69
The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
Piotr Pawlak
Adam Mickiewicz University
in Poznań
piotr.pawlak@amu.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-4666-5302
THE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
AND DISINFORMATION ON POLAND’S POLITICAL
CULTURE ON VIRTUAL SPACE
WPŁYW ROSYJSKIEJ PROPAGANDY I DEZINFORMACJI
NA POLSKĄ KULTURĘ POLITYCZNĄ W PRZESTRZENI
WIRTUALNEJ
Abstract: Contemporary political debate – public and individual – is undergoing progressive
degradation, exemplied by the growing problem of hate speech, fake news and manipulation
etc. The transfer of this debate to the web – further reinforced by the pandemic period – is re-
sulting in the increased involvement of previously relatively passive citizens. The most serious
current, though not de facto modern, problem aecting the state of domestic political culture is
the disinformation and propaganda of the Russian Federation, especially that part of it directed
directly against Poland and its society. Paradoxically, however, apart from the decidedly nega-
tive aspects of Russian propaganda, a phenomenon of political activism of Poles is observed.
An area of this activism is the Internet, through which the process of strengthening the demo-
cratically desirable “participatory” model of political culture is taking place. The text is a re-
ection on the current state of political culture and its role in levelling the crisis of democracy.
Zarys treści: Współczesna debata polityczna – publiczna i indywidualna – ulega postępującej
degradacji, czego przykładem jest rosnący problem mowy nienawiści, fake newsów, ma-
nipulacji itp. Przeniesienie tej debaty do sieci – dodatkowo wzmocnione okresem pan-
demii – skutkuje zwiększonym zaangażowaniem dotychczas relatywnie biernych obywateli.
Najpoważniejszym obecnie, choć de facto niemłodym problemem, wpływającym na stan rodzi-
mej kultury politycznej jest dezinformacja i propaganda Federacji Rosyjskiej, zwłaszcza ta jej
część skierowana bezpośrednio przeciwko Polsce i jej społeczeństwu. Paradoksalnie jednak,
obok zdecydowanie negatywnych aspektów rosyjskiej propagandy, obserwuje się zjawisko
aktywizacji politycznej Polaków. Obszarem tej aktywizacji jest Internet, za pośrednictwem
którego odbywa się proces umacniania „partycypacyjnego” (pożądanego dla demokracji)
modelu kultury politycznej. Tekst jest reeksją nad obecnym stanem kultury politycznej i jej
rolą w niwelowaniu kryzysu demokracji.
69
69gl;;
Nr 7 ss. 69–81 2022
ISSN 2543–7321 Przyjęto: 28.09.2022
© Instytut Bezpieczeństwa i Zarządzania, Akademia Pomorska w Słupsku Zaakceptowano: 28.09.2022
Oryginalna praca badawcza DOI: 10.34858/SNB.7.2022.006
STUDIA NAD BEZPIECZEŃSTWEM
70 Piotr Pawlak
Keywords: propaganda, disinformation, political culture, information warfare
Słowa kluczowe: propaganda, dezinformacja, kultura polityczna, wojna informacyjna
Introduction
The fact of the sharpening of public debate, especially in the area of social me-
dia, seems obvious. Its components are also well known and described, such as hate
speech, connement of users in lter bubbles, radicalisation of views and closure
to dialogue etc. The virtual space of political debate is linked to its real space,
but the opinions expressed online are much less balanced and more aggressive.1
In the real space, on the other hand, there are physical attacks of violence and self-
-aggression.2 It is also a fact that this state of aairs is a global phenomenon taking on, de-
pending on the country or region, dierent specicities. It is part of a crisis of democracy,
aecting in a multidimensional way an extremely important component of democratic
systems referred to in political science as political culture. Russia’s aggression against
Ukraine, the earlier Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s much earlier, unspoken hybrid
war against the wider West are certainly factors of great importance for the current
developmental trend of political culture.
The description of the causes of the aforementioned crisis is undoubtedly an im-
portant and interesting issue, and one that is often addressed in political science.
Here, however, we restrict the area of analysis to the space of social media in relation
to political culture and the impact of Russian propaganda on it. Conclusions from
both our own long-term research and that of other authors analysing the modus
operandi and nature of the Russian propaganda machine, allow us to posit the thesis
of the country’s signicant responsibility and participation in the architecture of
the aforementioned crisis. Is the crisis of political debate and culture (or, indeed,
the crisis of democracy I will mention later) planned and implemented by Russia?
No. It is a phenomenon (mega-trend) which is the result of many processes (trends)
which coexist. However, there is no doubt about the fact of the great responsibility
and involvement of Russia and its satellite3 and allied states in this process.
Propaganda and disinformation
Many analysts and political commentators are inclined to argue that the onset of
geopolitical “problems” with Russia coincides with the US “reset”, initiated by US
1 Stoppel, A., War on the net, or the other face of war in Ukraine, [in:] ‘Scientic and Methodical
Review: Education for Security’, year xiv number 4/2021 (53), Poznań 2022, pp. 15–28.
2 Examples of this include the assassination of the Mayor of Gdansk Paweł Adamowicz in Janu-
ary 2019 or the act of self-immolation by Piotr Szczęsny in protest against the Law and Justice
government in October 2017.
3 Belarus, in particular, has been particularly active in the elds of propaganda, disinformation
and agenting within Europe. See: Aro, J., Putin’s Trolls, Krakow 2020.
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The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
President Barack Obama in 2009. In my opinion, the “problems” with Russia, result-
ing today in the nal end of the relatively peaceful post-Cold War period, are much
earlier. It is Russian imperialism, which has been present in every historical period
and political form of that state. It is not the intent of this text to discuss the problem
of Russian imperialism as this issue already has an extensive literature. Let us assume
that the “problem” with Russia de facto never ceased to exist. It diminished after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to grow successively after the Russian “smuta”
period of the 1990s. It manifested itself again on a global scale in the rst decade
of the 21st century, beneting to a large extent from the goodwill of the West (unfor-
tunately sometimes also from its enormous naivety).4
The intentional, organised and long-term nature of the activities of Russian propa-
ganda can be shown precisely with the example of digital media, and even before
the year 2000, the informal caesura for the Web2.0 phenomenon. Several studies con-
ducted on the commentary layer of the then leading Polish news portals (Onet.pl,
Wp.pl and Interia.pl)5 concerning online aggression and propaganda revealed
a number of interesting observations. The period of analysis was immediately after
the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014. At the time, the Onet.pl portal allowed
both logged-in and anonymous users to comment on forum articles. This feature was
eventually disabled in 2018, precisely because of the problem of Russian propaganda
taking control of these platforms. When looking at the activity of Onet.pl users whose
comments were clearly pro-Russian, anti-democratic and anti-Ukrainian in nature,
it was noted that they operated 24 hours a day. Posts were “produced” from
the accounts of these users with an average frequency of 3 to 8 minutes. Every 8 to
10 hours there was a break in posting, usually no longer than 1 hour, but most often
up to 30 minutes. On the basis of the frequency of breaks, it was possible to select
eight groups of accounts (a total of 96 accounts out of several hundred analysed) for
which the breaks occurred at exactly the same time (with an average dierence of up
to 10 minutes). This made it possible to hypothesise that these accounts were handled
in an organised manner by a group of people working in shifts: one copywriter or, in
colloquial terms, troll, therefore handled around a dozen accounts during an 8 to 10
hour shift (it was assumed at the time that there could have been more, but not all
of them were selected because, for example, a given troll might have used some of them
less frequently). The continuous activity of the singled out accounts lasted for more
than three years (from the Russian aggression in 2014 until the end of the observations
in 2017). They were certainly still active after this period, until the media owners closed
4 The example of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines should be mentioned. See: Rosicki, R., Ros-
icki, G., Signicance of the Nord Stream gas pipeline for Poland, [in:] “Przegląd Bezpieczeństwa
Wewnętrznego”, 2012, no. 4, pp. 139–156.
5 Pawlak, P., War rhetoric in virtual space. Analysis of the content of the commentary layer of
Polish information portals, [in:] R. Sapeńko, P. Pochyły (eds.) Wojna/pokój humanistyka wobec
wyzwań współczesności, Zielona Góra 2017, pp. 272–296; Pawlak, P., The nature of political
discussion on information portals. A case study, [in:] ‘Studia Europaea Gnesnensia’, Poznań–
–Gniezno 2016, vol. 13, pp. 201–224; Pawlak, P., Socializing political discussions using the
example of the Internet: aggression and the search for compromise – a case study, [in:] “News
of Irkutsk State University. Psychology Series”, Irkutsk 2014, no. 9, pp. 57–68.
72 Piotr Pawlak
down the discussion forums. An analysis of the history of the accounts mentioned
brought even more interesting insights. About 30% of them were created in 1999, i.e.
three years after the Onet.pl portal was launched, as soon as the possibility to post com-
ments on it appeared and, importantly, even before Vladimir Putin assumed power in
Russia (which happened on 31 December 1999). These accounts became active only
at selected times: rst on the occasion of the 11 September 2001 attacks (activity for about
a year of time); again on a large scale during the Second Gulf War in 2003 (activity for
about 3 years); then on the occasion of Russia’s aggression against Georgia in 2008
(activity for about a year of time). In all these cases the activity lasted 24 hours a day
and was also carried out in an alleged shift pattern.
The accounts in question and the content they produced are the product of just
eight shift-work “positions.” What is meant by “post” is both the physical workplace
(which was probably still the case in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and, as is prob-
ably already the norm today, remote work, involving the transfer of operation of
a network of troll-accounts from one shift to another. Certainly, many more such “posts”
were set aside to handle a single information portal. How many, unfortunately, we do
not know. It is also worth mentioning that the described instances of organised Rus-
sian propaganda inuence signicantly predate the creation of the so-called “network
brigades” of the Internet Research Agency, popularly known as the “troll factory,”
which has been operating at Olgino since 2013. The work of the trolls in the Agency
actually resembled that in a factory, with shifts of workers arriving in the building at
a specic hour. From informal information6 it can be inferred that this form of Russian
disinformation production did not work from the technical point of view. The Olgino
centre quickly became the target of pro-Western hackers and certainly also the target
of special services’ attention. From about mid-2017 onwards, the Russians therefore
began to move to a mode of disintegrated remote work (otherwise closer to the nature
of a network).7 The reader may have noticed that tackling the problem of Russian
propaganda is moving in the dark, so to speak, and mostly based on circumstantial
evidence. For this is a front of information warfare for which the term “fog of war”,
coined by Carl von Clausewitz, is an apt description.
The question must be asked – why does the enormous scale of Russian disinfor-
mation not meet with a symmetrical response from the West? Well, paradoxically,
the lack of a symmetrical response can be seen from the point of view of democracy
and its political culture as a positive phenomenon. Democratic states and societies
respond in a democratic manner. The centres and sta of Russian propaganda are beings
anctioned, being analysed and, as far as possible, exposed. Numerous articles (such as
this text) and formal documents8 are being written, guidelines for the media are being
6 Miloš, G., Mlejnková, P., Challenging Online Propaganda and Disinformation in the 21st Cen-
tury, Cham (Switzerland) 2021.
7 In 2017, the ocial proles of the Internet Research Agency were successively suspended
and closed in the social media area. Among other things, this is what happened to the Agency’s
Twitter account.
8 For example, the EU Strategy 2019–2024, which includes a number of solutions to counter
Russian propaganda and disinformation.
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The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
developed, certain communication canons are naturally crystallising and measures
are being taken in the area of the media itself.9 In democratic states there is a legally
regulated and market-driven profession of copywriters, present primarily in advert-
ising and political marketing. Such individuals also often do the work of moderating
discussions in specic areas of the web, mostly in professional forums and social
media. Political parties in democratic states use the services of marketing companies,
contemptuously referred to as troll farms by political opponents. However, organising
such a gigantic yet anti-democratic enterprise as the Russian propaganda machine is
simply, and fortunately, impossible in democratic systems. The provision of a huge
budget, uninterrupted continuity of work, personnel facilities, IT support (both in
the form of software for multiplying activities – likes, for example, and IT protec-
tion against external attacks) and the freedom to enforce strict secrecy requirements
(including about torture and death) are only possible if two factors are met. The rst
is a totalitarian or authoritarian state and the second is a society that has operated
for centuries in a servile (and/or parochial) type of political culture. It is these two
factors that have enabled states such as Russia, Belarus, China and North Korea
to eectively control online content and impose their preferred narrative within
their own countries, as well as a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign
directed outwards. However, while Chinese propaganda tends to have a selective
dimension, with a strong focus on selected business areas,10 Russian propaganda is far
more aggressive, ideological and political in nature and targets democratic societies
and states.11 This is how Russia’s organised and long-term propaganda activity has
co-created the phenomenon of the so-called crisis of democracy. An analysis of this prob-
lem based on the concept of political culture makes it possible to grasp serious dierences
in the cultural space of the warring parties and their allies. It is in this space
that a struggle is taking place, the outcome of which will prove crucial for the future
of democracy and the free world.
With regard to social media, the destructive work of the Russian propaganda ma-
chine may be frightening in its scale and systematic nature, however, it should be
borne in mind that this machine was at work well before it was subjected (as it is
now) to scientic and social criticism. With the increase in virtual participation in the
political culture of citizens of Western countries, the problem and extent of Russian
propaganda is being successively exposed, which, in my opinion, will contribute both
9 Such as the removal of comments and even entire accounts identied as spreading Russian
disinformation. Another example is the complete removal by the Onet.pl portal of comments
to articles, or the removal by the CDA.pl portal of all Russian and Soviet war lms, which took place
a few days after the Russian aggression against Ukraine on 24.02.2022 (only a few lms remained,
which were not part of the portal’s oer, but were materials added by individual users). Now,
however, some Russian lms have been made available again in the ocial part of the portal.
10 China’s online propaganda was originally built and developed on defensive assumptions.
The former “Great Chinese Firewall” was primarily used to control the information available
to domestic Internet users. Krotoski, A., Virtual Revolution, part 1, BBC [documentary], Lon-
don 2010.
11 Although, of course, not only, as exemplied by the parallel developing Russian propaganda
targeting African or Middle Eastern countries.
74 Piotr Pawlak
to weakening its destructive inuence and to minimising the crisis of democracy.
Russian propaganda is still a dangerous factor, but the eectiveness of its inuence
is clearly waning.
At this point, it is necessary to give the reader a necessary brief overview of
the concept of political culture. This concept is an attempt to categorise the psycholo-
gical orientation towards social objects. This orientation is formed by the feelings, evalu-
ations and attitudes of citizens towards the political system. The whole mechanism
of bringing individuals into this system is also crucial. In terms of political science,
the term political culture has been developed since the mid-1950s, although the ori-
gins of the research go back to the second decade of the 20th century,12 and it was
popularised in the 1960s. According to the rst American researchers of this phe-
nomenon, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, we can speak of political culture in the
same way as economic or religious culture. It is a set of attitudes towards a specic set
of social phenomena and social processes. These authors distinguished three basic
ideal types of this culture:
– a parochial culture, which is characterised by a signicant passivity of citi-
zens towards the political system. Societies that function within this type of political
culture are characterised by a relative lack of expectations (lack of claims) towards
the political system.
– a culture of submission characterised by citizens’ relative knowledge of
the political system and the norms of behaviour arbitrarily assigned by that system,
while having no interest in actively participating in political processes. Citizens
of such, often complex, societies are aware of the existence of a particular system
and function in relative conformity with the rules of conduct imposed by that sys-
tem. For the most part, however, they are not, apart from a very limited number of
individuals who usually belong to a narrow circle of the privileged, interested in the
mechanisms of entry into the structures of such a system. The individual’s approach to
the system may vary here: he or she may be proud of it, he or she may not be in favour of it,
he or she may consider it legitimised or not. However, the individual’s relationship
with the system is generally based on a one-way ow of information, from the exit
mechanisms to the individuals (subjects).
– a participatory culture in which citizens have real opportunities to inuence the
shape of the political system and do so by participating in many ways in political
phenomena. Compared to the other two, this type represents a higher developmental
form of political culture that is necessary for consolidated democracies to function.
The activity of citizens in the co-creation of the political system (political particip-
ation) manifests itself both at the local (regional and local government) and central
(national) levels. An important factor ensuring the reproduction of this culture is
the awareness of at least partial inuence of individuals (their decisions and behav-
iour) on the shape of the system and on the quality of their own lives.
Of course, these are only basic theoretical models, which as abstract ideal en-
tities are unlikely to exist in their pure forms. But in most contemporary political
cultures it is possible to nd certain elements of them, the coexistence of which in
12 Siemieński, J., Kultura polityczna wieku XVI, Kraków 1932, p. 121.
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The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
a certain conguration is a characteristic feature of a given society. This is the essence
of the canonical concept of political culture, for it should be remembered that this
issue occupies a very important place in political theory, and has been and continues
to be studied by representatives of political science, starting with the pioneers already
mentioned, through such names as Arend Lijphart, Michaela Baun, Daniel Franklin,
Peter Reichel, Jürgen Gebhardt, Ronald Inglehart, Kazimierz Biskupski, Władysław
Markiewicz, Jerzy Wiatr and Marek Sobolewski, among others.
We therefore assume that we can consider the current situation through the prism
of a clash of political cultures. From a theoretical perspective, then, we are deal-
ing with a phenomenon consisting of a virtual (and not only) confrontation between
subject culture and participatory culture. A culture of submission operates among
communities in which not only is there no civic culture, but also anti-civic attitudes
are entrenched: individualism, initiative and creativity of individuals are considered
reprehensible, since the role of the citizen is to submit uncritically to a regime (a nar-
row group or leader) that is the embodiment of society at large. Dialogue with repre-
sentatives of such a culture is extremely dicult, often even impossible. The social
media space is a case in point. Enthusiasts of the ICT revolution and the information
society assumed that once enlightened thought began to circulate among individuals
in the world thanks to the ICT infrastructure, nothing would be able to stop it. Even at
the beginning of the 21st century, a signicant number of them shared this post-Cold
War optimism. Stephen Frey asked the rhetorical question in 2010, “How quickly
would the Berlin Wall have fallen if the Internet had existed at that time?” Today we
can criticise that optimism. Indeed, a culture of submission is a communicatively
closed culture. A participatory political culture, on the other hand, is characterised
by an open communicative culture, accessible even to the most controversial points
of view. This state of aairs exposes the communicative culture of democratic states
to the negative impact of the propaganda of non-democratic states (servile cultures).
There is therefore no room for dialogue. A discussion with Russian or Belarusian
propaganda workers is not a dialogue or exchange of ideas. On top of that, it takes
place exclusively in the “democratic part of the Internet.” Despite the technical pos-
sibilities of the Net, hostile societies do not talk to each other. The network space
of Russia (and to a lesser extent Belarus) can today be described in terms of a gi-
gantic information (lter) bubble, the framework of which is determined primarily
by the internal constraints of a submissive type of political culture. Of course, both
Vladimir Putin’s regime and some Western companies have imposed certain restrictions on
the ability to access internet content, but in most cases these obstacles are relatively easy
to bypass. The technical barrier is therefore not as important here as the cultural barrier.
If we relate the problem of the state of public debate within democratic states
to the phenomenon of the lack of intercultural communication at the junction (front)
of the democratic and non-democratic worlds, it would seem easiest to put an equal
sign here: here is the problem of the erce struggle between the feuding “political
tribes” of the Western world manifesting itself in a new international dimension.
However, this would be an erroneous simplication. For discussion, even at its most
76 Piotr Pawlak
heated, and conict are inherent in the nature of democracy.13 In the case of the rela-
tionship between the non-democratic world and the democratic world, however, there
is no exchange of views or even the most heated communication: what we see here is
only an organised, coordinated propaganda message directed towards the wider West,
and an equally coordinated internal message, reproduced, sustained and cultivated
by the Russian social media space. The discussion here, as I have already mentioned,
takes place only in the democratic space and mostly as a reaction to Russian propa-
ganda and disinformation. It would seem that such a state of aairs is undesirable for
the democratic world, and yet the West, specically the political participatory culture, has
a number of advantages here, which began to become apparent even before the out-
break of war. A surprising reinforcement for the participatory type of political culture
just before the full-scale, kinetic phase of the conict began was the fact of the global
and massive transfer of political discourse precisely to the virtual space, including
above all the area of social media. From our point of view, this can be considered
one of the few positive aspects of the decidedly negative and tragic phenomenon
of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the pandemic, the relationship between these cultures consisted largely
of a more or less visible, deliberately masked and organised inuence of a serf cul-
ture whose task was (and is) to disintegrate the participating culture. In principle,
we should use here a model in which one serf culture destructively inuences, through
propaganda and disinformation, many participatory cultures in a planned manner,
but we remain with the bipolar model, assuming that the democratic states as a whole
are a functioning environment for a political participatory culture, although of course
internally dierentiated. At the same time, we assume that it was the outbreak of
|the pandemic and the ensuing months-long lock down that triggered the increased
interest of citizens of democratic states in participating in political culture. Many peo-
ple sat down in front of their computers and, for such various reasons as entertain-
ment, boredom, increased exposure to virtual stimuli, observation of friends’ activities
on social media and the desire to express one’s own opinion, began to participate
more and more actively in public debate. On one hand, this has intensied the po-
litical and ideological conict gaining momentum more or less since the middle of
the second decade of the 21st century in most democratic countries. On the other
hand, this intensication of virtual participation has contributed to exposing both
the existence and the enormous scale of Russian propaganda and disinformation to
many who were, hitherto, unconscious of or downplayed its eects. On a theoretical
level, the increased interest in politics due to its transfer to the web, as an eect of
the pandemic, the expansive nature of media development and generational change,
can be interpreted as a strengthening of the participatory type of political culture.
This amplication during the pandemic period was sudden, massive and global, which
certainly translated in various ways into an exacerbation of the disputes that had
been going on for years in the areas of local political cultures, much to the delight of
the ruling elites of non-democratic states. Out of the chaos of these online disputes
13 See: Moue, Ch., The Paradox of Democracy, Wrocław 2005.
77
The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
within democratic societies, however, the rst symptoms foreshadowing future sta-
bility have already begun to emerge. What about the question of the relationship be-
tween subjective and participatory culture? Well, it has changed, shifting from a mode
of unilateral, covert and destructive inuence to a mode of conict. In this mode,
with the conscious resistance of the participatory culture, the destructive networking
action of the serf culture is doomed to failure.
Taking the thesis of the crisis of the current democracy14 as valid, one can hypo-
thetically assume that it will emerge from this crisis strengthened. This hypothesis is
already supported by numerous phenomena in the area of political culture observed
both nationally and internationally. As an example, there is widespread stigmatisation,
unmasking and rejection of the Russian narrative by the majority of serious parties,
politicians, institutions and, most importantly, citizens. In the Polish media space,
the Russian threat has begun to be widely perceived.15 The danger was also publicised
through social media. At the same time, there was a noticeable decline in the audi-
ence of all sorts of preachers of conspiracy theories, immensely popular throughout
almost the entire second decade of the 21st century, operating largely on platforms
such as YouTube.16 The widespread condemnation of Russia’s war of aggression
extends to the entire political and cultural component that makes up the Russian
vision of the world. This component is a phenomenon that requires a separate
study, and has already been undertaken many times.17 For the purposes of this text,
I will limit its description to a few terms: imperialism, nationalism, racism, intol-
erance, aggression, chauvinism, hatred, contempt, grandiosity mania, mythomania
and falsehood.
The unequivocal rejection of such a world view by the vast majority of democratic
societies is a resounding event. Importantly, this rejection has also occurred in the area
of broadly dened right-wing circles, except in cases of the extreme fringe. This is all
the more signicant because the weight of Russian lobbying and propaganda activi-
ties, along with the whole gamut of covert operations, has been reoriented since the
end of the Cold War from organisations, political parties and an electorate of left-wing
provenance, towards the conservative pole. Thus, the predictions of Russian elites
and propagandists regarding support among Western right-wing circles did not
come true. This support has been built over the years on arousing and/or amplifying
14 Numerous indicators, such as the level of democratisation, the level of freedom in the world
and the level of press freedom, prove this point (Economist Intelligence, Reporters Without
Borders, Freedom House).
15 A telling observation is one of the key motifs of the Russian propaganda message according to
which ‘Russia does not threaten anyone, but only defends itself’. This motif has been success-
fully distributed by the Russian propaganda machine in the societies and elites of Western coun-
tries. Proof of the success of Russian propaganda is the fact of unfettered de facto economic
cooperation (Nord Stream 1 and 2, arms trade, etc.) lasting until the aggression of 24 February
2022 and hardly slowed down once it started.
16 Cf.: YouTube trends, <https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending>, [accessed: 12.04.2022].
17 Cf.: Dugin, A., Essay on geopolitics. Geopolitical future of Russia, Moscow 1999; Dugin, A.,
Postmodern geopolitics. Time of new empires, essays on geopolitics of the 21st century, Sankt-
Petersburg 2007; Dugin, A., Concept of network wars, Geopolityka, 2, 1(2), Czestochowa
2009, pp. 187–190; Trienin, D., Russia, Washington 2019; Gumilov, L., From Russia to Russia,
Krakow 2004.
78 Piotr Pawlak
resentment against neo-liberal optics. In the tasking dimension of propaganda,
this translated into actions stigmatising LGBT people, ridiculing/negating the cli-
mate crisis, denying the COVID-19 pandemic, feminist thought, the development of
the concept of animal rights protection and most of the characteristics of consolidated
democracy such as the multi-stage process of consensus building, decision-making
and law-making, and tenure of government etc.
The role of social media in strengthening a participatory type of political culture
and thus bridging the crisis of democracy is particularly important. Observation
of social media reveals that its users increasingly understand the need to verify sources
of information.18 It is becoming increasingly common for ordinary users to attempt
and demand such verication. Users themselves, from either side of a political dis-
pute, are also acting as veriers. The correction of a particular pieces of information
which are, for example, out of date, out of context, manipulated or untrue, is also
becoming more common within one’s own lter bubble.
Institutions specialising in verifying the veracity of information and the cred-
ibility of its sources are also increasingly common. At the same time, these institu-
tions are increasingly present on social media and, interestingly, try not to identify
themselves with the ongoing ideological and political dispute. An example of this is
the social project FakeHunter, in operation since 2019, as well as a number of repre-
sentatives of the so-called creative sector: most often sole traders or micro-entrepre-
neurs such as bloggers, you-tubers and instagrammers etc. who professionally earn
money by verifying information. It is also worth mentioning innovative technological
solutions emerging in response to the problem of fake news, such as machine learn-
ing applications. The potential for the use of articial intelligence (AI19) in this area
is, at present, even dicult to estimate. In the media reality of recent years, this is
a revolution of sorts: these media and applications are satisfying the growing need for
possibly objective information, covering an increasingly distinct segment. Perhaps
the emergence of specialised solutions heralds a breakthrough for an ICT space char-
acterised by political struggle and propaganda? Perhaps this breakthrough will result
in the “bursting” of information bubbles and the return of a rational level of public
debate? At this point, it is important to mention an important conciliatory process
that can be observed in Poland, as well as in other Western countries. We are talking
about the phenomenon of uniting in the face of a threat, joining forces against a com-
mon enemy and putting aside ad hoc political and ideological disputes. In the case
of the Polish social media space, this topic is currently dicult to address, given the
pre-election campaign period. Certainly, the division of the domestic electoral market
and the relations between its segments are very clear and erce, but it is impossible
to exclude or minimise the impact of the “common enemy” as an identity-shaping
factor. A paradoxical example could be the mutual accusation of political adversaries
of being pro-Russian or subscribing to the Russian narrative. A rational example,
18 Kupiecki, R., Chłoń, F., Bryjka, T., Platform for countering disinformation. Building social
resilience research and education, Warsaw 2020.
19 AI (Articial Intelligence).
79
The Inuence of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation on Poland’s Political Culture...
on the other hand, is the common reaction of users on opposite sides of a political
dispute to obvious Russian propaganda or to news from the frontline.20
Conclusion
What, then, is the current impact of Russian propaganda and disinformation on
the political culture of Polish society? Despite the numerous negatives associated
with the spread of fake-news, hatred and false stereotypes etc., this inuence today
paradoxically contributes to the strengthening of a “participatory” type of political
culture. Summarising the considerations of this text, three phenomena in particular
have inuenced this state of aairs. Firstly, the pandemic period preceding the war
resulted in a surge of interest in the networked form of political culture participation.
Secondly, with the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 22 February 2023,21
the problem of Russian propaganda warfare took a key place in academic, popular
science and journalistic analyses, thus being largely exposed, and being unmasked is
a critical situation for any propaganda.22 The rst two phenomena can be regarded as
the result of chance, the negative consequences of globalisation and the consequences
of political bad will on one hand, and political naivety on the other. The third phe-
nomenon, which is the ever advancing ICT revolution, seems to be less inuenced
by the determinants of the rst two.
It cannot, of course, be said that everything changed with the advent of
a pandemic or the outbreak of war. Global civic engagement began to grow al-
most simultaneously with the emergence of the crisis of democracy. In the case
of Poland, one can point out, for example, the successively increasing interest in
security issues, geopolitics and strategy etc., since 2014. However, a signicant
acceleration of this process occurred precisely during the pandemic, when, as
a result of the lock-down, citizens shifted their activity online and with the out-
break of the full-scale, kinetic phase of the conict. These events set in motion
a whole range of social and psychological phenomena related to electronic com-
munication, often already well understood and described in the elds of sociol-
ogy, psychology and political science. Both positive and negative23 aspects of
virtual communication have therefore been reinforced in parallel. To summarise:
we are becoming more and more courageous in proclaiming our views and in
engaging in political debate; we are increasing our resistance to fake-news,
which is greatly supported by technology initiatives of individual organisations,
individual users and media owners; our tolerance of conspiracy theories is decreas-
ing, etc. These are only the rst positive symptoms on the way to stabilising the free
20 This condition can be observed, for example, on the Twitter platform, in reactions to informa-
tion from the front shared on the accounts of war correspondents or white intelligence person-
nel. See: Wolski, J., <https://twitter.com/wolski_jaros>.
21 It should be remembered that Russian aggression against Ukraine began in 2014. In turn, it was
certainly being prepared even earlier.
22 See: Głowiński, M., Jak nie dać się propagandzie, Warszawa 2016.
23 E.g. increase in aggressive speech, vulgarisation of language etc.
80 Piotr Pawlak
ow of information and knowledge that the pioneers of information society theory
would like to see. Despite the still numerous negative phenomena, the noticeable
positive trends can be seen as a promising prognosis. The dialogue between politi-
cal subject culture and participatory culture does not exist at the present time.24
With the outbreak of war, however, the implicit, long-term and planned destruc-
tive inuence of the former on the latter came to an end. This does not mean, of
course, a stopping or diminishing of the propaganda message, but a gradually
increasing resistance to its inuence by Western societies.
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Summary
Theorists and enthusiasts of the information society concept predicted a technologic-
ally determined, harmonious development of societies towards deepening cooperation
within globalization. However, we are currently witnessing serious negative situations, such as
a democratic crisis and a security crisis. These crises are especially visible in the area of social
media, which are a digital eld of competition between dierent types of political culture.
Despite the still dicult situation, in this competition the subservient political culture is in
a losing position compared to the participating political culture, which is represented by broadly
understood democratic societies.
