Strategic conspiracy narratives are effective means of information warfare. Conspiracy narratives function as relatively universal interpretative frames that have a very high modelling potential, which allows uniting various information fragments into a meaningful whole. Conspiracy narratives can be effectively used for grabbing attention, triggering memory-associations, delegitimizing political opponents, creating community cohesion and shaping the meanings of contemporary conflicts. The goal of this presentation is to introduce an analytical framework that I have created for qualitative analysis conspiracy theories, shared on RT and Sputnik. I focus on specific meaning-making and transmedial storytelling practices of strategic conspiracy narratives and explain the formation and management of interpretative communities. Since the social-media-dominated public communication is marked by a proliferation of (audio)visual and viral content, the research of strategic narratives needs to take into account the multimodal and transmedial components of storytelling. Strategic narratives may rely on various media to encourage the audience to explore particular aspects of the general story, to move to another platform for finding further content and to expand the main story with the audience´s own input. My aim is to develop an analytical framework that enables to study how strategic conspiracy narratives are used to point certain (social) media threads in desired directions, e.g. how they evoke a permanent skepticism and questioning of so-called mainstream media and dominant authorities and search for hidden motives. It is important to explicate how transmedial strategic conspiracy narratives, together with other discursive practices of RT and Spuntnik, form interpretive communities. Interpretive communities share specific networks of codes, value-hierarchies and a cluster of pragmatic standards that constitute the course of dominant interpretation. Regular visitors of those sites share a communal memory and principal rhetorical frames that enable justification of shared views. This paper combines my previous research on CNs (Madisson 2014; Madisson 2016, Madisson, Ventsel 2016), works on non-fictional strategic transmedia storytelling (Monaci 2017, Freeman 2016) and interpretative semiotics (Eco 1979, Jensen, 1987, Schroder 1994). If possible then I would like to present my paper in a roundtable (organized by Andreas Ventsel & Mari-Liis Madisson, Tartu University): Misinformation, strategic communication and infowar: semiotic approach References Eco, Umberto 1979. Lector in Fabula. Casa Editrice Valentino Bompiani & C. S.p.A. Freeman, Matthew 2016. Small change–big difference: Tracking the transmediality of Red Nose Day. Journal of European Television History and Culture 5(10), 87‒96. Jensen, Klaus Bruhn 1987. Qualitative Audience Research: Toward an Integrative Approach to Reception. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4 (1): 21-36. Madisson, Mari-Liis 2014. The semiotic logic of signification of conspiracy theories. Semiotica 202, 273-300. Madisson, Mari-Liis 2016. NWO conspiracy theory: A key frame in online communication of Estonian extreme right. Lexia 23/24, 189−208. Madisson, Mari-Liis; Ventsel, Andreas 2016. Autocommunicative meaning-making in online communication of Estonian extreme right. Sign Systems Studies 44 (3), 326−354. Monaci, Sara 2017. Explaining the Islamic State’s Online Media Strategy: A Transmedia Approach. International Journal of Communication 11, 2842–2860. Schroder, Kim Christian 1994. Audience semiotics, interpretive communities and the ‘ethnographic turn’ in media research. Media, Culture & Society 16, 337-347.