Authoritarian Norm Contestation and International Broadcasting: RT' s norm contestation strategy during the Ukraine Crisis

Norm contestation is a burgeoning area of research within International Relations (IR), particularly in the context of the evolving multi-order world. While critical constructivists have shed light on the dialogical nature of norm evolution and the significant role of discourses in norm construction, they have given little attention to the communicational process underlying these discourses. This paper argues that state-funded international broadcasters play a pivotal role in the contestation of the validity, meaning, and applicatory parameters of international norms. Unlike institutional contexts, international broadcasters do not contest norms through arguments but by projecting narratives using strategic assemblages of verbal, aural, and visual elements. Through an analysis of RT's coverage of the Ukraine Crisis (2014), the paper explicates how Russian state-sponsored propaganda has employed techniques such as liberal performance, liberal mimicry, civilizational essentialization, and counter-norm entrepreneurship to advance a favourable understanding of norms for Russia. The paper aims to contribute to the scholarship on norm contestation by authoritarian states, particularly by applying and attesting to Bettiza and Lewis's (2020) typology of norm contestation. Furthermore, it seeks to explore and theorize the relationship between norms and narratives in the ever-shifting global media ecology.