Elections Under Pressure : Understanding Russian Sharp Power Information Influence in the 2024 General Elections of Finland, France, and Ireland

Sammanfattning

With recent decades’ rapid globalisation and technological advancements, the information environment has developed, and among other things, brought with it new possibilities of foreign interference, and the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda. Recent examples in Romania (Rainsford, 2024) and Taiwan (Huang, 2025), shows how foreign actors have tried to exploit characteristics of the modern information environment to interfere with democratic elections. Building an analytical framework based on Ludwig & Walker’s (2017) sharp power, this thesis employs a structured, focused comparison to conduct an analytical, descriptive study. With Finland, France, and Ireland as cases, it is explored if, and how, Russia used sharp power information influence to target the countries’ respective general elections of 2024. In analysing both news and disinformation material, it is found that Russia employed information influence targeting Finland and France in the lead-up to their elections. Disinformation targeting France is found to be especially harsh on the character of President Macron, and is efficient in using pre-existing tensions in its narration on domestic French issues. Comparatively, disinformation targeting Finland is focused on two main issues: the Finnish NATO accession, and Finnish-Russian border closure. For Ireland, no distinct information influence efforts are detected.