When Looks Deceive and News Is Anything But: An Ideology-Centered Critical Discourse Analysis of The Kremlin Meddlers’ Twitter Communication & The Media’s Portrayal of The Meddlersin The Context of The U.S. Presidential Election of 2016 and The Brexit

Sammanfattning: This study takes a qualitative approach to contextualizing and examining the communication of the so-called Kremlin trolls on Twitter, in relation to two major political processes that occurred in 2016, namely the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election. Moreover, the study examines the news media of the two respective countries’ portrayal of the “Kremlin trolls”. The study assesses and problematizes mainstream application and contemporary usage of terminology in relation to two phenomena central to this thesis, namely: “Kremlin trolls”, and “fake news”. The study reconceptualizes the respective concepts into the “Kremlin meddlers” and “deceitful news”, as it was found those terms more accurately reflect both phenomena. Two sets of empirical data are examined in the thesis, one of which consists of 62 posts derived from 14 accounts of the Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter accounts. The other consistsof 30 articles stemming from 10 different news outlets, 5 of which were U.K. news outlets and 5 U.S. news sites, covering the political spectrum from one end to the other. The study applies one theoretical framework toexamine both sets of empiricaldata, namely Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis. The Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter accounts used two strategies to influence the electorates of both countries, one of which was to hide under the guise of pseudonyms impersonating actual citizens of the two nations. The other strategy employed by the meddlers was to maintain accounts that simulated news outlets, acting and appearing much like a legitimate news outlet would on the platform. The communication of the Kremlin meddlers was primarily aimed atsupporters of the ideological right by (re)producing discourse highly critical of the ideological left, this is particularly so for the Twitter accounts seeking to impersonate actual people. The pursuit of ideological polarization is centralin their communication.In the news media’s portrayal of the meddlers,differences are foundacross the ideological spectrum. The study identifies three themesin the discourse; one portraying the meddlers’ in a humanizing view, one creating a Them vs. Us categorization between Russia and the West, and the last focusing on the meddlers’ impacton democratic processes. Intrinsic to all of the themes is the (re)production of elite discourse, primarily seen through the selective use of voices from the symbolic elite to construct the social reality.