Regime legitimation, not nation-building: Media commemoration of the 1917 revolutions in Russia’s neo-authoritarian state

Chatterje-Doody, Precious N; Tolz, Vera

doi:10.1177/1367549419871346

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…Yet, as Galeotti (2018) convincingly argues, there is “no single organizing principle, let alone controlling agency” that manipulates RT as an organization or dictates the agenda for the journalists who work for it. Just because RT positions itself at times as an alternative to, and an opponent of, “mainstream media,” this does not mean that it operates exclusively as “Putin’s puppet” or a simplistic propaganda agent for Russia’s neo-authoritarian regime (Chatterje-Doody and Tolz 2020; Dajani et al 2019; Galeotti 2018; Tolz et al 2020).…”

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

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“…The progressive legacies of the revolution similarly dominated the narratives produced by RT for its international audiences. This stood in stark contrast to the unprecedentedly negative representation produced by state-aligned media at home, which characterised both Bolsheviks and liberals as untrustworthy, at precisely the time when Russia’s presidential campaign season saw the incumbent facing challenges from Communist and liberal challengers (Chatterje-Doody and Tolz, this volume).…”

Section: Remembering Revolution and Reframing Russia For Todaymentioning

confidence: 96%

The cultural politics of commemoration: Media and remembrance of the Russian revolutions of 1917

Chatterje-Doody

Gillespie

2019

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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The year 2017 marked the centenary of the revolutions of February and October 1917 which led to the collapse of the Russian Empire. These events (and their accompanying mythologies) proved pivotal in creating a uniquely politicised approach to remembrances of revolution across and beyond the post-Soviet space. This special section uses the revolutions’ centenary as an entry point for reassessing the cultural politics of commemoration. In particular, it draws attention to the transformations in memory work brought about by an increasingly integrated global media environment, in which interactions between multiple cultural actors influence the formation of (and exclusion from) cultural memory. These diffuse memory-making processes influence contemporary political and social developments within and beyond the societies in question. The articles presented in this special section interrogate how Russian and international media represented the revolutions, both for their domestic and international audiences. Together, they address questions about what regime-sponsored narratives of the Russian revolutions of 1917 can tell us about contemporary neo-authoritarian politics of identity, history and memory; the cultural significance of real-time, interactive media events for ‘memory work’, and for the participatory re-creation of revolutionary ideas and passions; the ways in which TV audiences and social media users of different generations and political persuasions respond to and interact with representations of revolution; and the nature of the relationship between cultural politics, memory and newsmaking. In bringing into dialogue work from a variety of disciplines and with a range of methodological approaches, the articles in this special section interrogate the fundamentals of the relationship between culture, media and politics in today’s globalised real-time media ecology.

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“…The past is increasingly politicized, with the USSR’s role in World War II pivotal to official narratives of the nation and a 2014 law criminalizing the conscious public expression of lies about the war (Malinova 2017; Linchenko and Golovashina 2019). Yet, in response to changing challenges to the regime’s legitimacy, the historical content used by elites to support the discourse of patriotism has become more varied, not only between actors but between narratives produced by single actors at different times (Sherlock 2016; Chaterjee-Doody and Tolz 2020). In this way, the notion of patriotism continues to provide a malleable basis for nation building.…”

Section: Challenges To Russian Nation Building and The Role Of Local ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Local Dynamics of Nation Building: Identity Politics and Constructions of the Russian Nation in Kazan and Ekaterinburg

Wilmers

2022

Nationalities Papers

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This article explores the role of place-based identity politics in constructions of the Russian nation by nongovernmental actors in the cities of Kazan and Ekaterinburg. Departing from more established approaches to the study of nation building concerned with elite strategies and actions, it contributes to an emerging line of inquiry focused on the agency of mesolevel actors. Drawing on interviews and analysis of public communications, the article demonstrates that actors such as museums, activist groups, and religious institutions creatively employ mainstream discursive practices present also in state narratives to anchor the nation in local symbols. At the same time, they position themselves in locally specific identity cleavages concerning city, regional, and ethnonational minority identities. The findings show that the imbrication of local identity politics in their narratives can problematize nation building by exposing contradictions in federal discourses or troubling the association of nation and state. Emphasizing the importance of locally situated processes of constructing the nation in conjunction with other scales of belonging, the article argues that nation building in Russia is complicated by mesolevel practices of identity making that can simultaneously support and subvert it.

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Regime legitimation, not nation-building: Media commemoration of the 1917 revolutions in Russia’s neo-authoritarian state

Cited by 9 publications

References 39 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

The cultural politics of commemoration: Media and remembrance of the Russian revolutions of 1917

The Local Dynamics of Nation Building: Identity Politics and Constructions of the Russian Nation in Kazan and Ekaterinburg

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