Instruments and Influences of Russian Propaganda II: Text as a Weapon

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel seeks to explore various aspects of text as an instrument of propaganda from different disciplinary angles. Dmitrii Pastushenkov applies the corpus linguistics methodology to examine the long-term changes in written language. For this presentation, he is focusing on how the rhetoric of the Russian state-owned media RT (Russia Today) changed over time in its portrayal of the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Hanna Baranchuk also focuses her research on RT and, in particular, on social media posts by the RT’s chief editor Margarita Simonyan, but approaches it with the rhetorical and psychoanalytical lens. Michael Coates considers the place of encyclopedias in the contemporary Russian ideological system and traces their progression from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia to current online iterations and wiki models. He is particularly interested in the conflict between the claims of objectivity and the need to conform to the prevailing ideology. Alla Roylance is collecting quantitative and qualitative data on how the Russian book publishing industry portrayed Ukraine and Ukrainians in the years that followed the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 and up to the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Alla Roylance, New York U

Papers

• Russian Propaganda versus Alexei Navalny: Word Frequencies, Clusters, Concordances, and Collocates - Dmitrii Pastushenkov, Harvard U

• At the Forefront of Russian Propaganda: A Psycho-Rhetorical Analysis of Margarita Simonyan’s Russia - Hanna Baranchuk, Curry College

• Knowledge, Ideology, and Encyclopedias in Contemporary Russia - Michael James Coates, Independent Scholar

• The Russian Book Publishing Industry and Its Role in Creating a Negative Image of Ukraine - Alla Roylance, New York U

Discussant

• William Scott Nickell, U of Chicago