Fortifying the Cognitive Domain: the Securitization of Narratives in Eu and Russian Digital Strategy

Abstract Book of the 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities in the 21st Century

Year: 2025

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Fortifying the Cognitive Domain: the Securitization of Narratives in Eu and Russian Digital Strategy

Anna Eva Andersen

ABSTRACT:

As information environments become central arenas of geopolitical rivalry, cognitive security has moved from the margins to the core of state strategy. Yet the discursive mechanisms through which major powers frame and securitize digital narratives remain insufficiently examined. This paper addresses this gap by asking: how do the European Union and Russia construct foreign information manipulation as a security threat, and what kinds of digital statecraft does this securitization enable?
Methodologically, the study employs a comparative qualitative design rooted in securitization theory. It analyses a corpus of strategic documents from 2014–2024—including the EU’s Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) Toolbox and Russia’s key doctrines on information security—supplemented by a critical discourse analysis of high-level political speech acts. This approach uncovers the threat–defence narratives through which each actor legitimizes expanding intervention in the digital domain. The paper offers a novel comparative framework for analysing narrative securitization in the cognitive domain and provides one of the first systematic cross-actor mappings of EU and Russian cognitive-security discourse.
The findings reveal a fundamental structural divergence: the EU frames cognitive threats through the lens of democratic resilience and the protection of the public sphere, whereas Russia anchors its discourse in civilizational sovereignty and the defence of traditional values. The paper argues that these distinct securitization logics generate a mutually reinforcing feedback loop: by depicting narratives as weapons, both sides justify increasingly assertive—and occasionally pre-emptive—forms of digital statecraft. This dynamic intensifies long-term antagonism in the international order and raises critical questions about whether cooperative governance of the global information space remains possible.

Keywords: Securitization Theory, Cognitive Security, Information Warfare, Digital Statecraft, European Union, Russia, Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), Disinformation, Strategic Narratives, Geopolitical Rivalry