Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-m6qld Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-13T02:37:22.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Christina Cottiero ,
Katherine Kucharski ,
Evgenia Olimpieva  and
Robert W. Orttung
Christina Cottiero
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Katherine Kucharski
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Evgenia Olimpieva
Affiliation:
Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Robert W. Orttung*
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: rorttung@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.

Keywords

state mediathe InternetframesRussiaUkraine
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 533 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baum, Matthew A., and Groeling, Tim J. 2010. War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brock, David, and Rabin-Havt, Ari. 2012. The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Choi, Hyunyoung, and Varian, Hal. 2012. “Predicting the Present with Google Trends.” The Economic Record 88: 2–9.Google Scholar
Darczewska, Jolanta. 2014. “The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare.” Point of View. http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/the_anatomy_of_russian_information_warfare.pdf Google Scholar
Davis, Richard. 2009. Typing Politics: The Role of Blogs in American Politics. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen, and Bobick, Michael S. 2014. “The Empire Strikes Back: War Without War and Occupation Without Occupation in the Russian Sphere of Influence.” American Ethnologist 41 (3): 405–413.Google Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–58.Google Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 2003. “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House's Frame after 9/11.” Political Communication 20 (4): 415–432.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A., and Modigliani, Andre. 1989. “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 95 (1): 1–37.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1975. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gorham, Michael S. 2014. After New speak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Granka, Laura. 2009. “Inferring the Public Agenda from Implicit Query Data.” Paper presented at Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) 2009, Boston, MA. http://uiir2009.dfki.de/papers/uiir2009_submission_10.pdf Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Kinder, Donald R. 1988. News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kashevarova, Anastasiia. 2014. “Dmitrii Kiselev: ‘Povedenie Zapada granichit s shizofreniei'” [Dmitrii Kiselev: Western Behavior Borders on Schizophrenia]. Izvestiia, April 4. http://izvestia.ru/news/568611 Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Sanders, Lynn M. 1990. “Mimicking Political Debate with Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action for Blacks.” Social Congition 8 (1): 73–103.Google Scholar
Krasheninnikov, Fedor. 2014. “Partii Interneta Bol'she Net” [The Internet Party is no More]. Vedomosti, July 27. http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/29318611/partii-interneta-bolshe-net Google Scholar
Kurspahic, Kemal. 2003. Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media During War and Peace. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.Google Scholar
Analytical Center, Levada. 2013. Russian Public Opinion, 2012–2013. Moscow: Levada Center. http://www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/2012_eng.pdf Google Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell E., and Shaw, Donald L. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 176–187.Google Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell E., Shaw, Donald L., and Weaver, David H. 1997. Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Mellon, Jonathan. 2014. “Internet Search Data and Issue Salience: The Properties of Google Trends as a Measure of Issue Salience.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 24 (1): 45–72.Google Scholar
Mendelson, Sarah E., and Gerber, Theodore P. 2008. “Us and Them: Anti-American Views of the Putin Generation.” The Washington Quarterly 31 (2): 131–150.Google Scholar
Oates, Sarah. 2013. Stalled Revolution: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pan, Zhongdang, and Kosicki, Gerald M. 1993. “Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse.” Political Communication 10 (1): 55–75.Google Scholar
Petrov, Nikolay, Lipman, Maria, and Hale, Henry E. 2014. “Three Dilemmas of Hybrid Regime Governance: Russia from Putin to Putin.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (1): 1–26.Google Scholar
Reese, Stephen D. 2010. “Finding Frames in a Web of Culture.” In Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, edited by D'Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, Jim A., 17–42. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Remnick, David. 2014. “Watching the Eclipse.” The New Yorker, August 11. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/watching-eclipse Google Scholar
Ripberger, Joseph T. 2011. “Capturing Curiosity: Using Internet Search Trends to Measure Public Attentiveness.” Policy Studies Journal 39 (2): 239–259.Google Scholar
Rössler, Patrick, and Schenk, Michael. 2000. “Cognitive Bonding and the German Reunification: Agenda-Setting and Persuasion Effects of Mass Media.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 12 (1): 29–47.Google Scholar
Scharkow, Michael, and Vogelgesang, Jens. 2011. “Measuring the Public Agenda Using Search Engine Queries.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 23 (1): 104–113.Google Scholar
Schatz, Edward. 2009. “The Soft Authoritarian Tool Kit: Agenda-Setting Power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.” Comparative Politics 41 (2): 203–222.Google Scholar
Scheufele, Dietram A. 1999. “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects.” Journal of Communications 49 (4): 103–122.Google Scholar
Scheufele, Dietram A. 2000. “Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication.” Mass Communication and Society 3 (2–3): 297–316.Google Scholar
Schimpfossl, Elisabeth, and Yablokov, Ilya. 2014. “Coercion or Conformism? Censorship and Self-censorship among Russian Media Personalities and Reporters in the 2010s.” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 22 (2): 295–312.Google Scholar
Snegovaya, Maria. 2014. “Putin Is Replaceable.” Moscow Times, August 18. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putin-is-replaceable/505309.html Google Scholar
The Liberal Mission Foundation and the Moscow Office of the Kennan Institute. 2014. “The ru-Net as a Mirror of Russia's Political and Ethnic Problems. Seminar of 22 October 2012.” Russian Politics and Law 52 (1): 68–91.Google Scholar
Valagin, Anton. 2014. “Garantirovannoe vozmezdie: kak rabotaet rossiiskaia sistema ‘Perimetr'” [Guaranteed Retribution: How the Russian System ‘Perimeter’ Works]. Rossiiskaia gazeta, January 22. http://www.rg.ru/2014/01/22/perimetr-site.html Google Scholar
Volkov, Denis, and Goncharov, Stepan. 2014. “Rossiiskii media-landshaft: televidenie, press, Internet” [Russian Media Landscape: Television, Press, Internet]. June 17. http://www.levada.ru/17–06–2014/rossiiskii-media-landshaft-televidenie-pressa-internet Google Scholar
Westen, Drew. 2007. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Yablokov, Ilya. 2014. “Pussy Riot as Agent Provocateur: Conspiracy Theories and the Media Construction of Nation in Putin's Russia.” Nationalities Papers 42 (4): 622–636.Google Scholar
Zheluk, Andrey, Gillespie, James A., and Quinn, Casey. 2012. “Searching for Truth: Internet Search Patterns as a Method of Investigating Online Responses to a Russian Illicit Drug Policy Debate.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 14 (6): e165. http://www.jmir.org/2012/6/e165/ Google Scholar
Zimmerman, William, Inglehart, Ronald, Ponarin, Eduard, Lazarev, Yegor, Sokolov, Boris, Vartanova, Irina, and Turanova, Yekaterina. 2013. Russian Elite – 2020: Valdai Discussion Club Grantees Analytical Report, 30–42. Moscow: Valdai Discussion Club. http://vid-1.rian.ru/ig/valdai/Russian_elite_2020_eng.pdf Google Scholar