Poisoning of Alexei Navalny: Understanding...

"Poisoning of Alexei Navalny: Understanding (Counter-)Propaganda"

Presented by Eduard Sviridenko as part of the Mediations Lecture Series.

Attend in person: FNB 4130
Attend online: Zoom

Abstract:

The paper investigates the use of government propaganda and “educational populism” on the example of Alexei Navalny’s (the Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist) alleged poisoning case. First, it considers differences in the propagation of conflicting information depending on the audience, used methods, and resources. In addition, it assesses the value of evidence and emotions in information dissemination. Lastly, it provides solutions to the issue of conflicting information dissemination. The study concludes that Navalny uses “educational populism” and appeals to people’s feelings and emotions to counter the Kremlin’s propaganda. In contrast, the Kremlin uses confusion strategies by producing conflicting and contradicting versions.

Speaker Bio:

Eduard Sviridenko is a second-year Doctoral Student in the Media Studies program at Western University. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Linguistics at Kazan Federal University in 2016 and his master’s degree in Linguistics at Western University in 2018. His master’s research analyzed lexical and syntactic means of expressivity on the example of Donald Trump’s public speeches. Eduard argued that the success of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign partially relied on his linguistic style and the use of expressive means. Eduard is currently interested in the issues of disinformation and government propaganda.