather than direct effects of propaganda. Instead of making citizens accept official interpretation of events, Russian state media provoke a communicative closure. Perceiving opponents as manipulated by propaganda, citizens refuse political discussions and instead consume propaganda without exposure to alternative views. By trapping them in their own (a)political worlds, reflexive propaganda reinforces pro-war attitudes.