Author
Ünver, Hamid Akın, Kurnaz, A.
Publication Date
2022-07
Publication Place
-
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research, İhsan Doğramacı Peace Foundation
Subject
Nato, Russia, Securitization, Structural topic model, Text analysis
Type
Periodical
Language
English
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Library
Özyeğin University
Library Asset ID
2146-7757
Record ID
27703b8a-35ea-4bc1-87d9-770813b50b5f
Library Location
International Relations
Date
2022-07
Sample Text
Following the Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections, disinformation and fake news became popular terms to help generate domestic awareness against foreign information operations globally. Today, a large number of politicians, diplomats, and civil society leaders identify disinformation and fake news as primary problems in both domestic and foreign policy contexts. But how do security institutions define disinformation and fake news in foreign and security policies, and how do their securitization strategies change over years? Using computational methods, this article explores 238,452 tweets from official NATO and affiliated accounts, as well as more than 2,000 NATO texts, news statements, and publications since January 2014, presenting an unsupervised structural topic model (stm) analysis to investigate the main thematic and discursive contexts of these texts. The study finds that NATO’s threat discourse and securitization strategies are heavily influenced by the US’ political lexicon, and that the organization’s word choice changes based on their likelihood of mobilizing alliance resources and cohesion. In addition, the study suggests that the recent disinformation agenda is, in fact, a continuity of NATO’s long-standing Russiafocused securitization strategy and their attempt to mobilize the Baltic states and Poland in support of NATO’s mission.
DOI
10.20991/allazimuth.1110500
Cilt
11
