THREAT-DEFUSER integrates state-of-the-art political science, linguistics, and media studies methods to forge a new multidisciplinary approach to hybrid warfare. The primary objective is long term strategic competence on hybrid warfare in Norwegian and Russian media that empowers citizenry, policy makers, and academics to recognize and mitigate the escalation of radicalization. The project will generate high quality research findings on technologically disseminated disinformation and its role in geopolitics and, thus, foster societies resilient to hybrid warfare. The secondary objectives are to a) address a knowledge gap for three languages (North Saami, Norwegian, Russian) with quantitative linguistic analyses and qualitative methods assessing media practices to triangulate data and produce new knowledge; and b) strengthen the Norwegian research community by building a network dedicated to hybrid warfare analysis stratified to include both early-career (postdoc) and senior scholars.
THREAT-DEFUSER increases Norwegian capacity to address challenges
of hybrid warfare in relation to Norway's biggest neighbor: Russia. We combine linguistic analysis of the big data of language corpora and path-breaking techniques developed in the Czech Republic with social science approaches such as document, discourse, and intersectional analyses of how language is gendered, racialized, and classed to trigger emotional reactions in populations and exacerbate conflict cleavages in societies. THREAT-DEFUSER integrates these methods to develop tools of analysis for Russian, North Saami, and Norwegian media. Using quantitative analysis of digitally networked communication and reassessing the acquired data through qualitative approaches, THREAT-DEFUSER identifies the role of disinformation in technologically facilitated dynamics of radicalization. We determine the function and possible effects of these dynamics in contemporary hybrid warfare, and develop concrete evidence-based recommendations for reduced vulnerability and increased resilience of societies and political systems in relation to such incursions.
We determine the function and possible effects of these dynamics in contemporary hybrid warfare, and develop concrete evidence-based recommendations for reduced vulnerability and increased resilience of societies and political THREAT-DEFUSER is the first cross-linguistic analysis of threat vocabularies and the Keywords/Keymorphs that show differential behavior in news media. We are the first to apply Normalized Social Distance metrics to the media sources of Russia and Norway. THREAT-DEFUSER contributes to UN sustainable development Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies. This is achieved by ensuring public access to ratings of the ideological biases and audience exclusivity of news media, essential information that mitigates social fragmentation and radicalization. News media ratings are delivered via the NewsRadar app that alerts consumers alongside their news feeds. The audiences of THREAT-DEFUSER include scholars of political science, linguistics, and media studies, as well as all consumers of news media in the broader public.