First, avoiding arguments from the “other side” on the basis that they might convince you of false things assumes that the other side’s belief are in fact false.
I believe it is less about true/false, but whether you believe the “other side” is making a well-intentioned effort at obtaining and sharing accurate maps of reality. On practical level, I think it is unlikely studying Russian media in detail is useful and cost-effective for a modal LWer.
Propaganda during wartime, especially during total war, is a prima facia example of situation where every player of note is doing their best to convince you of something in order to produce certain effects. [2] To continue with the map metaphor, they want to you to have a certain kind of map that will guide you to certain location. All parties wish to do this to some extent, and because it is a situation with the highest stakes of all, they are putting in their best effort.
Suppose you read lots of Western media sources and then a lot of Russian media sources. All sides in the conflict do their best to fill the air with favorable propaganda. You will find yourself doing a lot of reading, and I don’t know if there is any guarantee you can achieve any good results by interpolating between two propaganda-infused maps [1], instead of say, reading much less of both Western media and Russian media and trying to find good close-to-ground signals, or outsourcing the time-consuming analysis part to people / sources who you have a good reason to trust to do a good analysis (preferably you have vetted them before the conflict, and you can trust the reason still applies).
So the good reason to read Russian media to analyze it, is if you have a good reason to believe you would be good analyst of Russian media sphere. But if you were, would you find yourself reading a Russian newspaper you had not heard about two weeks ago with Google translate?
[1] I don’t have references at hand to give a good summary, but imagine you are your great*-grandparent and reading newspapers during WW2. At great expense you manage to get newspapers from London, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, and Moscow. Are you going to get good picture of “what happens” by reading them all? I think you would get some idea of how situation develops by reading accounts of battles and cross-referencing a map, but I don’t know it would be worth the expense. One thing I know, none of them is reporting much at all about the thing you most likely consider most salient about WW2, namely, the holocaust and the atomic bomb until after the fact.
[2] edit. addendum. Zvi used the word “hostile” and I want to stress its importance. During peacetime and in internal politics it is often a mistake to assume hostile influences (ie. conflict on conflict/mistake theory spectrum), because then you are engaging in a conflict all the time and likely to escalate it more and more. But now that we have a major European war, I think that is a good situation to assume that the players in the field are actually “hostile” because there is a shooting war conflict to begin with.
If you live in one of the countries at war, you will inevitably be exposed to “your” side’s propaganda. If you also look at the propaganda produced by the other side, you may well gain valuable information. For instance, if both sides acknowledge the truth of some fact, you can be reasonably sure that that it is the truth (whereas otherwise you might doubt whether your side is telling the truth about that). And if the other side’s propaganda talks about some issue that you’ve never even heard about, it may be useful to research whether something is being concealed by your side.
Even when those writing the propaganda have zero concern with telling the truth, they often will tell the truth, simply because it tends to be more believable. So looking at propaganda may expose you to true statements (which you hadn’t previously considered), which you may be able to confirm are true by independent means.
I believe it is less about true/false, but whether you believe the “other side” is making a well-intentioned effort at obtaining and sharing accurate maps of reality. On practical level, I think it is unlikely studying Russian media in detail is useful and cost-effective for a modal LWer.
Propaganda during wartime, especially during total war, is a prima facia example of situation where every player of note is doing their best to convince you of something in order to produce certain effects. [2] To continue with the map metaphor, they want to you to have a certain kind of map that will guide you to certain location. All parties wish to do this to some extent, and because it is a situation with the highest stakes of all, they are putting in their best effort.
Suppose you read lots of Western media sources and then a lot of Russian media sources. All sides in the conflict do their best to fill the air with favorable propaganda. You will find yourself doing a lot of reading, and I don’t know if there is any guarantee you can achieve any good results by interpolating between two propaganda-infused maps [1], instead of say, reading much less of both Western media and Russian media and trying to find good close-to-ground signals, or outsourcing the time-consuming analysis part to people / sources who you have a good reason to trust to do a good analysis (preferably you have vetted them before the conflict, and you can trust the reason still applies).
So the good reason to read Russian media to analyze it, is if you have a good reason to believe you would be good analyst of Russian media sphere. But if you were, would you find yourself reading a Russian newspaper you had not heard about two weeks ago with Google translate?
[1] I don’t have references at hand to give a good summary, but imagine you are your great*-grandparent and reading newspapers during WW2. At great expense you manage to get newspapers from London, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, and Moscow. Are you going to get good picture of “what happens” by reading them all? I think you would get some idea of how situation develops by reading accounts of battles and cross-referencing a map, but I don’t know it would be worth the expense. One thing I know, none of them is reporting much at all about the thing you most likely consider most salient about WW2, namely, the holocaust and the atomic bomb until after the fact.
[2] edit. addendum. Zvi used the word “hostile” and I want to stress its importance. During peacetime and in internal politics it is often a mistake to assume hostile influences (ie. conflict on conflict/mistake theory spectrum), because then you are engaging in a conflict all the time and likely to escalate it more and more. But now that we have a major European war, I think that is a good situation to assume that the players in the field are actually “hostile” because there is a shooting war conflict to begin with.
If you live in one of the countries at war, you will inevitably be exposed to “your” side’s propaganda. If you also look at the propaganda produced by the other side, you may well gain valuable information. For instance, if both sides acknowledge the truth of some fact, you can be reasonably sure that that it is the truth (whereas otherwise you might doubt whether your side is telling the truth about that). And if the other side’s propaganda talks about some issue that you’ve never even heard about, it may be useful to research whether something is being concealed by your side.
Even when those writing the propaganda have zero concern with telling the truth, they often will tell the truth, simply because it tends to be more believable. So looking at propaganda may expose you to true statements (which you hadn’t previously considered), which you may be able to confirm are true by independent means.