Authoritarian state media hijacking traditional values cleavages in Germany? An analysis of gender-specific frames on RT Deutsch

Attempts by authoritarian regimes like Russia to use disinformation campaigns to influence cleavages in democracies have received wide media, policy and academic attention. The gendered dimensions, however, have not been explored to a sufficient extent. This element of Russian influence campaigns is based on the Russian heteronormative traditional values discourse that has been known to not only function to unify Russia under a national idea (e.g. Wilkinson 2018), but to also facilitate coalitions of states in opposition to the ‘liberal West’ (Edenborg 2023; Moss 2017). Research has moreover suggested that Russian disinformation in Nordic European countries has drawn upon gendered national identities and discussions about gender and migration (Edenborg 2021). However, existing studies tend to overlook which gender-specific content is employed by pro-Russian media when targeting German-speaking populations, especially with regard to LGBTQI+ messaging, and how it links to other topics. Examining the entirety of content on Russia’s most renown propaganda outlet RT Deutsch (formerly, Russia Today), this paper aims to detect gender-specific framing, discerning between normative, misleading and outright false content, and to what extent they have functioned as a "symbolic glue" (Kováts and Põim 2015) to link together different topics over time. First, gender-related RT Deutsch articles are selected with a theoretically-grounded dictionary of keywords on gender and sexual orientation, which is expanded with common tags used by RT, followed by LDA topic modelling. Filtered data is then analysed using Framing Analysis (Pan and Kosicki 1993, 2010) comparing two points in time, 2014/15 and 2022/23. In a third step, the article uses similarity analysis with the EUvsDisinfo dataset to cross check the veracity of specific statements appearing in identified frames to discern the extent to which misinformation forms part of gender-related discourses on RT. Preliminary results show that the gender-related content on RT Deutsch is structured around homo-, transphobic, antifeminist, and conspiratorial themes, linking to topics such as traditional and/ or Christian values, child protection, social grievances, anti-capitalism and anti-elitism. We found that articles relating to gender, sexual orientation, and traditional family values have been highly present on RT since 2018. Anti-LGBT content peaked in 2021, but has since remained at a high level. These first results demonstrate how gender-specific heteronormative frames are employed in media that function as outlets for Russian information influence. We anticipate this work to contribute to further considerations of trends in autocratic practices of hijacking value-related cleavages abroad to amplify discriminatory, anti-liberal value discourses and thus amplify polarisation in democratic societies.