RUCARR Portal

RUCARR Seminar with Bidzina Lebanidze, PhD, Senior Analyst at the Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavic Languages and Caucasus Studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Time: November 18th, 15:15-17:00

Place: Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara, or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68198560054

Abstract:

In an era of resurgent multipolar competition, a fundamental update to our understanding of the reemerging concept of Spheres of Influence (SOIs) is needed. This analysis introduces the “Multi-Modal Sphere of Influence” (MMSOI) as a new analytical framework, positing that contemporary great powers project influence not just via coercion, but through a dynamic interplay of five modalities: military, economic, institutional, normative, and digital. This framework is used to deconstruct the intractable EU-Russia conflict in their “shared neighborhood” by bridging macro-, meso-, and case-level findings. At the macro-level, the core of the conflict is defined by different modalities of competition; this is not a symmetrical power struggle, but a structural clash between incompatible toolkits: the EU’s dominant normative, institutional, and economic modalities colliding with Russia’s reliance on its coercive-military and energy-based toolkit. This overlapping, multi-modal contestation creates, at the meso-level, a paradoxical environment for “in-between” states, granting them new avenues for hedging and agency while simultaneously exposing them to acute risks of coercion and conflict. Finally, the analysis unpacks the EU’s paradoxical role as an “antithetical actor.” While normatively rejecting SOIs, the EU’s institutional and regulatory expansion functions as a powerful, sui generis SOI-building tool, making it an unintentional geopolitical player. This synthesized approach explains the EU-Russia competition not merely as a regional dispute, but as a microcosm of 21st-century multi-modal, multipolar contestation.

RUCARR Seminar with Emma Rönngren, Örebro University

Time: October 7, 15.15-17.00 CET

Place: NI:C0319 (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69615481801

Abstract:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, attention has increasingly focused on how Russian strategic narratives are projected and received. In this seminar, Dr. Emma Rönngren presents findings from her doctoral dissertation on how Russian-speaking youth in Latvia make sense of, negotiate, and sometimes resist such narratives, with particular attention to emotions, media, and identity.

Drawing on focus groups and interviews with 69 participants, the study shows how young people navigate a contested media landscape where narratives of history, freedom of speech and language circulate. Using Carolyn Michelle’s reception model, Rönngren demonstrates how participants interpret these narratives on both denotative and connotative levels of meaning. Affect emerges as a key factor, shaping whether narratives gain persuasive force or trigger critical distance.

By foregrounding youth perspectives, the study not only contributes to debates on narrative power, resistance, and the affective dimensions of media reception, but also challenges simplified views of Russian-speaking minorities as either loyal or disloyal. It highlights the complexity of everyday meaning-making and the implications this has for democratic and civil actors in the Baltic Sea region.

Bio:

Dr. Emma Rönngren is a media and communication scholar specializing in strategic narratives, affect and information influence in the Baltic Sea region. She is a senior lecturer at Örebro University, affiliated researcher at IRES, Uppsala University and serves as the Student and Early Career Representative for the ICA Public Diplomacy Interest Group. Her current work includes forthcoming articles and book chapters on narrative persuasion, civil society resilience, and the role of media in geopolitics.