Nordenstreng, Kaarle

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  This document has been downloaded from  Tampub – The Institutional Repository of University of Tampere       Publisher's version   Authors: Nordenstreng Kaarle Name of article: The Russian media system : Something special?  Name of work: Content, Channels and Audiences in the New Millenium: Interaction and Interrelations Editors of work: Vartanova Elena  Year of publication: 2010 ISBN: 978-5-211-05873-6 Publisher: Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University  Pages: 183-186 Discipline: Social sciences / Media and communications Language: en  URN: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:uta-3-850       All material supplied via TamPub is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorized user. The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions 183Kaarle NordenstrengTHE RUSSIAN MEDIA SYSTEM: SOMETHING SPECIAL?This presentation is based on my long-term cooperation with Yassen Zassoursky, Elena Vartanova and other colleagues in Moscow, leading us to ask: is there something special in the Russian media system? Recalling the beginning of our cooperation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet media system was naturally very spe-cial, even unique. But today the special nature of the Russian system is no longer so obvious as this country has undergone a dramatic change, and the rest of the world has also changed a lot. Indeed, the question leads us to specify against which geopolitical direction we compare the Russian media system: different from what?First of all, different from our own countries, in this case Fin-land: separated from Sweden  200 years ago, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy of Czarist Russia and remained  part of Russia until Finnish independence in 1917 in the aftermath of the Great October Revolution. This common history brings us Finns close to Russia – especially us in Tampere, where the socialist revo-lutionaries held two clandestine party conferences in 1905-06 and where we still host a Lenin museum. However, nowadays Finland does not identify itself with Russia but rather with the European Union, and Russia’s difference from Finland is quite obvious.Then there is a broader perspective of Europe – West, South and Central/Eastern Europe – from which we may see Russia to differ. Here we can use the classiication into three by Daniel Hal-lin and Paolo Mancini (2004): the North Atlantic liberal model, the Northern European democratic corporatist model, and the Mediter-ranean polarized pluralist model. But these cover only the Western part of Europe and need to be complemented by a fourth, post-com-munist model of the Central/East European countries which has been well analyzed by Karol Jakubowicz (2008; see also Jakubow-icz & Sükösd, 2008, and more generally Christians et al., 2009).In a still broader perspective, we may relate Russia to the so-called Third World in Asia, Africa and Latin America with all the variations in their political and media systems. Ultimately, we may think about the 184Transforming Media Systems in Europe: Structural and Technological Factorsworld at large – a global system, or an average of all the national and regional speciicities from which Russia is considered to differ. In this general context, let us look at the Russian media land-scape through three windows provided by academic anthologies published during the past decade. First, the book Russian Media Challenge which I edited with Yassen and Elena eight years ago, with a foreword by Mikhail Gor-bachev based on the lecture he delivered in the Faculty of Journal-ism. The point is that Russia provides something that is parallel to other post-communist countries in Eastern Europe but still in many respects a unique case. In glasnost in the late 1980s, freedom was imposed from above, a kind of paradox. Then a situation developed when there was no dominant power, and the socially owned media were run by journalists and media managers who were not neces-sarily wealthy. With the new media law introduced at the time, I present this situation in my classes as the freest media in world history. Think of any other country or period where the media are highly developed in society and are operating under so little control, are so independent as they were in 1991-92. Later in the 1990s, the oligarchs seized the common Soviet property, and there was a major manoeuvre to join forces behind Yeltsin to prevent a com-munist comeback, and television was the major medium to elect a president as described by Andrei Rashkin in the above-mentioned book Finally, after 2000, we have the well-known situation led by President Vladimir Putin with “guided democracy”.This reading of the early 2000s offers a fantastic narrative with Russia presenting itself as a really special case. Later, in 2009, another collection of Russian and Finnish articles, Perspectives to the Media in Russia was published with Elena and two Finnish col-leagues as editors. This book provides a slightly different picture. Its review of what Western scholars write about Russia shows that the dominant Western framework for approaching the Russian me-dia system is still pretty much a Cold-War dominated Kremlinol-ogy. As summarized by Hannu Nieminen in this book, there are two schools of thought: the similarities school looking at the extent to which Russia meets the Western criteria of democracy, freedom, etc., and the exceptionalism school emphasizing the historically speciic socio-political conditions in Russia. Anglo-American ex-perts typically represent the similarities school, while Finnish ex-perts lean towards the exceptionalism school. Russians themselves look at similarities and differences throughout the world and ind The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions 185relevance in the framework called Eurasia. As Elena Vartanova sum-marizes, market and technology are the driving forces of change. In general, this book suggests that Russia is no longer such a special case. If it was unique in 2001, it is certainly less so in 2009.The latest book, World of Media: Yearbook of Russian Media and Journalism Studies 2009 was given to us at this conference. It is an excellent package of readings, which suggests that the Rus-sian media landscape today is far from unique. Surely there are some special features in Russian reality such as the “double-face of democratisation” whereby political pluralism is accompanied by authoritarian government, as summarized by Lyudmila Resnyans-kaya and Ekaterian Voinova in this book. Yet most of the chapters, from digital divide and information society to new paradigms in mass communication studies, address the same issues that concern scholars elsewhere. The big picture is indeed that the Russian me-dia system is moving closer to the rest of us in Europe.A fresh reminder of this movement is President Dmitry Med-vedev’s article calling for political reforms, with strong words also regarding communication: “The growth of modern information technologies, something we will do our best to facilitate, gives us unprecedented opportunities for the realisation of fundamental political freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and assembly… Society is becoming more open and transparent than ever, even if the ruling class does not necessarily like this.”3In contrast to these liberal words coming from the top we should not forget the sad reality on the ground of journalism in this country, particularly regarding the protection of journalists. Russia ranks among the worst in the number of journalists killed.4 Although Freedom House’s “Freedom of the Press Index” suffers from an American bias, it is symptomatic that in its annual “Map of Press Freedom” of 2003 Russia lost its status as a “partly free” country; since then Russia has remained “not free” along with China and most other Asian as well as Arab and African countries.5 Much of the same concern is shared by the Glasnost Defence Foundation of Russian journalists themselves.6Let us, however, return to the big picture and think about the presentations made by colleagues at this conference. Denis McQuail 3 http://eng.kremlin.ru/text/speeches/2009/09/10/1534_type 104017_221527.shtml4 http://en.rsf.org/safety-of-journalists.html http://www.cpj.org/5 http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=20096 http://www.gdf.ru/digest/item/1/714#gdf186Transforming Media Systems in Europe: Structural and Technological Factorsraised the problems of the audience, common problems in Britain, America as well as in Russia. Likewise, Paolo Mancini: although he started with the Berlusconi case, his relections on three points in politics are equally valid in Russia. Elena Vartanova’s points could also be applied to most of our countries; they are nevertheless more extreme and dramatic in Russia but qualitatively very much the same as in the rest of the world. Media economy conirms this per-spective, as would be elaborated by Robert Picard if only he could be here. His estimate of the share of media economy is 2.3 per cent of the total world economy. Elena Vartanova and Sergey Smirnov give roughly the same estimate for Russian media economy. The share of advertising in media economy is about 30 per cent in Europe and North America, and today the Russian igure is roughly the same.To conclude my overview, the Russian media system is unique in its historical development. On the other hand, its contemporary character is no longer so special but rather a more or less typical case for highlighting universal problems. So thank you for provid-ing us with such a good case.ReferencesChristians, C., Glasser, T., McQuail, D., Nordenstreng, K. and White, R. (2009) Normative Theories of the Media. Journalism in Democratic Societies. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Hallin, D. and Mancini, P. (2004) Comparing Media Systems. Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Jakubowicz, K. (2008) Media Systems in Pos-Communist Eu-ropean Countries. In Terzis, G. (ed.) European Media Governance. National and Regional Dimensions. Bristol: Intellect Books.Jakubowicz, K.and Sükösd, M. (eds.) (2008) Finding the Right Place on the Map. Central and Eastern European Media Change in a Global Perspective. Bristol: Intellect Books.Nordenstreng, K., Vartanova, E. and Zassoursky, Y. (eds.) (2001) Russian Media Challenge. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute. (Second edition in 2002.)Vartanova, E. (ed.) (2009) World of Media. Yearbook of Rus-sian Media and Journalism Studies. Moscow: Media Mir.Vartanova, E., Nieminen, H. and Salminen, M.-M. (eds.) (2009) Perspectives to the Media in Russia: “Western” Interests and Russian Developments. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute.Faculty of JournalismLomonosov Moscow State UniversityMoscow, 2010CONTENT, CHANNELS AND AUDIENCESIN THE NEW MILLENIUM:INTERACTION AND INTERRELATIONSElena Vartanova (ed.)C, C	  A	   N M: I  I	Editor in Charge: Mikhail MakeenkoEnglish Editor: Elena Aivazova Designer: Elena SirotinaCover designer: Arina BalantsevaFirst published 2010 by Faculty of Journalism Lomonosov Moscow State UniversityPrinted in Moscow, Russia.All right reserved. No parts of this publication might be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any for or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-wise, without the prior permission of the publisher.ISBN 978-5-211-05873-6© 2010 Elena Vartanova (ed.), © the contibutors The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions 3CONTENTPreface  ....................................................................................................................  6 The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions Denis McQuailThe Media Audience Concept: Decomposition and Recomposition  ............................................................ 9Wolfgang DonsbachAudience Selectivity and Media Power - A Brief Research History  ................................................................................22 Jeroen De Keyser and Karin Raeymaeckers Are Fear-Based Fortresses Finished? A Technology Fuelled Shift in the Flemish Journalist-Public Relations .............................................30 Ingela WadbringSatisfactory Content. Free Dailies Good Enough for a Speciic Readership  ...............................................................................45 Albert Kulla and Imrich Gazda The Analysis of the Thesis of Impacts of Desocialisation of the Media on the Basic Social Unit  .......................................................60 The Online Universe: Newer Platforms, Newer Creators, Newer Consumers Pamela J. Shoemaker, Philip R. Johnson, Hyunjin Seo and Xiuli WangReaders as Gatekeepers of Online News: Russia, China and the United States  ..........................................................73 Ulrika AnderssonJournalists’ Opinions on Audience-Created Content in Online Newspapers. A Swedish Case Study  ................................... 104 4ContentTim Dwyer and Fiona MartinNews Diversity in Online Media Systems: A Preliminary Report on the Concept of Voice  .................................. 116 Transforming Media Systems in Europe: Structural and Technological FactorsElsa De BensSuccess and Failure of Digital Television  ............................................. 145 Pieter BakkerPrint Media Shifts in Central and Eastern Europe: the Development of a Hybrid Model  ...................................................... 166 Kaarle NordenstrengThe Russian Media System: Something Special?  .............................. 183 Jukka PietiläinenRussian Middle Class and Media: Glossy Magazines as an Indicator of New Trends  ............................ 187 Rogerio SantosTrends in the Media Market in Portugal over the Past Three and a Half Decades  ....................... 201 Changing Media –Changing Politics and Regulation StrategiesBertrand CabedocheOpen Source Strategies and Media in Political Electionsof the New Millennium: an Emerging Script on Technological Determinism?  .............................................................. 215 Ana Edin and Kristina WidestedtCommunicating Politics – Theoretical Perspectives   ...................... 235 Laura BergésCulture and Business in Copyright Regulation  ................................. 248 The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions The Media-Audience Relationships: Communicating under New Conditions 5David Goldberg, Freedom of Information in the 21st Century: Bringing Clarity to Transparency  ............................................................ 265 Analyzing Media Content: How Close is the Reality? Murat Güreşçi and Ece Karadogan DorukDiscourse of Mobbing (Psychological Violence in Working Place) in Turkish Press  ........................................................ 285 Murat Mengü, Ceyda Ilgaz Büyükbaykal and Güven BüyükbaykalThe Image of Russia in Turkish Print Media  ...................................... 301 Seda Çakar Mengü, Ayşe Cengiz and Şebnem Çağlar, Formation of the Prejudice against Women and Women’s Freedom in News Discourse ......................................... 316 Usharani Narayana and Priti KapurMedia, Public Attitude and Mumbai Terror of 26/11 ..................... 332 Ömer Özer and Neda Saraçer Critical Discourse Analysis and Ideological Presentation of Custom Killings in Newspapers: An Example in Hürriyet and Sabah Daily Newspapers  ........................................... 349 Sema Becerikli and Didem ÖzkulOnline Public Relations Campaigns of NGOs in Turkey: an Inquiry of HAYTAP  .................................................................................. 369Authors and Contacts  ...................................................................................3806PrefacePREFACEFaculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State Univer-sity, the oldest Russian institution for teaching and researching media, journalism and communication, is progressively integrating in the international academic community as both participant and organizer of research and discussion. Currently, the Faculty of Jour-nalism interests cover almost all major ields of media studies. On the way to support its strong and inluential scientiic brand it has established a new strategy of internationalizing its studies focusing on organizing international events of visible scale that contribute to Russian and global media studies. Among its new contributions to the international academic universe was the 1st International Media Readings in Moscow hold on the MSU Faculty of Journalism in the autumn of 2009. The book that is presented now is a collection of articles written by some of its participants from Europe, Asia, Australia and both Americas. Today the number of approaches to mass communication research in modern media and scientiic environment is hardly countable. And the list keeps growing as more of the personal and mass communication processes relocates to new media space with its opening ininity of technological and communication options. The areas of contributors’ interest also varied widely, but more de-tailed examination made it possible to see that most of the research of various academics from gurus to gifted young doctors could be linked to understating audiences and regulation, analyzing content and representation of modern social issues, dealing with techno-logical challenges and opportunities and examining transforma-tions in regional media systems and models. Editors

The Russian media system : Something special?

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The Russian media system : Something special?

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