RT DE puts spin on user analytics to claim it outperforms German TV stations online
Tags: Russia, Media, Video, Analytics, Germany

By Givi Gigitashvili

Dinara Toktosunova, the editor-in-chief of RT DE, the German-language subsidiary of Kremlin-owned media outlet RT, cherry-picked a single digital analytics metric to inflate the subsidiary’s profile relative to other German outlets.

Although Toktosunova tried to position RT DE’s TV channel as more popular on digital platforms than many renowned local TV channels in Germany, a closer look at various performance metrics for RT DE on YouTube and Facebook showed that singling out one particular metric does not fully capture how it performs against other German TV channels. German TV channels that garnered fewer views of videos than RT DE YouTube channel and Faceboook page in June 2021 also outperformed RT DE on other metrics.

On July 26, 2021, Toktosunova posted on Telegram that RT DE garnered 21.3 million views on YouTube in June 2021, while local German outlets such as Tagesschau, ZDF, and Deutsche Welle “were left behind.” Toktosunova’s post also declared that RT DE was fifth in Germany in terms of the total number of Facebook video views in June 2021. Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, shared Toktosunova’s Telegram post to her own channel and added that RT DE had 21 million views in June 2021, while Deutsche Welle had just 5 million, and the latter would have to “live with that.”

Media companies exploiting digital metrics for commercial gain and bragging rights is nothing new, of course; outlets routinely track their performance for calculating potential advertising revenue, as well as for purely competitive purposes. In this instance, there is certainly competition at play, but not just over market dominance. By claiming RT DE is beating its competition in the digital space, Toktosunova is essentially arguing that the channel is beating them ideologically in the marketplace of ideas as well, as they attempt to make a case that a pro-Kremlin worldview is in the ascendancy in Germany. It also serves as a rhetorical ploy to claim greater legitimacy in the German media market.

In order to examine the performance of RT DE YouTube channel and Facebook page, the DFRLab compared various performance metrics for RT DE and those of German TV channels. Relying on the total number of views on videos per month is one of several metrics used to compare the relative popularity of different channels on social media; for example, RT DE and German TV channels uploaded a significantly variant number of videos in June 2021, which leads to different levels of performance on a per-video basis. In view of this, focusing solely on total views alone can be misleading without also analyzing performace across other important metrics, such as views per video, interactions, watched hours, and the like.

About RT DE

RT launched a German-language TV channel RT Deutsch in November 2014, prior to changing its name to RT DE in 2020. RT DE does not have a broadcasting license in Germany, however, so it distributes its content exclusively online. In January 2021, RT DE announced its intention to start broadcasting in the German language and filed an application to obtain a broadcast license in Luxembourg in June 2021. Currently, RT DE is operating in Germany under the limited liability structure of RT DE Productions GmbH, a sister company to Russia’s RT.

RT DE is unable to obtain a broadcasting license in Germany, because the country’s Interstate Broadcasting Treaty requires TV stations to be completely independent from foreign state control in order to obtain a license and RT is a Russian state-controlled network receiving funds from the Russian government’s federal budget. Der Spiegel International argues that, among other tactics, RT DE can circumvent the treaty by obtaining a broadcast license in another EU member state, which would grant it broadcast rights in Germany. This is very likely to be the reason why RT applied for a license in Luxembourg.

After the channel was first established, its German staff expressed some dismay at interference from Moscow, as reported by Der Spiegel, a report that also referred to the channel’s penchant for “distort[ing] and neglect[ing] facts.” One such prominent example was the outlet’s reporting on the so-called “Lisa case.” One night in 2016, a 13-year-old Berlin schoolgirl of Russian origin, “Lisa,” failed to make it home at the time her parents expected her, telling her parents later that she was abducted and raped by migrants from the Middle East. However, she later admitted to lying, which the German police, having interviewed Lisa, concluded “there was neither an abduction nor a rape.” Nevertheless, RT DE neglected to cover the police statement and kept disseminating the initial claims. After that, ethnic Russians and anti-migrant activists organized protests against the alleged crime calling for an investigation into “all crimes committed by migrants in Germany.” On top of this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused German authorities of “covering up” Lisa’s case. RT DE kept pushing manipulative narrative about Lisa case one year after the outbreak of initial story.

Analyzing RT DE’s performance vs. German TV channels on YouTube

On July 20, 2021, Dinara Toktosunova, editor-in-chief of RT DE, posted a screenshot of a ranking obtained from Tubular Labs, a video analytics platform that mainly offers its service to media companies. As shown in the posted screengrab, the RT DE YouTube channel garnered more views than those for six German TV stations, namely: Tagesschau, NDR Doku, ZDF Heute Nachrichten, SWR, WDR Doku, and Deutsche Welle. Unlike RT DE, however, all of the mentioned German TV stations have broadcasting licenses in Germany, which would provide their audiences a wider array of viewing options — standard TV broadcasts as well as online options — than are available for RT DE, which distributes its content exclusively online. In other words, the total number of views on YouTube is an incomplete metric for total viewership when broadcast viewership is taken into account.

According to German market research company GfK, 47 million adults used YouTube in Germany in September 2020, which represents more than half the country’s entire population. On the other hand, the German research company Infratest dimap conducted an opinion poll which showed that only 18 percent of surveyed people in Germany rated YouTube as a credible source of information in 2020, while 57 percent of those surveyed argued that public broadcasting services are their main source of information regarding current events, especially politics.