Political Criticism From the Soviet Kitchen to the Russian Internet: A Comparative Analysis of Russian Media Coverage of the December 2011 Election Protests (original) (raw)

Twilight of the Gods?: How the Internet Challenged Russian Television News Frames in the Winter Protests of 2011-12

In the winter of 2011-12, Russian citizens participated in their first large street demonstrations since the early 1990s. This paper looks at a specific element of the internet’s role in these protests by examining different news frames in state-run television news, commercial news, and online content for the protests on December 10, December 24, and February 4. The research finds that state-run news admitted only that people were dissatisfied with the political process, while commercial news and the internet were far more critical of political leaders and the regime. Overall, a ‘war of frames’ emerged, with all of the news sources attempting to either dismiss or support the idea that the protests had significant grass-roots support and represented a legitimate threat to the Putin regime. Online news sources provided not only a broader range of voices and ideas, but also gave important details about the protest events themselves. What emerges from this study is that state-run news will struggle to contain future protests using the same post-Soviet propaganda methods, suggesting that the Russian state will either have to find a more effective way to control information challenges or experience change on the scale of the Arab Spring. This research was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (The Internet and Everyday Rights in Russia, RES-000-22-4159).

Journalism and the political: Discursive tensions in news coverage of Russia

2011

Journalism is often thought of as the ‘fourth estate’ of democracy. This book suggests that journalism plays a more radical role in politics, and explores new ways of thinking about news media discourse. It develops an approach to investigating both hegemonic discourse and discursive fissures, inconsistencies and tensions. By analysing international news coverage of post-Soviet Russia, including the Beslan hostage-taking, Gazprom, Litvinenko and human rights issues, it demonstrates the (re)production of the ‘common-sense’ social order in which one particular area of the world is more developed, civilized and democratic than other areas. However, drawing on Laclau, Mouffe and other post-foundational thinkers, it also suggests that journalism is precisely the site where the instability of this global social order becomes visible. The book should be of interest to scholars of discourse analysis, journalism and communication studies, cultural studies and political science, and to anyone interested in ‘positive’ discourse analysis and practical counter-discursive strategies.

Stifling the Public Sphere: Media and Civil Society in Russia

In her essay on Russia, Maria Snegovaya identifies three distinctive features of the Russian government’s system for media control. The first is a combination of selectivity and “strategic uncertainty” in the censorship regime, which offers a number of clear advantages over traditional mass repression. For example, it is less expensive to maintain, and it allows the regime to backtrack in case of overreach. The second feature is the authorities’ efforts to modify key narratives rather than trying to fully control them. Russia’s modern propaganda system has come to depend in part on the dissemination of falsehoods to sow confusion, especially beyond its borders. Finally, the authorities use a mix of economic pressure and arbitrary legal restrictions to cow or cripple domestic and international media outlets—as well as civil society groups—that threaten regime interests.

The Russian Media Landscape

2013

Putin's Kremlin uses media repression as an indispensable part of a strategy to prevent the emergence of credible opposition that could seriously challenge the current regime. This article reviews recent developments in the Russian media and explains key elements of this strategy. While television remains the most important instrument for the authorities' dominance of Russia's information space, the Kremlin is paying increasing attention to the Internet, given that medium's rapidly growing influence.

Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia

Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia, 2004

The media history of Russian politics is a translated version of two Russian-language books, 'ReConstructing Russia' (2001) and 'Mass Media of the Second Republic' (1999), updated and published by M.E.Sharpe and Routledge. A media history classic, this book was written by a journalist turned researcher with a keen interest in the political events of the decade moonlighting as political campaign manager and aide to Boris Nemtsov, the Russian Kennedy. This work is of interest to media anthropologists as it explores in detail the nation building process as the puzzle coming together from shared memories and media effects under the heavy influence of the media system transformation, globalization and traditions in the almost mythical era of Free Russia reborn and dying simultaneously. From the publisher: This book describes the rise of independent mass media in Russia, from the loosening of censorship under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost to the proliferation of independent newspapers and the rise of media barons during the Yeltsin years. The role of the Internet, the impact of the 1998 financial crisis, the succession of Putin, and the effort to reimpose central power over privately controlled media empires mark the end of the first decade of a Russian free press. Throughout the book, there is a focus on the close intermingling of political power and media power, as the propaganda function of the press in fact never disappeared, but rather has been harnessed to multiple and conflicting ideological interests. More than a guide to the volatile Russian media scene and its players, Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia poses questions of importance and relevance in any functioning democracy.

Media Control and Citizen-Critical Publics in Russia: Are Some “Pigs” More Equal Than Others?

Media and Communication

Amid the intensification of state control over the digital domain in Russia, what types of online activism are tolerated or even endorsed by the government and why? While entities such as the Anti-Corruption Foundation exposing the state are silenced through various tactics such as content blocking and removal, labelling the foundation a “foreign agent,” and deeming it “extremist,” other formations of citizens using digital media to expose “offences” performed by fellow citizens are operating freely. This article focuses on a vigilante group targeting “unscrupulous” merchants (often ethnic minorities and labour migrants) for the alleged sale of expired produce—the Hrushi Protiv. Supported by the government, Hrushi Protiv participants survey grocery chain stores and open-air markets for expired produce, a practice that often escalates into violence, while the process is filmed and edited to be uploaded to YouTube. These videos constitute unique media products that entertain the audie...

The “Gardening” of an Authoritarian Public at Large: How Russia’s Ruling Elites Transformed the Country’s Media Landscape After the 2011/12 Protests “For Fair Elections”

Publizistik, 2019

In response to the massive street protests "For Fair Elections" that shook Russia in 2011/12, the country's leadership implemented a range of measures aimed at curbing dissent. How, why and with what consequences have Russia's political elites transformed the country's media landscape in the years since 2011? In order to answer these questions, this article leverages a recent theory of "authoritarian publics" proposed by one of the authors. According to this theoretical account, the multiple public sphere of contemporary authoritarian regimes can be productively imagined as being comprised of a myriad of competing partial publics of three types: (1) uncritical, (2) policy-critical, and (3) leadership-critical. Adopting this framework as a lens, the article argues that the measures implemented by Russia's leadership in the wake of the protests significantly reduced the audience reach of leadershipcritical publics, but did not entirely eradicate publics of this type. On a more abstract level, the measures taken are interpreted here as measures of "institutional gardening" deployed by the country's ruling elites in order to fine-tune the balance between the three types of publics. By so doing, they created an authoritarian public at large that better met their reconfigured needs.

The Role of the Internet in the December 2011 Moscow Protests

At the end of 2011, thousands of Moscow citizens protested against the December 4 election results for the 450-member Russian State Duma, the lower legislative chamber. In the months leading up to the election, an increasing number of Russian citizens had become angry and frustrated over rampant corruption and a worsening socio-economic situation. The flawed elections were the final straw, in making many Russians realize their lack of power and influence in the political process. Such Internet resources as LiveJournal and Facebook raised public awareness of the rigged elections in a new way. For several years prior to 2011, Russians with access to the Internet had been engaging in online discussions about their discontent with the ‘power vertical’ regime and its inability to address many social problems-- the most acute of which is rampant corruption. For the first time in Russian history, politically engaged citizens used the Internet and, more specifically, Web 2.0 to mount large-scale and highly successful protests. In a country in which media is highly censored, the Moscow protests, point directly to the crucial role of a free Internet in mobilizing the middle class. To have an objective and unbiased opinion of the role of new technologies in social protests within the Russian society, there needs to be an understanding of the fact that Russian protests of the middle class occurred within a ten year system of ‘managed democracy’. This period of time must be examined within the context of Russia’s thousand year history. Any study of the technology’s penetration into the society, without an exploration of the social processes taking place in such a country, will inevitably create a distorted picture.