The Director of the Veolia Chair (UPF-BSM) participates in the ICA 2026 International Congress in Cape Town

Toni Aira, professor at the UPF Barcelona School of Management and director of the Veolia Chair in Institutional Communication and Sustainability, has participated in the 76th edition of the International Communication Association (ICA), held in Cape Town (South Africa), the leading international annual conference in the field of communication.

Within the panel “Inequalities in Political Communication”, Toni Aira presented the paper “Strategic Dissonance: Climate Narratives and Russian-Speaking Minorities in the European Union”, a piece of research developed at UPF-BSM in collaboration with other universities and linked to the Veolia Chair.

The research is based on a paradox that has generated growing interest among scholars of political communication and disinformation. On the one hand, various actors linked to the Russian media ecosystem have been identified in recent years as disseminators of climate-related disinformation in Western contexts. On the other hand, the official institutional discourse of Russia acknowledges the existence of climate change and addresses its consequences.

From this apparent contradiction, the study raises a central question: what happens when millions of Russian-speaking residents in the European Union are simultaneously exposed to both information environments?

Beyond disinformation

One of the main findings of the study is that strategies of informational influence are not always based on the dissemination of false or misleading content. Sometimes, they operate through the strategic management of different narratives for different audiences.

According to Aira, “understanding these dynamics is increasingly important in multilingual democracies.” In the specific case of Russia and climate change: “this is a highly important front to study from a Chair such as the one I lead, focused on institutional communication worldwide, in interaction with sustainable development and growth.”