Sharing a Playbook?: The Convergence of Russian and U.S. Narratives about Joe Biden

Abstract

This paper uses a combination of human coding and artificial intelligence to measure the similarity of Russian propaganda narratives with discussion of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden in social and mainstream media in the United States. The research found the presence of the same five narratives across Russian English-language outlets, Fox News, rightwing websites, and leftwing Twitter. Four of the five narratives were present in rightwing Twitter. The research found a particularly strong convergence between the use of Biden attack narratives on Russian English-language sites such as RT and Sputnik with Fox News coverage. While this project did not identify specific Russian influence on key U.S. narratives about the Democratic candidate, it did find that Russian propaganda narratives generally differed only in quantity, rather than theme, from U.S. content. Across all these outlets, there was much discussion that Biden was corrupt, too old, a sexual deviant, and a placeholder for leftist conspiracy. All the sources aside from rightwing Twitter highlighted that Biden was also the frontrunner in the presidential race. This paper does not seek or find a 'smoking gun' that suggests specific planting of propaganda or disinformation from the Russians; rather, the analysis demonstrates in particular the similarity in narratives between Russian propaganda and right-leaning Fox News. This is worthy of discussion, in particular as Russia has traditionally been viewed as a threat to Western democracy and one might expect a greater difference in coverage between sources such as RT and Fox. At the same time, the five narratives also were present on leftwing Twitter, albeit in a different pattern. The analysis was carried out by the MarvelousAI StoryArc system, which measures news narratives by combining human coding, natural language processing, and machine learning.

Internationalizing Afghan security? Strategic narratives and transnational public sphere (dis)formation in Chinese, Russian, Afghani, and US media

“…Finally, the formation of a common community was operationalized by analyzing the larger narrative themes presence in the media discourse for evidence of shared, divergent, or competing storylines and worldviews regarding the prospects of peace in Afghanistan. While identifying narratives in media discourse is more of “an art than science” (Oates et al, 2020, p. 5), narratives can be understood as broader statements about life in general, rather than differences in framing of specific facts. According to Miskimmon et al (2014), narratives are composed of actors, actions, scene/context, instruments, and ascribed motives with narratives providing a temporal sequencing of events drawing from the past to the present with an obvious or implied future/resolution (Hagström & Gustafsson, 2019).…”

US Hypocrisy and the End of American Exceptionalism? Narratives of the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol From Illiberal National Media

“…This is not to say that frames are absent in narratives. Indeed, frames can serve as the bricks upon which narratives are composed (Miskimmon et al, 2014) and may emerge from frames (Oates et al, 2020). Framing may also contribute to a narrative's resonance by providing detailed characterization of the actors involved (Fisher, 1987).…”

“…Frames, then, provide snapshots of reality, taking on a more tactical nature to serve short-term purposes of elites; narratives, on the other hand, go beyond framing due to their temporal quality, providing a strategic focus on the deeper, long-term sensemaking of events (Coticchia, 2016). As Oates et al (2020) argues, narratives and frames differ over their claims of factuality, with frames operating within an organized view of reality emphasizing the material world while narratives represent a broader, particularized way of looking at the world.…”