From Russia with Lols: Humour, RT, and the Legitimation of Russian Foreign Policy

Crilley, Rhys; Chatterje-Doody, Precious N

doi:10.1080/13600826.2020.1839387

Cited by 31 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…It can also be done without reciprocation, which means that it is not dependent upon anyone else (as with two-way ties on platforms such as Facebook). Twitter followers are not equivalent to a traditional broadcast audience, nor even to the engaged “active” audiences who comment on YouTube videos (Chatterje-Doody and Crilley 2019a; Crilley and Chatterje-Doody 2020a, 2020b). Indeed, a user might follow an account but never engage with it—and simply forget to unfollow it.…”

Section: Rt’s Operational Paradigms: Reviewing the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding RT’s Audiences: Exposure Not Endorsement for Twitter Followers of Russian State-Sponsored Media

Crilley

Gillespie

Vidgen

et al. 2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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The Russian state-funded international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) has attracted much attention as a purveyor of Russian propaganda. To date, most studies of RT have focused on its broadcast, website, and social media content, with little research on its audiences. Through a data-driven application of network science and other computational methods, we address this gap to provide insight into the demographics and interests of RT’s Twitter followers, as well as how they engage with RT. Building upon recent studies of Russian state-sponsored media, we report three main results. First, we find that most of RT’s Twitter followers only very rarely engage with its content and tend to be exposed to RT’s content alongside other mainstream news channels. This indicates that RT is not a central part of their online news media environment. Second, using probabilistic computational methods, we show that followers of RT are slightly more likely to be older and male than average Twitter users, and they are far more likely to be bots. Third, we identify thirty-five distinct audience segments, which vary in terms of their nationality, languages, and interests. This audience segmentation reveals the considerable heterogeneity of RT’s Twitter followers. Accordingly, we conclude that generalizations about RT’s audience based on analyses of RT’s media content, or on vocal minorities among its wider audiences, are unhelpful and limit our understanding of RT and its appeal to international audiences.

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Section: Rt’s Operational Paradigms: Reviewing the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding RT’s Audiences: Exposure Not Endorsement for Twitter Followers of Russian State-Sponsored Media

Crilley

Gillespie

Vidgen

et al. 2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

Self Cite

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“…Subsequently, we used discourse analysis to draw attention to the political significance of these representations by focusing on: a) what knowledge the videos deemed to be true; b) how subjects of the videos were labelled with certain attributes; and c) how subjects were positioned in relation to one another. Doing so enables the exploration of how ICYMI represents identities and power relations, and helps to make sense of how, as an example of geopolitical culture jamming, ICYMI attempts to appeal to young audiences through various forms of reproducing newsworthy content through the lens of satire, while retooling artistic efforts at subverting corporate messaging in line with RT's established modus of creating geopolitical dissensus (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to the self-deprecating characteristics of much satire, RT has explicitly traded off Boiko's good looks in videos with titles such as 'Who's hotter, right-wingers or left-wingers?' (see Crilley and Chatterje-Doody 2021, 280). Whilst various comments refer to the presenter as ‘hot’, or the show as the ‘Sexiest Propaganda Eva!…”

Section: How Do Audiences Engage With and Interpret Icymi's Videos?mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…RT launched in 2005 with a twinned brief to: positively represent Russia to the world and present a Russian perspective on global affairs. RT brands itself as an anti-establishment media pariah, and its use of humour and sarcasm is crucial to ostensibly acknowledge – whilst avoiding substantively addressing – specific negative claims about Russia or the broadcaster itself (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody 2021). Whilst humour has been integral to RT as a brand, we argue that the creation of ICYMI to target young audiences marks a significant point of departure in the network's efforts at (geo)political culture jamming.…”

Section: Geopolitical Culture Jamming and The Case Of Rt's Icymimentioning

confidence: 99%

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ICYMI: RT and Youth-Oriented International Broadcasting as (Geo)Political Culture Jamming

Saunders

Crilley

Chatterje-Doody

2022

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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Research in political communication has recently begun to explore the role of non-Western English-language state-funded international broadcasters (NEIBs) in influencing international audiences. Despite this, there has been little attention given to understanding how NEIBs engage and influence young people in ‘Western’ democracies. Our article addresses this gap by providing a detailed analysis of RT's English-language, youth-orientated news product ICYMI. Launched in 2018, ICYMI is a social media-based news brand that consists of a series of 2–3-min videos that deliver satirical takes on recent global events including military conflict, financial scandals, and culture clashes. Our findings, which examine the first year of the platform's activity, show that ICYMI is a novel form of engagement, one that is not easily categorised as either public diplomacy or propaganda, nor can it be described as traditional journalism. Instead, we label this approach as geopolitical culture jamming. In this article, we conduct a discourse analysis of 45 videos published on YouTube by ICYMI over its first year to examine how the platform attempts to influence how young people relate to traditional foreign policy discourses. Our empirical analysis centres on how viewers engage with and interpret ICYMI's videos with the aim of addressing how RT may be influencing younger audiences, particularly its core demographic of Anglophone white males whose comments reflect an attachment to ICYMI's populist, anti-elite worldview.

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“…The March 2018 assassination attempt of ex‐Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK, prompted more moments of diplomatic comedy. For example, the Russian foreign ministry's official Twitter account initiated the hashtag #HighlyLikelyRussia, and Russian embassies and diplomatic missions picked up the hashtag (Tolz, Hutchings, Chatterje‐Doody and Crilley 2021). This humorous Twitter campaign followed UK Prime Minister Theresa May's accusation that Russia was “highly likely responsible” for the poisoning and included mocking posts directed at British politicians for blaming Russia for everything, including the weather.…”

Section: Stiob and Its Postsocialist Mutations: An Ethnographic‐histo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Satirical strikes and deadpanning diplomats: Stiob as geopolitical performance in Russia–US relations

Hemment

2022

PoLAR

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This article examines humor as geopolitical performance in the context of Russia–US political communication. Humor has featured prominently in the mass‐mediated performances of Russian state actors since 2012. Public officials such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have engaged in ambiguous play and satirical borrowings via the circulation of memes and other political theatrics. “Russiagate”—the scandal about Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election—proved to be a particular flashpoint. I draw on recent scholarship in anthropology and media studies as well as prior ethnographic work to account for these humorous performances and consider the work that they do. Dominant analyses view this humor in militarized terms, regarding it as part of a deliberate “hybrid war” strategy. I contend that deadpanning diplomats like Lavrov are produced when a transformed Soviet‐era humorous form, stiob, intersects with a hybridized and transnationally dialogic global media context, resulting in a volatile form of geopolitical communication. In taking this state propagated humor and the confusion it generates as ethnographic objects, I contribute to anthropological interrogations of the politics of post‐truth.

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From Russia with Lols: Humour, RT, and the Legitimation of Russian Foreign Policy

Cited by 31 publications

References 50 publications

Understanding RT’s Audiences: Exposure Not Endorsement for Twitter Followers of Russian State-Sponsored Media

Understanding RT’s Audiences: Exposure Not Endorsement for Twitter Followers of Russian State-Sponsored Media

ICYMI: RT and Youth-Oriented International Broadcasting as (Geo)Political Culture Jamming

Satirical strikes and deadpanning diplomats: Stiob as geopolitical performance in Russia–US relations

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