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 German-language 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.

中文翻译：

---

克里姆林宫在海外的信息影响力如何？德语另类媒体如何与俄罗斯统治精英建立联系

现有对西方民主国家替代媒体的研究主要集中在审查其内容、组织、制作和受众。然而，尽管大量媒体在 2022 年 2 月全面入侵乌克兰后公开站在俄罗斯一边，传播克里姆林宫的宣传叙事，但尚未分析其他媒体与强大外国势力的联系程度。 。为了填补这一空白，本研究采用案例研究的方法。它选择德国作为俄罗斯对外影响力的关键目标国家的启示性案例，提出了德语另类媒体如何以及在多大程度上与俄罗斯统治精英联系的问题。基于对各种文档的定性分析，本研究提出了一种分类，将联系分为三种不同类型：组织、媒体和个人联系。随后，研究表明，所分析的德语另类媒体中有一半至少与克里姆林宫保持着这三种类型的联系中的一种。这些发现有助于我们了解替代媒体以及俄罗斯公开和秘密的外国影响力行动，即所谓的“积极措施”。他们还强调，在全球民主背景下，另类媒体格局需要提高透明度。