Journalism in Russia is being shaped by new forms of regulation, ownership and economic organization as well as new conceptions of the role of the journalist in relation to authorities and audiences. While centralized broadcasting and communications in the Russian Federation continue to have a dominant role, the centrifugal tendencies of the post-Soviet period have enhanced the autonomy and importance of the provincial media. Using data from research interviews, supported by documentary and statistical sources on the media in Tatarstan, this article examines journalists' perceptions of their role and how it is changing. Key issues include the distinction between `information' and `presentation', the search for a new ethos among the younger generation of journalists, and orientations towards the audience. In a republic with an ethnically and religiously mixed population, often taken to be a model of stable political evolution, journalists are finding ways to accommodate to, rather than challenge, new structures.
Abstract. The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictory. Although sometimes posed in terms of an historical legacy, claims to nationhood are also strongly shaped by more pragmatic contemporary concerns. In addition to more conventional forms of political mobilisation, national identity is also contested in cultural arenas. Examining policies on language reform and media development, for example, sheds light on the processes through which a sense of national identity is currently being renegotiated in Tatarstan. The Republic's official multicultural policy is situated in the context of a range of distinct conceptions of Tatarstan's identity, from radical Islamic nationalism to a view of the republic as a Russian province.
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