Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
Hostname: page-component-79b67bcb76-jn9wc Total loading time: 0.392 Render date: 2021-05-16T19:36:48.576Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "metricsAbstractViews": false, "figures": false, "newCiteModal": false, "newCitedByModal": true, "newEcommerce": true }
EnglishFrançais
Nationalities Papers Nationalities Papers

Article contents

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Christina Cottiero ,
Katherine Kucharski ,
Evgenia Olimpieva  and
Robert W. Orttung
Christina Cottiero
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Katherine Kucharski
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Evgenia Olimpieva
Affiliation:
Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Robert W. Orttung
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Corresponding
E-mail address:
rorttung@gmail.com
Get access
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.

Keywords

state media the Internet frames Russia Ukraine
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 533 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.
If you should have access and can't see this content please contact technical support.

References

Baum, Matthew A., and Groeling, Tim J. 2010. War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brock, David, and Rabin-Havt, Ari. 2012. The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Choi, Hyunyoung, and Varian, Hal. 2012. “Predicting the Present with Google Trends.” The Economic Record 88: 2–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darczewska, Jolanta. 2014. “The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare.” Point of View. http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/the_anatomy_of_russian_information_warfare.pdf Google Scholar
Davis, Richard. 2009. Typing Politics: The Role of Blogs in American Politics. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen, and Bobick, Michael S. 2014. “The Empire Strikes Back: War Without War and Occupation Without Occupation in the Russian Sphere of Influence.” American Ethnologist 41 (3): 405–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 2003. “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House's Frame after 9/11.” Political Communication 20 (4): 415–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamson, William A., and Modigliani, Andre. 1989. “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 95 (1): 1–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1975. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gorham, Michael S. 2014. After New speak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granka, Laura. 2009. “Inferring the Public Agenda from Implicit Query Data.” Paper presented at Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) 2009, Boston, MA. http://uiir2009.dfki.de/papers/uiir2009_submission_10.pdf Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Kinder, Donald R. 1988. News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kashevarova, Anastasiia. 2014. “Dmitrii Kiselev: ‘Povedenie Zapada granichit s shizofreniei'” [Dmitrii Kiselev: Western Behavior Borders on Schizophrenia]. Izvestiia, April 4. http://izvestia.ru/news/568611 Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Sanders, Lynn M. 1990. “Mimicking Political Debate with Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action for Blacks.” Social Congition 8 (1): 73–103.Google Scholar
Krasheninnikov, Fedor. 2014. “Partii Interneta Bol'she Net” [The Internet Party is no More]. Vedomosti, July 27. http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/29318611/partii-interneta-bolshe-net Google Scholar
Kurspahic, Kemal. 2003. Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media During War and Peace. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.Google Scholar
Analytical Center, Levada. 2013. Russian Public Opinion, 2012–2013. Moscow: Levada Center. http://www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/2012_eng.pdf Google Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell E., and Shaw, Donald L. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 176–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell E., Shaw, Donald L., and Weaver, David H. 1997. Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Mellon, Jonathan. 2014. “Internet Search Data and Issue Salience: The Properties of Google Trends as a Measure of Issue Salience.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 24 (1): 45–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelson, Sarah E., and Gerber, Theodore P. 2008. “Us and Them: Anti-American Views of the Putin Generation.” The Washington Quarterly 31 (2): 131–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oates, Sarah. 2013. Stalled Revolution: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, Zhongdang, and Kosicki, Gerald M. 1993. “Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse.” Political Communication 10 (1): 55–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petrov, Nikolay, Lipman, Maria, and Hale, Henry E. 2014. “Three Dilemmas of Hybrid Regime Governance: Russia from Putin to Putin.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (1): 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reese, Stephen D. 2010. “Finding Frames in a Web of Culture.” In Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, edited by D'Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, Jim A., 17–42. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Remnick, David. 2014. “Watching the Eclipse.” The New Yorker, August 11. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/watching-eclipse Google Scholar
Ripberger, Joseph T. 2011. “Capturing Curiosity: Using Internet Search Trends to Measure Public Attentiveness.” Policy Studies Journal 39 (2): 239–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rössler, Patrick, and Schenk, Michael. 2000. “Cognitive Bonding and the German Reunification: Agenda-Setting and Persuasion Effects of Mass Media.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 12 (1): 29–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharkow, Michael, and Vogelgesang, Jens. 2011. “Measuring the Public Agenda Using Search Engine Queries.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 23 (1): 104–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schatz, Edward. 2009. “The Soft Authoritarian Tool Kit: Agenda-Setting Power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.” Comparative Politics 41 (2): 203–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheufele, Dietram A. 1999. “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects.” Journal of Communications 49 (4): 103–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheufele, Dietram A. 2000. “Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication.” Mass Communication and Society 3 (2–3): 297–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schimpfossl, Elisabeth, and Yablokov, Ilya. 2014. “Coercion or Conformism? Censorship and Self-censorship among Russian Media Personalities and Reporters in the 2010s.” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 22 (2): 295–312.Google Scholar
Snegovaya, Maria. 2014. “Putin Is Replaceable.” Moscow Times, August 18. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putin-is-replaceable/505309.html Google Scholar
The Liberal Mission Foundation and the Moscow Office of the Kennan Institute. 2014. “The ru-Net as a Mirror of Russia's Political and Ethnic Problems. Seminar of 22 October 2012.” Russian Politics and Law 52 (1): 68–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valagin, Anton. 2014. “Garantirovannoe vozmezdie: kak rabotaet rossiiskaia sistema ‘Perimetr'” [Guaranteed Retribution: How the Russian System ‘Perimeter’ Works]. Rossiiskaia gazeta, January 22. http://www.rg.ru/2014/01/22/perimetr-site.html Google Scholar
Volkov, Denis, and Goncharov, Stepan. 2014. “Rossiiskii media-landshaft: televidenie, press, Internet” [Russian Media Landscape: Television, Press, Internet]. June 17. http://www.levada.ru/17–06–2014/rossiiskii-media-landshaft-televidenie-pressa-internet Google Scholar
Westen, Drew. 2007. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Yablokov, Ilya. 2014. “Pussy Riot as Agent Provocateur: Conspiracy Theories and the Media Construction of Nation in Putin's Russia.” Nationalities Papers 42 (4): 622–636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheluk, Andrey, Gillespie, James A., and Quinn, Casey. 2012. “Searching for Truth: Internet Search Patterns as a Method of Investigating Online Responses to a Russian Illicit Drug Policy Debate.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 14 (6): e165. http://www.jmir.org/2012/6/e165/ CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zimmerman, William, Inglehart, Ronald, Ponarin, Eduard, Lazarev, Yegor, Sokolov, Boris, Vartanova, Irina, and Turanova, Yekaterina. 2013. Russian Elite – 2020: Valdai Discussion Club Grantees Analytical Report, 30–42. Moscow: Valdai Discussion Club. http://vid-1.rian.ru/ig/valdai/Russian_elite_2020_eng.pdf Google Scholar
22
Cited by

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *