Stephen stephen.hutchings@manchester.ac.uk1; 1 The University of Manchester, UK
Discussion
Applying qualitative discourse analysis methods to sources including press articles and grassroots Russian Telegram posts this paper offers a new perspective on transnational disinformation flows. Focusing on a two-pronged case study from the heart of Trump’s MAGA movement (the Deep State conspiracy theory and its QAnon offshoot), it reveals profound flaws in conventional notions of the secondary ‘adaptation’ of ‘narratives’ by disinformation actors colluding across linguacultural boundaries. Explicating the connection between the ‘Russia Gate’ scandal of 2016 and the emergence of Deep State conspiracism as an insurgent force it first presents the generation of such narratives as a reciprocal process without ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ stages and involving mainstream as well as marginal actors from multiple geopolitical settings. Secondly, by tracking Russian QAnon Telegram channels, it shows how, as conspiracism is disassembled and reconfigured from context to context, its values and meanings are transformed to the point of unrecognizability. The paper concludes that these twin processes point to flaws in the linear, ‘object’-driven models we apply to disinformation and its modes of migration requiring us not only to abandon concepts of ‘adaptation’ and ‘appropriation’, but to rethink what we mean by ‘disinformation narratives’ per se.
