Projects per year
Abstract
This article argues that accounts of the Russian media system that tend to view the time from Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000 as a single homogenous period do not capture major qualitative shifts in state-controlled media strategies and in the nature of ideological messages disseminated by the media. By analyzing the output of Russia’s two main television channels, Pervyi Kanal and Rossiya-1, during Putin’s third presidential term we identify a range of distinctly new features that amount to a new media strategy. In particular, the amount of coverage of political issues has increased significantly through the replacement of infotainment with what we term agitainment—an ideologically inflected political coverage that, through adapting specific global media formats to local needs, is packaged in a way that is able to appeal to less engaged and even sceptical viewers. Our findings challenge existing literature on neo-authoritarian media systems. They show that when struggling for control over the public agenda, neo-authoritarian regimes start employing extensive and intensive ideological messaging, rather than preferring a largely de-politicized content. In the Russian context, despite the tightening of political control over the media, particularly following the annexation of Crimea, the new strategy paradoxically has strengthened the constitutive role played by the state-controlled broadcasters in the articulation of official discourse.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 213-227 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Post-Soviet Affairs |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 9 Apr 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 9 Apr 2018 |
Keywords
- Putin’s third presidential term
- Russian media system
- agitainment
- neo-authoritarian regime
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Dive into the research topics of 'Broadcasting Agitainment: A New Media Strategy of Putin's Third Presidency'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: From Cold War to 'Information War'?
Hutchings, S. & Tolz-Zilitinkevic, V.
1/02/17 → 31/08/20
Project: Research
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Mediating Post-Soviet Difference: An Analysis of Russian Televison Representations of Inter-Ethnic Cohesion Issues
Hutchings, S. & Tolz-Zilitinkevic, V.
1/09/10 → 31/08/13
Project: Research
Impacts
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Conflict with Russia in the New Information Environment: Shaping Policy Analysis, Broadcaster Practices and Public Understanding
Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic (Participant) & Stephen Hutchings (Participant)
Impact: Awareness and understanding, Policy, Society and culture