Veyshnoria: A Fake Country in the Midst of Real Information Warfare

Anastasiya Astapova is a research fellow at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and Uppsala University (Sweden). She explores forms and genres of political ideology and mythology in socialist and post-socialist societies, particularly in Belarus, Russia, and Estonia. She specializes in political, ethnic, and college humor; belief, rumor, and conspiracy theory; symbolic and expressive forms of dissidence and resistance; and popular and political discourse surrounding immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers.

Vasil Navumau completed his PhD at the Graduate School for Social Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a postdoc researcher at Uppsala Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies and editor of the web-based journal e-gov.by, devoted to discussion and popularization of ideas in the sphere of public sector innovation, e-government formation, and e-participation enhancement in Belarus. His research interests focus on the ways new information and communication technology (ICT) influences the transformation of discourse, repertoire, and scope of social movements and the ways they can contribute to the formation of more transparent, participative, and inclusive government.