Workshop - Russian malign information: quantitative and qualitative approaches

Focusing on four different countries, this project explores how Facebook users engaged with 
selected Russian disinformation narratives during the first 18 months of Russia’s war against 
Ukraine (2022-2023) and which kind of perception of the comments is reflected by the comments. 
Using a comparative quantitative and qualitative approach, our research produced three key 
insights. (1) User engagement patterns strongly correlate with national political environments and 
media ecologies. (2) Across all the countries under scrutiny, user responses were more often than 
no emotionally driven, rather than content-focused. Over 80% of the comments displayed minimal 
engagement with the content of the disinformation narratives. (3) We suggest that these dynamics 
resonate with recent academic research on ‘trolling’ and ‘derailing’ (the latter term used in German 
language publications). We conclude that journalistic social media outlets should concretize 
coverage about disinformation narratives more in order to limit affective reactions.

14:00 Opening

14:15 Exploring Russian malign information
- Niels Drost, Tony van der Togt (Clingendael): Exploring Russian disinformation narratives
- Dmitry Kuznetsov (UvA): The post-2022 Russian media environment and disinformation
- Robert van der Nordaa (Trollrensics): Forensic Analysis of Troll networks and the rise of Africa

15:45 NARDIV: Russian malign information and user perception in international perspective
- Hanna Klimpe (HAW Hamburg): Exploring social media comment – possibility and limits of 
perception analysis
- Jana Kazaz (Globsec): Quantitative analysis
- Christian Noack (UvA): Qualitative analysis 
- Hanna Klimpe / Christian Noack: Findings and recommendations
 

Ca. 17:00 Closing

To sign up, please send an email to Dr. Christian Noack