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Russophones' Conspiratorial Thinking in Estonia: Three Years Post-Invasion to Ukraine

Date
-
Event Sponsor
CREEES Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
Stanford University Libraries
Location
Encina Commons, room 123

In this talk, based on the longitudinal ethnography of different Russophone groups in Estonia,  Dr. Astapova will tackle conspiracy theories around the war in Ukraine as they emerged at the beginning of the war and developed after, demonstrating that they have been far from static. She will explore the reasons and vulnerabilities behind this group’s conspiratorial thinking, which are much more complex than a mere result of the Russian Federation propaganda. Finally, she will analyze other narratives that tend to gravitate toward conspiracy theories about the war and some genres that, as ethnography shows, often accompany conspiracy talk, such as humor.

Anastasiya Astapova is an Associate Professor of Folkloristics (University of Tartu, Estonia) and a member of Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. Previously, she was interested in the research of post-socialist humor and rumor under authoritarianism (which, along with other publications, resulted in her monograph Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). In 2016-2020, Astapova was a board member of the COST project “Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories”, within which she published a co-edited Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends (Routledge, 2020) and a co-authored Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (Routledge, 2020), among other works. Astapova is one of the founding members of CONNOR: Nordic Network of Conspiracy Theory Research. At the moment, Astapova is a principal investigator in Estonian Science Foundation project “COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Contents, Channels, and Target Groups”, a member of Horizon project DELIAH: Democratic Literacy and Humor”, and a member of ERC grant “Conspirations: Conflicts over Conspiracy Theories”. Anastasiya Astapova is an Estonia Short Term Visiting Scholar at CREEES. 

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