Cooking Classes To Counter Russian Disinformation, The Estonian Approach

US media report­ed ear­li­er this month about Esto­ni­a’s unusu­al approach to counter Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion. Accord­ing to a PBS report:

Jan­u­ary 15, 2022 Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion is rife in coun­tries for­mer­ly ruled from Moscow. Some ex-Sovi­et states have tried to sup­press it alto­geth­er by ban­ning Russ­ian tele­vi­sion sta­tions and even lim­it­ing the use of the Russ­ian lan­guage on their own domes­tic chan­nels. Spe­cial Cor­re­spon­dent Simon Ostro­vsky vis­it­ed Esto­nia, which is try­ing a dif­fer­ent approach.

Watch the full report here.

The video report notes that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has revealed that Esto­ni­a’s two main com­mu­ni­ties, Eston­ian-speak­ing and Russ­ian-speak­ing, still live in some­what sep­a­rate infor­ma­tion ecosys­tems. Due to Russ­ian anti-vac­cine pro­pa­gan­da, only 58% of the res­i­dents of the Euro­pean Union’s most Russ­ian-speak­ing city had cho­sen to be vac­ci­nat­ed as of last Decem­ber. To com­bat Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, the Eston­ian gov­ern­ment is orga­niz­ing cul­tur­al cours­es such as cook­ing class­es to inte­grate the Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion in Esto­nia to make them less sus­cep­ti­ble to pro­pa­gan­da from Russia.

In Octo­ber, we report­ed about an Eston­ian intel­li­gence report detail­ing Russ­ian influ­ence and dis­in­for­ma­tion activ­i­ties in the country.