The Popular Geopolitics Feedback Loop: Thinking beyond the ‘Russia versus the West’ Paradigm

In this article we use the concept of popular geopolitics feedback loops to define systems of exchange and iteration among (popular) geopolitical entities and subjectivities, which produce meaning and affects and influence our perception of the world as an imaginary geopolitical space. They are distinguishable from other related categories, such as knowledge and opinion, by the fact that—like the software code described above—they tend to re-produce an existing set of connotations and—like economic principles—they lead to circulation of positive or negative values, disabling a more nuanced world-view. An example of a popular geopolitics feedback loop would be a cultural stereotype, which can be either positive or negative and which continues to dominate our perception of a particular country or nation even when information available increases