Understanding sputnik news agency strategic state narratives

Abstract

Our digital society becomes today the new battleground for powerful state actors, such as the Russian Federation, interested in boosting strategic narratives designed to systematically shape people’s perceptions and generate "alternative realities" suitable for empowering Russia's foreign policy objectives. This research recovers the web content stored on the Russian platform ro.sputnik.md and delivers answers by interpreting large quantities of data: all news headlines, their summary, date of publication, views, positive/negative reviews, comments, tags assigned by the publisher as well as the section in which the news is framed, all for better understanding the key themes that Russia promotes in our country.