These days the word “influence” to analyze RT (the Russian international news and discussion program at the heart of Western concerns about its “weaponized information”) in U.S. and European press and policy-making circles is, you might notice, replacing other terms, such as “effects” and “persuasion.” Influence is an old word in English, from the 14th century astrological term for an “ethereal fluid from the heavens affecting mankind.” [Oxford Etymological Dictionary] It becomes a medical term, as in influenza, and then at the end of the 18th century in France, it is broadened to include “exertion of power.” That’s still much vaguer than political persuasion, which has specifics that can be analyzed. Influence, as it is being used, is based on assertions, lack of evidence, and minimal context. So, let’s go back to what can be analyzed: persuasion, which has a long, scientific literature.
Exposure to the material intended to persuade [in this case, RT] is obviously the first piece. Since RT’s claims are backtracking from minuscule audience numbers for offline news and online YouTube videos, by far coming from other countries with an RT label on top, exposure is also a failing argument. More recently RT claims persuasion is now mainly online in insertions into social media [no precise route or sites given]. But a second element of the scientific study of persuasion is the presence of competing messages and sources. Messages from RT meet a huge universe of online sites crammed with other messages—many emotionally charged and advancing all kinds of views and “information” (real, or one-sided, or made up, or scurrilous, or outlandishly adulatory, or “fake”). The internet is an expanding cosmos, and to make a case for RT’s place in it, analysis must put it in the context of all the other competition trying for persuasion in opposite directions.
Persuasion means attitude CHANGE. Unless it can be shown with evidence that a previously held attitude has changed as a result of RT’s message, then we are not talking about persuasion. We all know that increasingly the internet is an “echo chamber” where you pick out sites or “friends” with whom you already agree. That’s not persuasion, but individual characteristics of people going to sites purveying material they ALREADY believe. There are plenty of people in Europe, for example, that have chafed under what they see as American hegemony; others see America as safeguarding their values. The waves of these attitudes fluctuate over time. Take Sweden, where neutrality is deep in the culture, yet the country has achieved inter-operability to meet NATO requirements, should Russia threaten them. During the conflict in Vietnam, Sweden’s Olof Palme, later to be Prime Minister, made a pro-FNL [National Liberation Front of North Vietnam] speech and marched in a demonstration together with the North Vietnamese ambassador to Sweden: the United States withdrew its ambassador.
Still, RT, telling a story different from the big Western news sources, may have achieved its purpose if people just don’t know what to think after being exposed to a different—and anti-Western—angle. But that argument falls flat. Attitudes can fluctuate, mainly among people who have less education, less interest in the issues, and less political knowledge. Their attitudes can change just as much if they encounter competing messages elsewhere on the internet, as they are bound to do. They also are much less likely to retain what they consume. They are less likely to vote and also are more likely to go to people they have known a long time and ask them what’s the story.