Political Affairs Through the Lens of Russian Media

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Most of what we know about current political affairs both at home and abroad is shaped by the media we consume. This fact drives contemporary autocracies to employ their state-controlled media in an attempt to influence popular opinion. What media strategies do they use? What goals do they try to achieve with these strategies? Digital datasets along with the wide variety of methodological approaches enable us to attempt to answer these questions. Our panel sheds light on the strategies employed by Russian state-controlled media in relation to major international phenomena as well as domestic events: COVID-19 pandemic, contemporary military conflicts, and domestic strife. The analyses rely on the archives of the most popular media outlets; methodological approaches employed by the researchers vary from novel NLP tools to in-depth qualitative discourse analysis. The research contributes to the literature on autocratic resilience as well as general diversionary war scholarship.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Online and Offline Repression in Electoral Autocracies: Evidence from Russia   - Anita R. Gohdes, Hertie School; Katerina Tertytchnaya, University College London

• Warfare Agenda-Setting on Russian Television, 2009 - 2019 (Pre-Recorded) - Lanabi la Lova, LSE

• RT’s Coverage of the Pandemic and Its Circulation on New Media Platforms - Vitaly Kazakov, The University of Manchester

• Methodology of International Agency War Reporting: Promiscuity and Plurality (Pre-Recorded) - Kenzie Burchell, University of Toronto Scarborough

Chair

• Quintin H. Beazer Florida State University

Discussants

• Samuel A. Greene King's College London

• Tom Paskhalis New York University