The Hybrid Media Propaganda System that Enables Russian Authoritarianism - Maxim Alyukov Interview

The Putin regime has been widely exploiting the vulnerabilities of  global social media platforms, using bots and trolls to promote specific  stories and narratives. But Russian propaganda does not work how most  people think it does. The interventions of the trolls and agitators  often fail to directly promote pro-regime narratives in political  discussions but do succeed in distracting people from having open  discussions that are critical of the state. Welcome to the  counter-intuitive world of Russian disinformation operations.  

Maxim Alyukov is a postdoctoral fellow at the King’s Russia Institute.  He is also a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory (St  Petersburg). Maxim holds a PhD in social sciences from the University of  Helsinki and an MA in sociology from the European University of  Saint-Petersburg. Maxim’s research has been published in a variety of  disciplinary and area studies journals, including Politics, Nature Human  Behaviour, Qualitative Psychology, and Europe-Asia Studies. He has also  made guest appearances on several British and European TV and radio  shows, such as BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, Deutsche Welle, and  others. Maxim is a regular contributor to Open Democracy.