Media disinformation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis

Disinformation plays a key role in contemporary hybrid warfare, particularly in the Russia – Ukraine conflict, where media narratives shape public perception. This study examines whether established linguistic indicators of disinformation appear in pro-Kremlin news discourse and identifies context-specific strategies. A corpus of English-language articles from the EUvsDisinfo database (2021–2023) was analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis and corpus linguistics, integrating quantitative measures with qualitative interpretation. Critical Discourse Analysis allows identifying the features that express meaning, reveal ideologies, and influence discourse. On the other hand, corpus linguistics provides a quantitative basis by examining the frequency and the distribution of these features in the corpus. The findings confirm the presence of known disinformation markers designed to influence the reader’s perception through text, rhetoric, and semantic manipulation mechanisms. Disinformation thus emerges as a coherent, context-driven discursive practice rather than a fixed set of features.