War and Opposition in Russia’s Media Narratives

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Russia’s media plays a crucial role in sustaining war and autocracy in today’s Russia. While much attention has been lavished on support for the war in Ukraine, this international panel re-focuses attention on the ways that Russia’s media narratives work to undermine political opposition and cultivate popular ambivalence about the war. Natalia Kovyliaeva’s paper highlights the weaponization of gender in the official media campaigns to smear opposition actors Ekaterina Duntsova and Yulia Navalnaya, while Natalia Moen-Larsen’s paper contrasts official and opposition media narratives about Aleksei Navalny’s death. Andrey Davydov’s paper identifies a curious mismatch between the promotion of Western far right rhetoric in Russia’s state-run media and the lack of such themes in domestic reporting, in turn opening political space for Russia’s opposition to engage with far right themes on social networking platforms. Paul Goode analyzes the ways that the war is banalized on Russian television for the general public, sustaining the domestic perception of the war as business as usual in Russia’s dealings with Ukraine and the West.

Sub Unit

• Politics/Law

Chair

• Ilya Yablokov, U of Sheffield (UK)

Papers

• Does the Selective Use of International Radical Right Rhetoric by the Russian Regime Provoke or Pacify the Opposition? - Andrey Davydov, McGill U (Canada)

• Hero, Martyr, or Forgotten Extremist?: Narratives about Alexei Navalny’s Death in Russian Official and Exile Media - Natalia Moen-Larsen, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (Norway)

• Making Liberation Boring Again: How Russian Television Normalizes the War - Paul Goode, Carleton U (Canada)