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Political Communication in Russian New Media: “opinions” vs. “news”

Mon, June 13, 9:30 to 10:45, Fukuoka Hilton, Kusu

Abstract

Keywords: public sphere, new media, opinion journalism, theory of journalism
In recent years the role of Internet in political communication in Russian society has grown enormously. Diverse political comments, opinions and blogging enriched content flows of online environment. Although the Internet has obviously broaden the information picture of the world with its endless content flows, tough opinionated comments and engaged discussions have become a biased and polarized though attractive content for civil activists, political experts and general public. Such heterogeneous media contents coexisted on websites and in social networks definitely represent new public sphere (s), although they challenged journalism and its professional and ethical standards of unbiased and balanced reporting.
The paper attempts to discuss established theoretical approaches to journalism standards which require to divide media content into «facts / news» and «comments / opinions» in the context of Russian media where the opinion-based journalism produced by a reasoning and moralizing journalist has been considered the essence of the profession. Russian journalistic tradition allowing for a subjective and interpreting attitude to facts should be theoretically put in the context of current day political online communication and of the Soviet tradition of politically engaged journalism.

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