Leveraging anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Russian influence operations: An audience study of pro-Russian media users in Germany

Despite Russia's use of state-sponsored outlets to influence international audiences, studies examining how its heteronormative traditional values discourse manifests in pro-Russian media content and the reception by audiences abroad remain scarce. Its traditional values discourse has been found to enable the formation of coalitions of states against the ‘liberal West’. Research has also suggested that Russian disinformation in Northern Europe has successfully gained audience resonance for culturalized, ethnicized, and racialized narratives of gender. However, studies on the audience reception of gender-specific heteronormative narratives are lacking, especially concerning German-speaking populations. To address this gap, this study focuses on attitudes of pro-Russian media users in Germany, a significant target of Russian propaganda due to its sizable Russian population. Conducting an online survey of 2,000 alternative media users, the research discerns whether the consumption of pro-Russian media has a significant effect on the level of anti-feminist, trans- and homophobic attitudes, using validated scales and controlling for socio-demographic variables and media consumption frequency. It moreover investigates the extent of users’ agreement with different dimensions of heteronormative narratives, stemming from RT Deutsch. These findings are compared to the levels of agreement by right-wing, left-wing and conspiracy media consumers, to discern the groups’ overlap versus the specific features of pro-Russian media users. Preliminary findings showcase a higher prevalence of heteronormative attitudes among consumers of pro-Russian media compared to the broader sample of alternative media users. The study reveals particularly high resonance with conspiratorial anti-feminist narratives and viewpoints rejecting LGBTQ+ representation. Overall, it underscores substantial support for heteronormative content among pro-Russian media users in Germany and showcases the overlaps of agreement with these narratives among different alternative media user groups. This investigation highlights Russia's leveraging of the anti-gender turn in Europe and its success in disseminating a discriminatory traditional values discourse within German alternative media audiences. This work fuels further considerations of how national value-related discourses can be hijacked by authoritarian state actors to amplify discriminatory, anti-liberal discourses and thus broaden polarisation in democratic societies.