Białoruskie i rosyjskie działania dezinformacyjne wobec Polski w kontekście antyreżimowych protestów przeciwko Alaksandrowi Łukaszence

Since August 2020, the political situation in Belarus has become one of the key elements of Russia’s information warfare against the transatlantic community. The main target of Belarusian and Russian information and psychological operations is Poland, repeatedly accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Belarus, inspiring a colour revolution, waging a hybrid war, supporting separatism, historical revisionism, preparation of military intervention or organising an armed coup and assassination of Lukashenko. The main research problem of this article is the answer to the question: what disinformation activities are Belarus and Russia conducting against Poland in connection with the political situation in Belarus after the falsification of the results of the presidential elections of 9 August 2020. The author analyses, among others, why Poland has become the main target of Belarusian and Russian disinformation operations, what the goals are of these activities, on what issues the Belarusian and Russian information narrative towards Poland is focused, and what the effectiveness is of these influence operations.

Platforms, alternative influence, and networked political brokerage on YouTube

This article interrogates political brokerage on YouTube by examining the platform’s role in the construction of political discourses and in configuring the action of a new genre of political actors advancing a political agenda through historical revisionism. Using assemblage theory and drawing from technography (Bucher, 2018), we propose the concept of ‘networked political brokerage’ to characterize the mutually affirming relationship of YouTube’s governance mechanisms and alternative political influencers’ microcelebrity practices in building, complementing, and magnifying historical revisionist narratives through and within a network of algorithmically-sanctioned videos. We illustrate how this interplay of platform logics and cultures of use (Rieder et al., 2018) privileges and legitimizes political content into knowledge without accountability. We argue for the importance of examining YouTube as a socio-technical driver of this political brokerage process in curating political information in this contemporary political scene.

Platforms, alternative influence, and networked political brokerage on YouTube

This article interrogates political brokerage on YouTube by examining the platform’s role in the construction of political discourses and in configuring the action of a new genre of political actors advancing a political agenda through historical revisionism. Using assemblage theory and drawing from technography, we propose the concept of “networked political brokerage” to characterize the mutually affirming relationship of YouTube’s governance mechanisms and alternative political influencers’ microcelebrity practices in building, complementing, and magnifying historical revisionist narratives through and within a network of algorithmically sanctioned videos. We illustrate how this interplay of platform logics and ‘cultures of use' privileges and legitimizes political content into knowledge without accountability. We argue for the importance of examining YouTube as a socio-technical driver of this political brokerage process in curating political information in this contemporary political scene.

Is Russia Fascist?

In Is Russia Fascist? This book argues that the charge of “fascism” has become a strategic narrative of the current world order. Vladimir Putin's regime has increasingly been accused of embracing fascism, supposedly evidenced by Russia's annexation of Crimea, its historical revisionism, attacks on liberal democratic values, and its support for far-right movements in Europe. But at the same time Russia has branded itself as the world's preeminent antifascist power because of its sacrifices during the Second World War while it has also emphasized how opponents to the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe collaborated with Nazi Germany. This book closely analyzes accusations of fascism toward Russia, soberly assessing both their origins and their accuracy. By labeling ideological opponents as fascist, regardless of their actual values or actions, geopolitical rivals are able to frame their own vision of the world and claim the moral high ground. Through a detailed examination of the Russian domestic scene and the Kremlin's foreign policy rationales, the book disentangles the foundation for, meaning, and validity of accusations of fascism in and around Russia. It shows that the efforts to label opponents as fascist is ultimately an attempt to determine the role of Russia in Europe's future.

La mode rétro: French mystery games – Between nostalgia and historical revisionism (1986–91)

This article examines how games set in the past reflect contemporary social and political events without overtly communicating messages. Using a simplified version of Astrid Ensslin’s methodological toolkit, the author studies four critically acclaimed retrospective mystery games produced in France within the 1986–91 period. The research results allow one to externalize a trend marked by ambiguous meanings called la mode rétro, namely a nostalgic re-creation of the past and a simultaneous coming-to-terms with France’s history. The author contextualizes the games examined here in terms of their references to a problematic past – the nation’s wartime stance towards Nazi Germany, and colonialism – and contemporaneous events such as the emergence of the National Front in France. The titles examined here demonstrate how discursively ambiguous computer games are as cultural texts.

Revisionismo histórico en arquitectura, en el intersticio de los siglos XX y XXI: reivindicar, rescatar o negar una memoria

Historical revisionism, a phenomenon typical of social and political sciences, has been consolidated at the start of the 21st century as one of the paradigmatic strategies in architecture, with the purpose of rewriting -or erasing- historical memories of the city. In this context, the objective of the research presented here was to investigate the relationship between different convergent social and political situations on the issue of memory and the demolition/construction of architectures, as a strategy to question events from the past and the official narratives. As this is a historiographic research, the methodology used a cross analysis between the discourses on which several socio-political issues around memory, that occurred in different countries, have been based, and the architectural projects built or demolished because of these issues. The conclusions, insofar as a research contribution, allowed detecting three lines of historical revisionism in architecture, starting from its use -and abuse- regarding the historiography of the facts: vindication, rescue, and denial of memory.