Adapting Nord Stream 2: How Russia adapts strategic narratives to English-speaking Polish and German audiences

Abstract

Despite extensive scrutiny of how Russia has weaponized information, little work has been done on how it takes different audiences into account when designing its strategic narratives. Although scholars and practitioners agree on the importance of fitting narratives to audiences, the fact that Russia builds knowledge on audiences and that its practices are informed by a Soviet legacy of information warfare, little is known about the strategies Russia uses to adapt its strategic narratives to audiences. Through a comparative narrative study, the article investigates how Russian state media promote different narratives on Nord Stream 2 to German, Polish and English-speaking audiences. It shows how these are shaped by four adaptation strategies in which Russia amplifies, bridges, transforms and pushes back on the audiences’ pre-existing structures of meaning. This article contributes to the existing literature by deepening our knowledge of the relationship between the design of strategic narratives and their intended audience.