In recent years, political podcasting has boomed in the United States, with new series emerging across the political spectrum. Due to the medium’s decentralized nature, it is difficult to grasp the total audience for these shows, but recent polling data has found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans look to podcasting for their news, almost 9 out of 10 expect the information they receive there to be mostly accurate, and 8 out of 10 view it as equally or more trustworthy than news they receive from other sources. Despite this audience growth and implicit trust in news content shared across the medium, podcasting remains a largely underexplored space, where content can be highly opinionated and politicized, anyone can claim expertise and become a podcast host, content moderation practices are largely absent, and the spread of contested claims — particularly about elections — is common across some series. As a result, this new media ecosystem represents a seemingly fertile area for Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine to reach audiences in the United States. Despite this expectation, we found the endorsement of pro-Kremlin narratives to be a rare event. When these types of narratives circulated, they primarily did so because they resonated with domestic culture war concerns in the United States, rather than out of sympathy for Russia’s cause in Ukraine.
