Media Elites in Post-Soviet Russia and their Strategies for Success

Media managers are key in the relations between, on the one side the authorities, to whom they enjoy privileged access, and, on the other side the newsroom, the functioning of which they define. Contrary to the popular view, held both in Russia and abroad, that the Kremlin controls the majority of the country’s media, we argue that media managers have a fair bit of agency and are players in their own rights, able to shape their audiences’ attitudes and modify individual as well as collective behavior. To be able to exert this power they must, however, tread a very fine line: they have to demonstrate adekvatnost’ (literally adequacy, but better translated as appropriateness, or ‘the right feel for the game’) and demand adekvatnost’ from their journalists and editors. Focusing on two dimensions – elite theory and the concept of adekvatnost’ – this article analyses the data gleaned from interviews with a range of media managers

Coercion or Conformism? Censorship and Self-Censorship among Russian Media Personalities and Reporters in the 2010s

Federal television is a crucial element of the political system in Putin’s Russia. 88% of the Russian population use television news as their prime source of information, 65% regard the news reporting as objective and 51% trust television as an information source.[1] Television is, therefore, the primary and most effective tool employed by the political regime to influence its people. Since the onset of the Ukraine conflict and more hostile relations between Russia and the West, Russia’s main television channels have confounded the world with their ability to convince viewers of stories which are diametrically opposed to those shown in the West. What the Russian viewers see on state-aligned television is strongly shaped by the Kremlin. Particularly during Putin’s third presidential term, news reporting has become more propagandistic

Power Lost and Freedom Relinquished: Russian Journalists Assessing the First Post-Soviet Decade

This article seeks a nuanced understanding of the troubled state that Russian journalism finds itself in today. As much as the Kremlin may be blamed as the source of these woes, it cannot be responsible for low ethical standards and lack of solidarity among journalists. This article explores what has hindered the journalistic community from developing stronger ethical standards over the past twenty-five years. Three significant events in the first post-Soviet decade serve as case studies: first, an early ethical code of conduct, the Moscow Charter of Journalists, produced in 1994; second, the 1996 presidential election campaign, which led to president Yeltsin's victory over the Communist Gennadii Zuiganov; and third, the so called “information wars” between oligarchs, culminating in the 2001 demise of the television channel NTV. In unique interviews, conducted by the authors, thirty-five Russian elite journalists and media managers assessed the role they played in major political events and how these events impacted the freedom of media in Russia today

Post-Socialist Self-Censorship:Russia, Hungary and Latvia

This article argues that today in Central and Eastern Europe self-censorship, journalistic freedom and autonomy are just as severely affected by economic constraints, oligarchic influences and new authoritarianism as they are by their Communist pasts. Either way, journalists know exactly what to report, what to omit and how to advance their careers. This is reminiscent of adekvatnost’; a distinct strategy employed by Russian journalists, who regard this skill as an expression of professionalism. It implies having a ‘feel for the game’ and the ‘right instinct’, which allows them to enjoy a certain level of freedom in their work and express their creativity. The authors’ interviews with Latvian and Hungarian journalists, editors and producers examined the extent to which adekvatnost’ might be a feature of journalism beyond Russia, in particular when a media system faces rising populism and authoritarianism, paired with oligarch-dominated ownership. As such, knowledge gained about journalistic practices in the countries under investigation might also be useful in understanding media development beyond the post-Communist space, including Western Europe

From Soviet to Russian Media Managers

Smashing initial hopes for more radical and speedier changes in Russia, elements of the Soviet system of managerial and ideological control proved to be obstinately persistent. Certain practices reminiscent of the informal functioning of the Soviet nomenklatura continue unabated primarily in politics, but also in Russian media. This article argues that nomenklatura practices are still a fixed part in organization management in Russian media today, securing the loyalty of journalists and controlling the output of the news media. The analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews and three case studies, scrutinizing media managers’ professional biographies, directs to a non-intuitive development; namely, that it is not necessarily those who have experienced the Soviet nomenklatura closely and in person who were most active in applying and perpetuating nomenklatura practices, but also those who were either remote from these power structures or too young

A brief history of news making in Russia

In this introductory article to our special issue on newsmaking in Russia, we provide a context for how the study of journalism evolved in Russia in contrast to Europe and the US. This brief historical overview helps make sense of the specific trajectory of journalism studies: from normative Cold War perspectives to a highly diverse and vibrant field that considers journalistic agency, the interplay of commercialisation and media control and the complexities of a rapidly changing media environment. The contributions to this special issue present nuanced approaches to self-censorship, the impact of digital technologies and political intervention

Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool

Adaptált digitalizált tartalom. A Speciális Hallgatói Ügyeket Támogató Iroda a fogyatékossággal élő hallgatók megsegítése céljából tankönyveket adaptál. A tananyag akadálymentes, adaptált változata az arra jogosult (a fogyatékosügyi koordinátoroknál regisztrált) hallgatók számára érhető el

Staging the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 on Russia Today and BBC World News : From soft power to geopolitical crisis

This article compares how Russia Today (RT) and BBC World News (BBCWN) interacted with audiences on their social media platforms during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. From the outset, the sporting events were overshadowed by tensions between Russia and ‘western’ nations over human rights. By the time the Sochi Games closed, the world had plunged into one of the gravest geopolitical crises since the Cold War – the confrontation over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, following dramatic regime change in Ukraine. This confrontation led to a disruption of the carefully orchestrated strategies of RT and BBCWN for staging the Games. The collision of a soft power spectacle and geopolitical crisis was most acutely felt and apparent at the interface between international broadcasting and social media where dissonant and dissenting discursive regimes clashed. This geopolitical standoff brought prior international tensions to a head as BBCWN struggled to manage the transition from a celebratory global media event to a geopolitical crisis. Unimpeded by established media conventions, RT’s approach to the transition was to attack and repudiate ‘western’ media and political discourses. RT, while loathed and despised in western media circles as a crude propagandistic news channel, has proved to be particularly adept in its uses of social media at times of global political events. The article sheds light on RT’s appeal to international audiences interested in counter-hegemonic assaults on ‘western’ media and political debate, and suggests directions for future research. It argues that RT thrives in a 24-hour news environment in which global crises become subject to rumours, counter-rumours and unverified accounts superseding one another in a cauldron of conflicting information and unanswered questions - fertile territory for RT’s conspiratorial ethos.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe