Conduits of the Kremlin's Informational Influence Abroad? How German-Language Alternative Media Outlets Are Connected to Russia's Ruling Elites

https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241230284 The International Journal of Press/Politics 1 –20 © The Author(s) 2024 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/19401612241230284 journals.sagepub.com/home/hij Article Conduits of the Kremlin’s Informational Influence Abroad? How GermanLanguage Alternative Media Outlets Are Connected to Russia’s Ruling Elites Arista Beseler1 and Florian Toepfl1 Abstract Extant research on alternative media in Western democracies has focused on scrutinizing their content, organization, production, and audiences. However, the extent to which alternative outlets are linked to powerful foreign actors has not yet been analyzed, despite the fact that a plethora of outlets have openly sided with Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, spreading the Kremlin’s propagandistic narratives. To fill this gap, this study adopts a case study approach. It selects Germany as a revelatory case of a key target country of Russia’s foreign influence efforts, raising the question of how and to what extent Germanlanguage alternative media outlets are connected to Russia’s ruling elites. Grounded in qualitative analysis of a wide range of documents, this study proposes a categorization that divides the connections into three different types: organizational, media, and personal connections. Subsequently, it is demonstrated that half of the analyzed German-language alternative media outlets maintain at least one of these three types of connections to the Kremlin. These findings contribute to our knowledge of alternative media, as well as Russia’s overt and covert foreign influence operations, the so-called “active measures.” They also highlight the need for more transparency in alternative media landscapes in democratic contexts across the globe. Keywords propaganda, alternative media, active measures, case study, Russia, influence 1University of Passau, Passau, Germany Corresponding Author: Arista Beseler, University of Passau, Dr.-Hans-Kapfinger-Str. 14c, Passau, Bavaria 94032, Germany. Email: [email protected] 1230284HIJXXX10.1177/19401612241230284The International Journal of Press/PoliticsBeseler and Toepfl research-article2024 2 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) Since 2012, Jürgen Elsässer, the chief editor of the far-right German alternative media outlet Compact, has been organizing so-called sovereignty conferences in cooperation with the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation. This Kremlin-affiliated think tank based in France provided financial and organizational support for these events and is known, among other things, to have financially supported the French right-wing party National Front. In addition to this cooperation with a Kremlin-linked organization, Elsässer also frequently appears as a guest speaker on Russian state television and has, in the past, cooperated with the Russian foreign communication outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) German. This example illustrates the complexity of the ties that some central entities in the German-language alternative media landscape maintain with Kremlin-affiliated actors and organizations. However, to date, these connections have not been discussed in the academic literature. To fill this gap, this study raises the question of how and to what extent German-language alternative media outlets are connected to Russia’s ruling elites. By Russia’s ruling elites, or synonymously by the metaphor the Kremlin, we refer to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and the small, tightly knit informal network of his closest allies, who make all key political decisions within Russia’s personalist authoritarian regime. In Western democratic contexts, alternative media understand themselves—or are perceived—as a voice against the political and media mainstream (Holt et al. 2019). Germany, for instance, has a flourishing alternative media landscape, particularly when it comes to outlets with a right-wing political orientation (Heft et al. 2020; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022). In recent years, alternative media outlets have received much scholarly attention (Atkinson et al. 2022), for example, with regard to their dissemination of problematic content, such as disor misinformation about COVID-19 (Boberg et al. 2020; Frischlich et al. 2022). With most measures against the spread of COVID-19 having ceased in Europe, the war against Ukraine now takes precedence in the coverage of alternative media. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there has been a shift to pro-Russian narratives. For example, pro-Kremlin narratives such as the alleged need for a “denazification” of Ukraine or disinformation about the Bucha massacre have featured prominently in a large number of German-language alternative media outlets (Amadeu Antonio Stiftung 2022).1,2 In the past, the Soviet Union has been known to employ so-called active measures to overtly and covertly exert influence in foreign countries to destabilize them and thus advance the Soviet Union’s position in the transnational political context (Abrams 2016; Rid 2020; Shultz and Godson 1984). These active measures ranged from open propaganda techniques, such as the use of foreign communication channels, to entirely covert tactics, such as the use of agents of influence, seemingly independent individuals who would use their positions to act in the Soviet Union’s favor (Abrams 2016; Rid 2020). However, active measures are not merely a thing of the past; various tactics have been updated in recent years by the Soviet Union’s most powerful successor state, Russia, to the digital age (Abrams 2016; DeBenedictis 2022; Rid 2020). A wellknown example of the Kremlin’s digitalized active measures is the use of bots and paid human commenters (“trolls”) to influence public opinion in Western democracies, as Beseler and Toepfl 3 was attempted in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (Rid 2020). Against this background, it appears plausible that the Kremlin might also reach out to web-based alternative media outlets in key target countries of its foreign communication efforts, seeking to influence, for instance, the coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, no academic study has thus far analyzed these potential connections and their extent. In the literature on alternative media and active measures (see, e.g., Abrams 2016; Bradshaw et al. 2022; Elswah and Howard 2020; Klawier et al. 2022; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022; Schwarzenegger 2021), only state-sponsored outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, have been considered Kremlin-affiliated. To fill this research gap, we adopt a case study approach (Yin 2014) grounded in qualitative analysis of documents and investigative analysis of publicly available online information (Carter et al. 2021; Hayden 2019). The materials analyzed include reports from nongovernmental organizations, fact-checking services, newspaper articles, documents from government institutions, and information published by the alternative outlets themselves. The connections scrutinized in this article have significant political implications and, from a normative standpoint, raise concerns for at least two reasons. First, although connections between media elites/institutions and political elites/institutions are observable in democratic settings, the connections examined in this study stand out due to their involvement with, and empowerment of, the ruling elites of a highly repressive, expansionist, and authoritarian regime. Notably, these elites are associated with Vladimir Putin, against whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March 2022 over allegations of war crimes. Second, it has been substantiated that Russia’s ruling elites have consistently endeavored to exert (covert) informational influence in democratic societies over the past decade, with the malign objective of destabilizing their constitutional orders (Decker 2021). As the results of our analysis show, approximately half of the German-language alternative media outlets maintain connections with Russia’s ruling elites or affiliated actors at the organizational, media, or personal levels. In the following sections, we first summarize the current literature on alternative media and active measures before presenting and discussing the findings of this case study. Alternative Media Landscapes: Informal Connections With Foreign Actors Disregarded Drawing on the work of Holt et al. (2019), this paper defines alternative media as “a self-perceived corrective of ‘traditional’, ‘legacy’ or ‘mainstream’ news media in a given sociocultural and historical context” (862). This relational, non-normative approach establishes the difference between mainstream and alternative outlets on a spectrum rather than as a fixed dichotomy. According to this definition, an outlet falls somewhere on the spectrum of alternativeness as soon as it takes an approach contrary to the current mainstream position, considering the outlet’s self-proclaimed orientation. The characteristic of alternativeness may manifest itself across different dimensions, namely the producer, content, organizational, and system levels (Holt et al. 2019: 863; 4 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) see also Sandoval and Fuchs 2010 for a similar approach). Thus, alternative media may distinguish themselves by (1) producing content in non-conventional ways as well as by non-conventional producers (e.g., participatory journalism; Holt et al. 2019; Ihlebæk et al. 2022), (2) creating non-conventional content (such as non-mainstream topics or opinions; see, e.g., Buyens and Van Aelst 2021; Freudenthaler and Wessler 2022; Heft et al. 2020; Klawier et al. 2022; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022), (3) relying on non-conventional organizational structures (such as one-person outlets or nonconventional hierarchies; see, e.g., Aslan Ozgul and Veneti 2022; Harcup 2005; Heft et al. 2020; Ihlebæk et al. 2022; Issawi 2021), or (4) by serving a non-conventional systemic purpose (such as being the voice of the political opposition in repressive contexts; see, e.g., Issawi 2021; Leung and Lee 2014). In recent years, a plethora of academic literature has focused on these various aspects of alternative media, as well as on its audiences (e.g., Noppari et al. 2019; Schulze 2020; Schwarzenegger 2022). The focus has been on right-wing alternative media, particularly in the German (e.g., Klawier et al. 2022; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022) and Scandinavian (e.g., Ihlebæk and Nygaard 2021; Mayerhöffer 2021) contexts, due to the rise of (far-)right hyper-partisan outlets (Haller and Holt 2019; Heft et al. 2020; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022). While scholars caution against generalizing alternative media as purely antagonistic and emphasize that it is “paramount to acknowledge and understand the diversity and range of alternative media” (Schwarzenegger 2022: 2), it can be said that radical or anti-democratic actors exist within the diverse sphere of alternative media and that, depending on their content and reach, they may weaken democracies (Ihlebæk et al. 2022: 1278). The relations between alternative media and foreign actors have been discussed in the literature; however, it has almost exclusively been with a focus on Russia’s two major official foreign communication outlets, RT and Sputnik. As the key goals of these officially Kremlin-affiliated outlets, the literature commonly highlights sowing distrust in Western governments and institutions, thus destabilizing democracies (Elswah and Howard 2020; Wagnsson 2022). RT and Sputnik are often included in research on alternative media, highlighting their affiliation with the Kremlin (Bachl 2018; Bradshaw et al. 2022; Frischlich et al. 2022; Ihlebæk et al. 2022; Klawier et al. 2022; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022; Schwarzenegger 2021; Schweiger 2017). However, even after the major dissemination channels of RT and Sputnik have been blocked in Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s narratives still feature prominently in Germany’s alternative media outlets.3,4 In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion, additional voices disseminating proKremlin content established themselves on various social media platforms, not only in Germany but also in several other European countries including Spain and Italy.5,6 While the newly created outlets are commonly referred to as (political) influencers, they can also be considered alternative media. As Ihlebæk et al. (2022) noted, alternative media can take many forms, including “one-person initiatives” (1273). Thus, in this study, we understand influencers as a subtype of alternative media as long as they (1) focus on timely or political topics, similar to conventional media, (2) consider themselves in opposition to the mainstream media landscape, and (3) present themselves as a kind of media brand (see Bause 2021 for a similar approach). Beseler and Toepfl 5 In the extant academic literature, no systematically collected knowledge is available about the organizational background of German-language alternative media outlets, let alone their potential connections to foreign actors. To fill these gaps, this study aims to empirically investigate the connections between German-language alternative media outlets and the Kremlin. Therefore, we pose the following research question: How, and to what extent, are leading German-language alternative media outlets connected to Russia’s ruling elites? Active Measures: How Russia Updated Soviet Practices to the Digital Age The Soviet Union, and Russia as its most powerful successor state, have a history of conducting overt and covert operations with the goal of exerting influence and furthering Russia’s standing in the (geo-)political sphere, going back as early as the beginning of the twentieth century with the Bolsheviks’ effort to abolish the Russian Tsarist empire (Kux 1985; Lasswell 1951; Shultz and Godson 1984). Such tactics were especially prevalent during the Cold War, when the term active measures was used by Soviet intelligence agencies to refer to “a wide span of practices including disinformation operations, political influence efforts, and the activities of Soviet front groups and foreign communist parties” (Kux 1985: 19) with the “common goal of enhancing Soviet influence, usually by tarnishing the image of opponents” (Kux 1985: 19). These tactics can be divided into three broader categories: white, gray, and black active measures (Abrams 2016; Kux 1985). While white active measures describe overt activities, such as official Russian media outlets or open engagement of diplomatic tools or institutions, gray active measures refer to more hidden tactics, such as funding “front organizations” (ostensibly independent organizations that were controlled by the Soviet leadership) or cultivating connections to similarly aligned political parties in other countries (Abrams 2016; Kux 1985). In the media field, the Soviet Union sponsored the “International Organization for Journalists” as a major front organization (Kux 1985: 22). Moreover, reminiscent of what is described in this article, both the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union provided covert subsidies to selected ideologically aligned journals (Kux 1985). Lastly, black active measures describe entirely covert tactics, for example, forging and disseminating false information or utilizing agents of influence (Abrams 2016; Kux 1985). Agents of influence are entities who use their “position, influence, power, and credibility to promote the objectives of a foreign power in ways unattributed to that power” (Shultz and Godson 1984: 38) in order to secretly distribute regime-aligned propaganda (DeBenedictis 2022). Although such tactics are mostly discussed in a historical context, Russia has never completely ceased to implement active measures after the end of the Cold War (DeBenedictis 2022; Rid 2020). At the time of this writing, for example, the Russian news agency TASS was tightly controlled and supervised by the Kremlin (Watanabe 2017), and some European political parties, such as France’s National Front, Italy’s Lega Nord, as well as Germany’s Die Linke and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, English: Alternative for Germany), continued to maintain (often intransparent) 6 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) connections to Kremlin-aligned politicians or organizations (Fisher 2021). Moreover, Russia adapted certain active measures to the digital age. The internet became a viable “battleground” for Russia’s intelligence agencies, who use tactics such as hacking computer systems, leaking sensitive information, conducting large-scale trolling, and using bots to spread pro-Kremlin narratives (Abrams 2016; DeBenedictis 2022; Rid 2020). A notorious example of such tactics is the 2016 U.S. presidential election, where the Kremlin-affiliated Internet Research Agency (IRA) sought to sway the opinion climate on U.S.-based social networks in Trump’s favor by, among others, spreading disinformation (Ehrett et al. 2022; Helmus 2018: 19). Another facet of contemporary Russia’s active measures is state-sponsored foreign communication outlets such as RT and Sputnik (Abrams 2016). These outlets have often been referred to as the Kremlin’s mouthpieces, tools of soft power or even information warfare, mediators of misand disinformation, such as conspiracy theories, as well as distributors of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic content (for overviews of the literature on RT and Sputnik, see Crilley et al. 2020; Elswah and Howard 2020; Wagnsson 2022). However, as Abrams (2016) argued, “RT and other state-controlled media outlets represent only one facet of a much larger influence campaign—a single tool in a range of understudied activities that constitute a concerning gap in the West’s broader ‘soft-containment’ of Putin’s Russia” (6). After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RT’s and Sputnik’s content was blocked on many platforms across Europe. Experts have argued that RT and Sputnik, as former key distributors of the Kremlin’s narratives to foreign audiences, might be substituted by alternative media outlets connected informally and covertly to the Kremlin.6 From the lens of the literature on active measures, such Kremlin-aligned alternative media outlets might—unwittingly or wittingly—serve Russia’s ruling elites by covertly exerting influence in foreign countries. Thus, the instrumentalization of foreign alternative media outlets might be another asset of the Kremlin’s active measure toolbox. Methodological Approach Case Selection: The German-Language Alternative Media Landscape To analyze the connections between German-language alternative media outlets and Russia’s ruling elites, we adopted a case study approach. The case study approach describes “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the ‘case’) in depth and within its real-world context” (Yin 2014: 16). In this article, we consider the German-language alternative media landscape as a “revelatory case” (Yin 2014: 52). That is, we have chosen this case because it allows us to examine a phenomenon that has been “previously inaccessible [or not subject] to social science inquiry” (Yin 2014: 52). We undertake this analysis because we expect that some of our findings and the concepts proposed (e.g., our tripartite typology of conduits of influence) lend themselves to “analytical generalization” (Yin 2014: 68) to the alternative media landscapes of neighboring European countries and other democratic contexts around the globe, which are targeted by the Kremlin’s foreign propaganda efforts. At the same time, we acknowledge that our case has some particularities. Beseler and Toepfl 7 As one of the most influential (politically and economically) countries in Europe, Germany has long been a key target of Russian information influence (Decker 2021). It can therefore be assumed that the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts are particularly intense, visible, and traceable in this context. Moreover, in the decades before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany had relatively friendly and close relations with Russia. Although East Germany was a satellite state of the Soviet Union and under Moscow’s control for more than 40 years (1949–1990), many German citizens, organizations, and parties, such as the social-democratic political party SPD, have long had good relations with Russia. Finally, it needs to be mentioned that our case analysis is not limited to outlets located in Germany but considers all German-language outlets, making Austrian or Swiss outlets relevant as well. This decision was based on the study of Heft et al. (2020: 31), who found that Austria-based alternative media outlets attract relatively large numbers of German users. Selection of Outlets: The twenty Most Popular German-Language Alternative Outlets. To select outlets for analysis, we proceeded in three steps. First, we created a comprehensive list of German-language alternative media outlets by drawing on the literature on German-language alternative media (Bachl 2018; Boberg et al. 2020; Heft et al. 2020; Klawier et al. 2022; Müller and Freudenthaler 2022; Müller and Schulz 2021; Schulze 2020; Schwaiger 2022; Schwarzenegger 2022; Schweiger 2017), as well as on additional exploration and snowball sampling, scrutinizing the linking and mentioning behavior of the outlets. As justified in the previous section, we added political influencers to our list if they portrayed themselves as media brands opposed to the mainstream media landscape. After compiling a list featuring a total of fifty relevant outlets, we collected information on these outlets’ key user metrics, including monthly website visits (sourced from SimilarWeb), as well as follower counts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube. To focus the analysis on the most popular Germanlanguage alternative media outlets, we stipulated a threshold of at least one million website visitors per month or at least 100,000 followers on any given social media platform. This resulted in our final list of the twenty most popular outlets (see Table 1). To contextualize the findings of this article, the user metrics and follower numbers of these twenty alternative media outlets need to be put into perspective and contrasted with those of Germany’s legacy news media. To briefly mention but two examples, the website of the news program of Germany’s public broadcaster ARD, Tagesschau.de, as of 2023, received approximately 116 million monthly website visits, while its YouTube channel had 1.3 million subscribers (all metrics in this paragraph were retrieved in August 2023 from SimilarWeb). BILD, Germany’s biggest-selling daily tabloid newspaper, received around 215 million visits to its website and had approximately 1.5 million followers on YouTube. Data Collection. For all outlets included in Table 1, we collected a wide range of documents containing information about their (presumed) connections to Russia’s ruling elites. The materials collected included news articles, fact-checking and think tank reports, and other publicly available online content. An innovative investigative 8 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) open-source intelligence approach (OSINT approach; see Carter et al. 2021; Hayden 2019) to data collection and analysis allowed for a broad collection of information from multiple platforms, databases, and sources, with the goal of critically comparing claims by different sources and triangulating knowledge on the topic at hand. Adopting this approach, we also scrutinized the information provided by the analyzed alternative media outlets themselves, their authors, or related outlets. These arguably less reputable sources were interpreted in context and primarily consulted for first-hand accounts (such as attendance at an event or cooperation with other outlets). The documents were collected using various library databases for trustworthy (journalistic) content of quality media, mostly based in Germany or Austria. Additionally, we searched specific, thematically relevant websites for information, such as fact-checking services or media analysis projects. The search queries used ranged from “[name of alternative media outlet or its chief editor]” to “[name of alternative media outlet] AND russia OR putin OR kremlin.” The following section presents our findings with reference to 191 key documents, which we identified as containing particularly relevant or dense information on the selected alternative media outlets and their connections to the Kremlin. We provide a comprehensive list of these source documents in the Supplemental Information file. A case study database containing all source documents is available upon request. Table 1. The twenty Most Popular German-Language Alternative Outlets as of June 2022. Outlet name Website Facebook Twitter Instagram Telegram YouTube Tichys Einblick 4.9M 64,264 291,700 NA 10,569 136,000 Reitschuster 4.5M 100,319 132,700 75,700 282,000 353,000 Achse des Guten 4.3M 52,039 63,000 1,320 7,630 111,000 Epoch Times 3.4M 876,455 14,200 11,100 42,173 16,500 PI-News 3.1M NA 4,643 NA 5,220 NA Journalistenwatch 2.5M NA NA NA 121,000 1,800 Anti-Spiegel 2.2M 8,419 17,400 482 69,330 87,300 Report24 2.2M NA NA NA 38,611 428 NachDenkSeiten 2.1M 99,945 40,400 NA 11,914 82,000 Wochenblick 1.9M 79,287 NA 2,795 59,885 6,960 Junge Freiheit 1.7M 129,663 55,700 18,000 5,328 64,600 MMnews 1.1M 4,767 3,369 74 41,100 116,000 DWN 1.0M 93,939 6,708 751 569 NA Apolut/KenFM 897K 2,848 NA 7,023 116,000 NA AUF1.tv 842K 5,967 NA 6,400 197,481 NA Compact 593K NA 32,800 NA 60,175 151,000 Kla.tv 434K 7,154 NA NA 56,668 121,000 Neues aus Russland 20.7K NA NA 5,195 146,994 NA eingeSCHENKt.TV 17.9K 33,176 1,879 2,499 22,252 116,000 Alles Ausser Mainstream NA NA 4,599 3,171 162,090 92,700 Note. All user metrics were collected on Jun. 14, 2022. Website metrics refer to monthly visits as provided by similarweb.com, social network metrics to followers or subscriptions. Beseler and Toepfl 9 Data Analysis. We coded the 191 key documents qualitatively using MAXQDA, following the suggestions of Kuckartz (2019). We opted to use a combination of concept-driven and data-driven coding: first, broad conceptual codes were derived (in our case, the relevant alternative media outlets), and second, types of connections were then derived based on the analyzed documents. This approach combines the advantages of deductive and inductive coding, providing a broad coding frame in the beginning, which is then refined during the subsequent coding process. While coding, the reputability of the source material was assessed, and information was only considered valid if two reputable sources provided the same information. The analysis was case-oriented, allowing us to “identify similarities between cases, identify extreme cases, and form types” (Kuckartz 2019: 187). After the coding process, we summarized the findings for each alternative media outlet and then developed a typology of connection types. Findings Types of Connections Between Alternative Media Outlets and Russia’s Ruling Elites To systematize the various ways in which alternative media and Russia’s ruling elites are connected (implicitly or explicitly), we divided the connections observed into three different categories: organizational, media, and personal connections. Organizational Connections. This overarching category includes all connections between outlets and Kremlin-affiliated organizations or institutions. It entails officially cooperating with an organization connected to Russia’s ruling elites, which may include direct financial support or sponsorships, hosting joint public events, such as conferences, and meetings in official contexts between representatives of the outlets and representatives of Russia’s ruling elites, such as politicians or oligarchs. A prime example of official cooperation with Kremlin-affiliated organizations or institutions is epitomized by the right-wing German-language alternative media outlet Compact, led by Jürgen Elsässer. As such, Compact serves as an official partner of the German Centre for Continental Cooperation, a Kremlin-affiliated organization (D22, D27).7 In addition, Compact and a French Kremlin-affiliated think tank located in Paris, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, cooperated multiple times to organize conferences and events together (D40, D41, D95, D98, D174) with Jürgen Elsässer directly receiving money from this institute to finance the events (D98, D95, D112). Similarly, speculations about direct financial support have also been made concerning the Austrian alternative media outlet AUF1.tv (D96, D152), which has close ties to the Kremlin-friendly Austrian right-wing party FPÖ (D36, D48, D50, D92, D95, D138, D152) and belongs to a cluster of other Austrian alternative media outlets, including Wochenblick, Report24, and InfoDirekt (D48, D92, D95, D138, D152, D153). However, AUF1.tv finances itself mostly via donations (D48, D138, D152). 16 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) degree to which the connections to the Kremlin identified in this study affect the coverage of specific outlets. Fourth, this study focused solely on theorizing the Kremlin’s efforts to connect with foreign alternative media outlets. Future research could expand this lens by comparing the types of connections scrutinized in this study to how (Russia’s) authoritarian elites seek to influence (1) foreign legacy media in Western democratic states and (2) domestic media in their authoritarian contexts. In developing these comparisons, they can draw on the literature on media capture (Dragomir 2018; Yanatma 2021), which has scrutinized a range of strategies by which autocrats seek to “capture” their domestic media landscape, including financial incentives, regulation, legislation, physical attacks, and threats against journalists. To conclude, even though the alternative media landscape changes quickly, and user metrics, as well as relevant platforms, might change in a short time span, this study generated novel and generalizable insights into how, and the degree to which, a Western alternative media landscape is penetrated by connections to Kremlin-affiliated entities. It thus highlights the need for more nuanced approaches to the classification of the Kremlin’s connections in research on alternative media and active measures. Furthermore, the heavy permeation of the Kremlin’s influence on alternative media landscapes should be considered by policymakers concerning regulations and measurements to maintain independent media systems as well as democratic governance. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [Grant agreement No. 819025]. It is part of the ERC consolidator project on “The Consequences of the Internet for Russia’s Informational Influence Abroad” (www.rusinform.uni-passau.de/en). ORCID iDs Arista Beseler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1906-0121 Florian Toepfl https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5773-779X Supplemental Material Supplemental material for this article is available online. Notes 1. Anton Livshits, “Krieg gegen die Ukraine: Wieso „Querdenken“ zu Putin hält. [War against Ukraine: Why “Lateral Thinkers” Stay on Putin’s Side.],” Belltower.News. https:// www.belltower.news/krieg-gegen-die-ukraine-wieso-querdenken-zu-putin-haelt-129531/ 2. Julia Smirnova, and Francesca Arcostanzo. 2022. “German-Language Disinformation about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Facebook.” Digital Dispatches. https://www. Beseler and Toepfl 17 isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/german-language-disinformation-about-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-on-facebook/ 3. Sara Bundtzen, and Mauritius Dorn. 2022. “Banning RT and Sputnik Across Europe: What Does It Hold for the Future of Platform Regulation?” Digital Dispatches. https://www. isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/banning-rt-and-sputnik-across-europe-what-does-it-holdfor-the-future-of-platform-regulation/ 4. Foo Yun Chee. 2022. “EU Bans RT, Sputnik over Ukraine Disinformation.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-bans-rt-sputnik-banned-over-ukraine-disinformation-2022-03-02/ 5. Isolde Ruhdorfer. 2022. “Propaganda auf Social Media: Die Putinfluencer. [Propaganda on Social Media: The Putinfluencers.]” Die Zeit. https://www.zeit.de/campus/2022-06/propaganda-social-media-influencer-russland?page=4&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. google.com%2F 6. Brandy Zadrozny. 2022. “Russian Propaganda Efforts Aided by Pro-Kremlin Content Creators, Research Finds.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian -propaganda-efforts-aided-kremlin-content-creators-research-fin-rcna32343 7. The IDs refer to the documents in which the discussed information is provided. The documents can be found in the appended Supplemental Information file. 8. Reporters without Borders. 2023. “The Malkevich Propaganda Machine” RSF. https://rsf. org/en/investigation-mysterious-alexander-malkevich-kremlin-propagandist-ukraine References Abrams, S. 2016. “Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia.” Connections 15(1): 5–31. Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. 2022. 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He is Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Project on “The Consequences of the Internet for Russia’s Informational Influence Abroad” (RUSINFORM).