Collective and Individual Transition of Self-Memory about Russian Journalism after 1991

• In Event: Memory and Self-Memory of Media in Transition in Poland and Russia

Abstract

This paper is intended to be a first attempt to present the results of research that was initiated in 2023 in Riga and conducted from 2024 under a grant: „Professional and personal identity strategies of journalists at risk (biographical determinants in interviews with reporters-refugees from Ukraine and journalists fleeing repressions from Russia and Belarus). Stage I – analysis of pilot data and selection of further respondents”. The above mentioned project aims to explore the transformation of professional identity and other dimensions of identity (including: national, ethnic, spiritual, religious) under conditions of strong influence of unique historical variables. It should be emphasized that after the pilot measurement in Latvia, it has been extended to other countries: Poland (2024-25), Lithuania (2025), USA (2024), Kyrgyzstan (2023). For the purposes of the presentation at the ASEES conference, the analysis of the interviews will be narrowed down to the imagined image of the journalistic environment in Russia in the eyes of the respondents, its evolution and turning points: from the assessment of the media of the late USSR, through the imagined utopia of freedom of speech, subsequent repressions and turning points reconfiguring the media landscape, ending with the escape of journalists from Russia after February 24, 2022.

Author

• Jedrzej Morawiecki, U of Wrocław (Poland)