The countries of Eastern and Central Europe have become Russia’s test field for new propaganda methods, and the regions of Eastern Partnership, the Baltic States and Visegrad countries are a special target for information warfare. Ukrainian Prism in partnership with leading think tanks of the region evaluated the situation in fourteen countries and presented the Disinformation Resilience Index to come up with bet common solutions for countering propaganda.
The Disinformation Resilience Index is based on comprehensive methodology that allows conducting multifaceted and robust analysis of communication activities of the Kremlin’s information and psychological campaigns in the selected countries, as well as assess the impact of the Kremlin-led disinformation. The interdisciplinary approach and variety of qualitative and quantitative methods and tools allow measuring the issue from different perspectives. In its turn, the respective measuring will create the preconditions for elaborating additional instruments that can be further applied to assess in detail the vulnerabilities of the participating countries and counteract them by relevant means which are at the disposal of stakeholders.
The implementing partner and scientific coordinator of the project is a Warsaw-based think tank EAST Center .
Research results
The project brings together high profile analysts from:
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Czech Republic
- Estonia
- Georgia
- Hungary
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Poland
- Romania
- Slovakia
- Ukraine
Applying the same comprehensive methodology to the research in fourteen countries at a time will give the holistic picture of resilience to disinformation of CEE and thus will allow to form the common comprehensive approach to fighting Russian disinformation warfare. Project findings will contribute into reaching the goals of “A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign And Security Policy”, which highlights that “the EU will foster the resilience of its democracies”,“resilience is also a priority in other countries within and beyond the ENP”, “managing the relationship with Russia represents a key strategic challenge. A consistent and united approach must remain the cornerstone of EU policy towards Russia”
The main project objective is to strengthen the resilience of Central and Eastern European states to foreign, foremost, Russia-led disinformation activities by developing a comprehensive assessment methodology (Disinformation Resilience Index) and launching a periodical comparative assessment of the situation in the selected countries
Two expert groups will meet to elaborate the methodology in Chernihiv, Ukraine in:
- June, 2017
- October, 2017
