Budnitsky, Stanislav (2022). 'Pranks and propaganda: Russian laws against ‘fake news’ target Ukrainians and the opposition, not pro-Putin pranksters', The Conversation, available at: https://theconversation.com/pranks-and-propaganda-russian-laws-against-fake-news-target-ukrainians-and-the-opposition-not-pro-putin-pranksters-179795 (accessed 21 April 2022).
A new article from Centre Postdoc Research Fellow Dr Stanislav Budnitsky examines the influence that online 'pranksters' have had on policy and decision-making before and during the war of aggression in Ukraine. The author tracks the 'draconian' control of information by the Russian government and highlights the state's attempt to use pranks to deploy increasingly stringent legislation.
'The combination of the law’s intentional vagueness and severity is meant to stifle criticism of the Russian invasion. The “fake news” laws swiftly devastated media organizations that weren’t already controlled by the state'.
Read the full article here.
About the Article
Originally published by The Conversation on April 19, 2022.
Budnitsky, Stanislav (2022). 'Pranks and propaganda: Russian laws against ‘fake news’ target Ukrainians and the opposition, not pro-Putin pranksters', The Conversation, available at: https://theconversation.com/pranks-and-propaganda-russian-laws-against-fake-news-target-ukrainians-and-the-opposition-not-pro-putin-pranksters-179795 (accessed 21 April 2022).
Dr Stanislav Budnitsky joined the research group 'Legitimation and Delegitimation in Global Cooperation' in August 2021 and will be a Postdoc Research Fellow at the Centre until July 2022. He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University.
