Russian Strategic Narratives on the Chinese Internet: Non-Linear Soft Power Projection

This book challenges the notion that strategic narratives, which carry soft power significance, are seamlessly projected to audiences. It offers the first book-length critical analysis of the non-linear dissemination of strategic narratives in the digital age, focusing on social media.

Through a case study of a Chinese state-aligned outlet’s mediation of Russian broadcaster RT’s videos and their remediation by Chinese social media users’ danmu comments on Bilibili, it reveals disruptions by participatory media agents, including outlets and audiences. These multilayered mediations, driven by political and commercial agendas or online practices, yield unexpected benefits and challenges for narrative producers. The book’s main argument is that state actors have little control over the dissemination of the strategic narratives they project in the digital age. The dissemination paths of these narratives are non-linear and involve multilayered mediations imposed by other political actors for their own political and commercial agendas, as well as mediations introduced by participatory audiences who impose their own online practices, conventions, and rituals onto the narratives.

A major intervention in the study of soft power projection through public diplomacy in the online era and the emerging geopolitical alliance between Russia and China, this interdisciplinary book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Media Studies, Russia-China relations, Political Communication, Digital Culture, and Studies of Russian politics and Chinese politics.

Rui Wang is a lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages, North China Electric Power University. She holds a PhD in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Manchester, an MA in Interpreting from Queen’s University Belfast, and a BA in Russian Studies from Dalian University of Foreign Languages. Her research interests include Russian studies, Chinese studies, translation studies, media studies, political communication, and digital cultural studies.