Date of Award

Summer 8-15-2018

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Political Science

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Regionally influential powers are likely to pursue not just straightforward, rational policy goals but also sophisticated long-term, possibly ideological, ``milieu'' goals. These objectives may be far from obvious for an external observer and often require manipulation of public and elites' opinions on both domestic and international level. In our extremely digitalized era of Big Data, opinions have to compete with the facts that is why understanding better how they can be manipulated is crucial for both pundits and practitioners. While many approaches exist to address the topic, this work examines three sound cases from modern Russia in the exceptionally politically salient context of Ukrainian revolution in 2014. This country is an excellent choice for this task being recently highly active domestically and internationally in attempting to influence opinions and attitudes. Chapter I addresses the hidden manipulation targeted at the Ukrainian elites that resulted in an unexpected victory of the street protests in Kyiv. The following chapter investigates the state-controlled TV news coverage around this time. Finally, the last part analyzes the behavior of state-political trolls on the nationally significant Russian-language Wikipedia.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Norman Schofield

Committee Members

Michael Berchel, Sanmay Das, Justin Fox, Betsy Sinclair,

Comments

Permanent URL: 2018-08-15

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