Introduction: Russian Media and the
War in Ukraine1
Julie Fedor
This collection of articles focuses on the Russian information war
campaign that has accompanied and fueled the war in Ukraine. Of
course, neither side has a monopoly on the use of propaganda and
disinformation, and the latter are always present in any war.2 But we
have chosen to focus here on the Russian state media machine, as a
phenomenon that not only looms especially large over the events of
the past year but is also bound to continue to play a major role in
shaping future developments in the region and beyond.
Although the Russian government continues to deny its
involvement in the war, Russian media have effectively been on a
war footing since the spring 0f 2014. Consequently we have seen an
extraordinary proliferation of “enemy images” of various kinds and
in various genres, from lurid tabloid TV “documentary” films
1
2
The research for this introductory essay was supported under the Australian
Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Research Awards (DECRA) funding
scheme (project DE150100838). The views expressed herein are those of the
author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council.
On Ukrainian information warfare, see Andreas Umland, “Lozh’ ne pomozhet
ni Kievu, ni Moskve”, Novoe vremia, 27 January 2015, http://nv.ua/opinion/um
land/lozh-ne-pomozhet-ni-rossii-ni-ukraine-31315.html; Marta Dyczok, “Mass
Media Framing, Representations, and Impact on Public Opinion” in Ukraine’s
Euromaidan: Analyses of a Civil Revolution, eds. David R. Marples and Frederick
V. Mills (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2015), 77-94; Joanna Szostek, “The Media
Battles of Ukraine’s EuroMaidan”, Digital Icons 11 (2014), http://www.digital
icons.org/issue11/joanna-szostek/; and “Ukraine’s Media War: Battle of the
Memes”, The Economist, 12 March 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/
europe/21646280-russia-has-shown-its-mastery-propaganda-war-ukraine-stru
ggling-catch-up-battle-web?zid=307&ah=5e80419d1bc9821ebe173f4f0f060a07.
All URLs cited in this introduction were last accessed on 7 April 2015.
1
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JULIE FEDOR
demonizing critics of Russian policy on Ukraine;3 to hipster and
enfant terrible Internet guru Yurii Degtiarev’s semi-ironic viral
videos with their preoccupation with the scatological and the
grotesque in their depiction of relations between Russia, the near
abroad, and the West;4 and through to TV news reports and talkshows recounting phantasmic atrocities committed by “ukrofascists”, from cannibalism to child crucifixion to the “genocide” of
Russians in East Ukraine.5 A more subtle take on events is presented
to global audiences through vehicles such as RT, which deftly
exploits the crisis of credibility currently afflicting Western
mainstream media and liberal democracy by positioning itself as an
alternative to US hegemony and hypocrisy.6 Often, the depiction of
Ukraine as over-run by US- and EU-sponsored neo-Nazis has been
couched in the language of human rights, tolerance, and Holocaust
remembrance, as in official reports based on the pseudo-monitoring
of the persecution of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, such as the
Russian Foreign Ministry’s White Book of Violations of Human
Rights and the Principle of the Rule of Law in Ukraine (November
2013-March 2014).7 Meanwhile, the Russian authorities have
3
4
5
6
7
The most prominent of these was the NTV production 13 druzei khunty (24
August 2014), promoted under the subheading “Traitors for export”;
http://www.ntv.ru/peredacha/professiya_reportyor/m720/o290376/.
These include Ya—russkii okkupant (February 2015), available here: Nastia
Golubeva, “My Duck’s Vision: ‘Russkii okkupant’—eto my, zakazchiki sviazany
s gosudarstvom”, Medialeaks.ru, http://medialeaks.ru/features/0403ng_my
ducksvision.
See further Grani.ru’s “Budni telepropagandy” column, http://grani.ru/So
ciety/Media/Television/m.236984.html; and journalist Aleksandr Ostashko’s
crowd-sourced inventory of fictitious Russian media atrocity stories; “Ves’ bred
rossiiskikh SMI za god”, Svobodnaia zona, 11 January 2015, http://www.szo
na.org/ves-bred-rossijskih-smi-za-god/.
See Paula Schmitt, “Why I Quit ‘Russia Today’ and Why It Remains Necessary”,
+972 Magazine, 23 December 2014, http://972mag.com/why-i-quit-russiatoday-and-why-its-necessary/100402/; and Euan MacDonald, “Bordering on
Lunacy: How Russia Defeated Western Journalism”, Blogspot, 8 September
2014, http://euan-macdonald.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/how-russia-defeatedwestern-journalism.html.
Belaia kniga narushenii prav cheloveka i printsipa verkhovenstva prava na
Ukraine (noiabr’ 2013 – mart 2014) (Moscow: MID RF, April 2014), available at
RF President’s official website, www.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d4da83
f8a4e1696e94.pdf. See further on this topic Viacheslav Likhachev, “Lozhnaia
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INTRODUCTION
3
organized mass Twitter campaigns carried out by automated
“bots”,8 and employ armies of “trolls” paid to pollute the online
information space with abusive comments and anti-Ukrainian and
anti-Western memes, often viciously misogynist or racist.9
The hatred and hysteria broadcast on Russian federal TV in
particular have now reached alarmingly high levels.10 The rising tide
of aggressiveness and xenophobia across Russian state media more
broadly has also gone along with an unprecedented and audacious
disregard for journalistic standards of truth and accuracy.11 While
none of these are new features of the Russian media landscape, the
conflict in Ukraine has acted as a catalyst that has greatly intensified
them.
8
9
10
11
informatsiia o ksenofobii v Ukraine—chast’ rossiiskoi propagandy,
soprovozhdaiushchei vooruzhennuiu agressiiu protiv nashei strany”, Ukraine
Crisis Media Center, 18 August 2014, http://uacrisis.org/ru/vyacheslavlikhachov/; and Maksym Yakovlyev, “‘Antimaidan’ posle Yevromaidana v
sotsial’nykh setiakh: obraz vraga i opaseniia zhitelei vostoka Ukrainy”, Forum
noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury 1 (2014), http://www1.kueichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/forumruss21/07Yakovlyev.pdf.
For impressive and elegant visualizations of the Kremlin Twitter bot
phenomenon, see Lawrence Alexander, “Social Network Analysis Reveals Full
Scale of Kremlin’s Twitter Bot Campaign”, Globalvoicesonline.org, 2 April 2015,
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/#.
A number of banks of these ready-made images have recently been publicized
broadly; see for example Shaun Walker, “Salutin’ Putin: Inside a Russian Troll
House”, The Guardian, 2 April 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/
2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house.
For reflections on these features of Russian state media coverage, see Mikhail
Yampol’skii, “V strane pobedivshego resentimenta”, Colta.ru, 6 October 2014,
www.colta.ru/articles/specials/4887; Anatolii Akhutin, “Protiv chelovechnosti”,
Radio Svoboda, 20 February 2015, www.svoboda.org/content/article/2683
4354.html; and Arina Borodina’s comments on the responsibility borne by
Russian TV for fostering hatred and aggression, cited “‘Strana prakticheski
ischezla s ekranov televizorov’”, Colta.ru, 27 November 2014, www.colta.ru/
articles/media/5515.
On the latter, see Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible:
The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2014); and Mark
Lipovetsky, “Anything Goes: How the Russian News Became a Postmodern
Game without Rules”, The Calvert Journal, 10 March 2015, http://calvertjour
nal.com/comment/show/3736/political-steampunk-postmodern-game-mark-li
povetsky.
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JULIE FEDOR
The resulting toxic combination of discursive violence and
disinformation has already had important consequences, from
inspiring volunteer soldiers from Russia and elsewhere to travel to
Ukraine to join the fighting,12 through to hindering efforts to present
a unified EU policy response to Russian aggression.13 In Western
countries, ignorance,14 Orientalist prejudice,15 and generalized
skepticism and disaffection are all factors that provide fertile ground
for Russian information campaigns aimed at undermining the
credibility of information coming out of Ukraine and discrediting
the new Ukrainian government.16 A strong tendency towards
mythologization of the events and actors in Ukraine, present in the
pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian coverage alike, has contributed to
the sharp polarization of opinion on the war’s causes and nature,
12
13
14
15
16
The point is made by Yegor Lapshov, “2014-1941. Pochemu auditoria goskanalov
voiuet s fashistami”, Slon.ru, 7 November 2014, http://slon.ru/calendar/event/
1180893/; and by Nikolay Mitrokhin in his article in this issue.
On which see further comments by the scholar of radical nationalism and
xenophobia Viacheslav Likhachev, who points out that, for Western
governments, “any doubts about the purity of the new Ukrainian government,
including anything to do with accusations of xenophobia, are a wonderful
pretext for inaction”; “Maidan i cherez sto let budet privlekat’ issledovatelei”,
Historians.in.ua, 20 November 2014, http://historians.in.ua/index.php/en/
intervyu/1348-viacheslav-lykhachev-maidan-y-cherez-sto-let-budet-pryvlekatyssledovatelei.
As Sofi Oksanen has observed, “A people, which does not have an identifiable
story outside its own language area, is a people which does not exist. It is easy
to wipe from the map a country or language one cannot locate on a map”; cited
Jukka Rislakki, The Case for Latvia. Disinformation Campaigns against a Small
Nation: Fourteen Hard Questions and Straight Answers about a Baltic Country
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), 219.
See Fabio Belafatti, “Orientalism Reanimated: Colonial Thinking in Western
Analysts’ Comments on Ukraine”, Euromaidan Press, 27 October 2014,
http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/10/27/western-commentators-should-rid-them
selves-of-old-prejudices-dating-back-from-the-age-of-colonialism-before-commen
ting-on-eastern-european-affairs/.
The frequent crude negative stereotyping of Russia in mainstream Western
media, evident especially in the wake of the shooting down of MH17, has also
been an important factor building sympathy for the Russian side. On the
“Othering” of Russia over Ukraine, see Mikhail A. Molchanov, “Russia as
Ukraine’s ‘Other’: Identity and Geopolitics”, in Ukraine and Russia: People,
Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives, eds. Agnieszka Pilukicka-Wilczewska
and Richard Sakwa (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2015), 206-221.
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INTRODUCTION
5
including amongst scholars of the region.17 In Russia, media
“manufacturing of enemies” serves to reinforce an increasingly
prevalent siege mentality, and to foster a climate in which political
murders and other forms of violence become unremarkable.18
Elsewhere in post-Soviet space, the Russian media framing of the
conflict in Ukraine as a struggle to protect the rights and lives of
ethnic Russians has the potential to further destabilize the region.19
One of the root metaphors used in the Russian media
coverage on the events of the past year is the “Russian Spring”. This
slogan heralds the “awakening” of Russians oppressed throughout
post-Soviet space, but also more broadly a new dynamism in the
Russian ideological and political landscape. Russian patriotic
propagandists and political technologists claim a large share of the
credit for enabling this regeneration via the twin achievements of
breaking through the “information blockade” to project Russia’s
narrative in the global information space,20 on the one hand, and
consolidating society around a new vision of Russian identity, on the
other.21 In this connection it is frequently claimed that the Russian
17
On this phenomenon, see the Ab Imperio forum “Ukraine and the Crisis of
‘Russian Studies’”, Ab Imperio 3 (2014): 22-228; and “Andrei Portnov o voine v
Ukraine kak faktore intellektual’nogo razmezhevaniia”, Ab Imperio, 7 March
2015, http://net.abimperio.net/blog.
18 Novaia gazeta journalist Kirill Martynov recently described the Russian state
media machine as a “machine for the production of enemies”; Kirill Martynov,
“Memorial’naia voina”, Novaia gazeta, 28 March 2015, http://www.novaya
gazeta.ru/columns/67827.html.
19 See Kevin M. F. Platt, “Russia’s Powerful Media Bubble”, Huffington Post, 19
March 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-f-platt/russias-power
ful-media-bubble_b_4995783.html.
20 See for example 1945, “Fenomen ‘rossiiskoi propagandy’ napugal Zapad”,
Internet-opolchenie, 24 February 2015, http://ipolk.ru/blog/infovoina_bib
lioteka_svedeniy/14658.html. “Breaking through the European information
blockade regarding events taking place in Ukraine” is one of the aims pursued
by Nikolai Starikov’s Internet-Militia (Internet-opolchenie) project; Nikolai
Starikov, “Otchet o deiatel’nosti internet-opolcheniia za fevral’ 2015 goda”,
LiveJournal blog post, 3 March 2015, http://nstarikov.livejournal.com/?skip=10.
The project’s website is here: ipolk.ru.
21 See for example Oleg Bondarenko, “Ideologiia ‘russkoi vesny’”, Izvestiia, 11 April
2014, http://izvestia.ru/news/569094; “Roman Maslennikov: ‘Kremlevskaia
propaganda—samaia krutaia dukhovnaia skrepa’”, Novyi den’, 20 June 2014,
http://newdaynews.ru/propaganda/502304.html; and “Yelena Yashina:
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JULIE FEDOR
state media apparatus has recently gone through a period of major
qualitative change, a “serious evolutionary spurt both technologically, and most importantly, in terms of content”.22 As the
Russian Baltic diaspora activist Dmitrii Linter puts it, Russia now
has new media instruments capable of finally “teach[ing] the world
to interpret our victories in a manner profitable for us” and of “really
supplying new meanings”.23 There is a general consensus here that
after decades of defeats on this front, Russia has finally gained the
advantage in the global information war.24 For all these reasons and
more, the Russian state media machine and the messages it
broadcasts are phenomena that demand special attention.
What, then, are these “new meanings” that the Russian state
media machine has been generating and disseminating in the course
‘Kremlevskaia propaganda’ prevrashchaetsia v ob”ediniaiushchii faktor”, Novyi
den’, 3 July 2014, http://newdaynews.ru/propaganda/503728.html. On the war
as ideological watershed and crucible of “new meanings”, see also Aleksandr
Prokhanov, “Pevtsy i podletsy”, Izvestiia, 17 August 2014, http://izvestia.ru/
news/575376.
22 Aleksei Martynov, cited 1945, “Fenomen ‘rossiiskoi propagandy’”. A key
milestone in this narrative is the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, widely held to have
been a “serious information defeat” for Russia, but one which also provided the
welcome impetus for reform and expansion of the state media apparatus; see
for example “Dmitrii Fetisov: ‘Propagandu smenila tonkaia rabota s
obshchestvennym mneniem’”, Novyi den’, 25 June 2014, http://newday
news.ru/propaganda/502721.html. On the 2008 information war, see Margarita
Akhvlediani, “The Fatal Flaw: The Media and the Russian Invasion of Georgia”,
in Crisis in the Caucasus, ed. Paul B. Rich (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 113-140.
23 “Dmitrii Linter: Nashi propagandistskie shedevry dostoiny Gollivuda”, Novyi
den’, 17 November 2014, http://newdaynews.ru/propaganda/518184.html. Linter
is also involved in the “Novorossiia” movement, founded in October 2014, and
has acted as aide to RF Minister for Culture Vladimir Medinskii; see “Dmitrii
Linter: Ob”iavleno o sozdanii obshchestvennogo dvizheniia ‘Novorossiia’”,
Baltija.eu, 31 October 2014, http://www.baltija.eu/news/read/40613; “Dmitrii
Linter stal pomoshchnikom ministra kul’tury RF i vystupaet s dokladami v
Krymu”, rus.delfi.ee, 22 October 2014.
24 On the topic of the global “information-psychological warfare” against Russia
see in particular the numerous books on this topic by Igor’ Panarin, former
chekist and currently professor in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic
Academy. A summary of his views on this topic is set out in Viktoriia
Dzhashibekova, “Igor’ Panarin: V informatsionnykh voinakh u Rossii dolzhen
byt’ krepkii shchit i ostryi mech”, Argumenty i fakty, 24 March 2011,
http://www.aif.ru/society/24294.
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INTRODUCTION
7
of the Ukrainian crisis? What are the stories that these resources are
being used to tell, and what are the identities that they create and
sustain? How has the new Russian information environment
enabled and driven the events of the past year? The articles collected
here offer some initial answers to these questions via the close
analysis of a range of aspects of the Russian media discourse on
Ukraine. They share a common focus on narratives and framing
devices such as the metaphors and terminological labels used to
classify and make sense of the events in Ukraine.25 These are
analyzed on the basis of Russian-language media content mostly
from the spring and summer of 2014.26
Edwin Bacon starts off with a fine-grained and carefully
contextualized narrative analysis of Putin’s landmark programmatic
Crimea Speech of 18 March 2014. Bacon highlights the ways in which
the speech enacts subtle but telling shifts in the framing of Putin’s
“public political narrative”—in particular, a move towards a greater
emphasis on ethnicity, civilizational identity, and national unity and
univocality. In Bacon’s reading, the speech “confirm[s] a decisive
step-change in the story that the Putin regime tells about Russia and
25
For a lucid and insightful recent overview of this topic, see Stephen Hutchings
and Joanna Szostek, “Dominant Narratives in Russian Political and Media
Discourse during the Ukraine Crisis”, in Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics,
Propaganda and Perspectives, eds. Agnieszka Pilukicka-Wilczewska and
Richard Sakwa (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2015), 183-96; and for a
wonderful riff on the real-life consequences of linguistic choices, see Gasan
Guseinov, “Kak tolkovanie slova privelo k mirovoi voine?”, rfI na russkom, 8
February 2015, http://ru.rfi.fr/rossiya/20150208-kak-tolkovanie-slova-privelok-mirovoi-voine/.
26 The issue of the representation of the Ukrainian conflict in global media more
broadly is discussed in the panel discussion, “Ukraine and the Global
Information War”, towards the end of this issue. On this topic see also Peter
Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin
Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money”, The Interpreter (2014),
http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The_Menace_of
_Unreality_Final.pdf; Jolanta Darczewska, The Information War on Ukraine:
New Challenges (Cicero Foundation Great Debate Papers), no. 14/08 (December
2014), http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Jolanta_Darczewska_Info_War_
Ukraine.pdf; and Andriy Portnov, “Germany and the Disinformation Politics of the
Ukraine Crisis”, OpenDemocracy Russia and Beyond, 24 November 2014,
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andriy-portnov/germany-and-disinfor
mation-politics-of-ukraine-crisis.
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JULIE FEDOR
its place in the world”, heralding “a new complexity and uncertainty
in Russia’s domestic, as well as international politics”. Bacon also
sketches out the main reactions to the speech across the Russian
political spectrum, highlighting especially the diversity of responses
from different ethno-nationalist groups and the potential
vulnerabilities that this opens up for Putin domestically.
Next, Rolf Fredheim approaches the dominant Russian
narrative about Western hostility to Russia, via an examination of
an important but under-studied element of the Russian media
landscape: the popular state-run translation web portals, InoSMI
and InoTV. For the majority of Russians, these translation portals
are the most likely point of encounter with the foreign press. The
portals claim to act as a kind of mirror reflecting Western reporting
on Russia, and their translations are often held up as primary
evidence of endemic Western “Russophobia”. Fredheim argues that
the portals should in fact be viewed as functioning as powerful filters
for the state-controlled media system. He uses quantitative methods
to demonstrate a clear selection bias in favor of translating articles
on subjects “that can be easily absorbed into Russia’s dominant
narrative about Western media” and which thus serve to reinforce
the claim that Western mass media are monolithically and
systemically hostile towards Russia. Fredheim also explores how
Western media reports of various kinds are creatively re-purposed
by these portals, and the ways in which the editors at InoSMI and
InoTV endeavor to steer a course between translating usefully
“Russophobic” texts and avoiding drawing attention to valid and
well-substantiated Western criticism and analysis of Russian
policies and realities. Fredheim’s methodology provides an
innovative way of making visible the taboos and blank spots
structuring the official Russian discourse (his graphs showing the
dramatic dropping off of translations of Guardian articles on Russia
during the Crimean crisis and after the downing of MH17 are
especially striking here).
Tatiana Riabova and Oleg Riabov also address the theme of
the dominant media discourse on Russia’s place in the world, but
they do so through a gender lens. Their article comprises an
extended gloss on the popular Russian media tagline “Gayromaidan”
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INTRODUCTION
9
and its political and ideological uses as part of what they call the
“symbolic demasculinization” of Ukraine. Via the analysis of a
diverse range of sources, they tease out the connections between
gender, national identity, and security, showing how gender is used
to “draw symbolic borders between Russia, Ukraine, and Europe”.
As Riabova and Riabov demonstrate, the concept of “Gayromaidan”
serves the primary purpose of providing a foil for a vision of Russian
national identity based on the notion that the Russian state must
act as a powerful guarantor of “normality” in the face of a degenerate
West. The links drawn here between sexual and political “deviance”
also offer a means of stigmatizing the political opposition in Russia.
At one level the new meanings that are being forged by the
Russian media coverage on Ukraine are being shaped out of existing
materials, in particular, the fabric of the mythologized memory of
the Great Patriotic War. 27 A strikingly high proportion of the basic
categories and tropes used in the Russian media framing of the
current conflict draw upon the Soviet war mythology. The next
three articles share a focus on the instrumentalization of the Soviet
war memory via the media framing of Ukrainians as “fascists”.
Alexandr Osipian switches to a regional lens, and examines
the special importance held by the Soviet Great Patriotic War
mythology for the Donbass regional identity, and the ways in which
related fears and prejudices have been exploited and amplified by
the Russian mass media during the Ukrainian crisis and particularly
during the Donbass insurgency of spring 2014. Osipian shows how
these events were reported using historical categories borrowed
from the cultural memory of the Great Patriotic War, such that
“value-judgments about these events are built into the very form in
which the information is packaged”. He explains how a new myth of
“Novorossiia” is being spun out of the old material of the Soviet
Great Patriotic War myth, and he also traces the roots of the
entrenched stereotypical image of the “Ukrainian fascist” back to
the Party of Regions’ political rhetoric and sloganeering in the
27
For a recent collection of articles on related issues, see “Forum: The Ukrainian
Crisis, Past and Present”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
16, no. 1 (Winter 2015).
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JULIE FEDOR
2000s, aimed at building regional electoral support by creating a
“phantom existential threat in the shape of ‘Ukrainian fascists’”.
Like Osipian, Elizaveta Gaufman focuses on the media
framing of Ukrainians as “fascists”, and investigates the ways in
which this frame relies on cultural memory. As Stephen D. Reese
observes, frames “don’t just arise as free-standing entities”; they are
“embedded in a web of culture” and they “draw upon a shared store
of social meanings”.28 Gaufman argues here that the “fascist” frame
is powerful because it resonates with existing features of post-Soviet
Russian war memory and identity. She shows how the distinctive
constellation of meanings and associations linked to “fascism” in the
Russian context make this frame an especially effective tool for
constructing a sense of existential threat. She also sets out to gauge
and compare the prevalence of this frame across different forms of
Russian media, with a focus on TV and social media platforms
Twitter, LiveJournal and VKontakte. Her findings indicate a high
degree of similarity between the framing of the Ukrainian crisis in
“old” and “new” media. The key terms and tropes associated with
the “fascist” frame were not confined to traditional state-controlled
mass media but had likewise been taken up enthusiastically by
social media users.
Next, Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya shifts focus onto
strategies of resistance that have emerged in Ukraine in response to
Russian information aggression. She begins by surveying the
dominant pro-Russian media discourse, describing what she labels
the “hate memes” circulating in Russian media and showing how
this negative coding draws heavily upon imagery related to the
Russian memory of the Great Patriotic War. She then examines
some of the main online grass-roots initiatives that have arisen in
an attempt to combat disinformation and to provide reliable
alternative sources of independent information on events in
Ukraine. Next, she explores two very different cultural responses to
28 Stephen D. Reese, “Finding Frames in a Web of Culture. The Case of the War
on Terror”, in Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical
Perspectives, eds. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers (New York and Abingdon:
Routledge, 2010), 18.
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11
the war: Boris Khersonskii’s anti-war poetry, Mass in a Time of War,
written during the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine and
disseminated in the first instance online, via Facebook and
LiveJournal; and the obscene anti-Putin chant, “Putin khu@lo”, also
known as the “Ukrainian Folk Song”. Bonch-Osmolovskaya reads
both of these as challenges to the dominant Russian narrative, and
also as therapeutic responses to the stresses of war.
The Russian state media framing of the war to date has been
complex and dynamic, not least because the war itself remains
undeclared, and the Russian troops in Ukraine disavowed.29 The
blurred nature of the identities of the combatants is seemingly
deliberately built into the Russian military strategy employed here
and arises out of the nature of “hybrid” or “non-linear war” involving
multiple and overlapping sides, a war of “all against all”.30 In the final
article, Nikolay Mitrokhin guides us through the evolution of the
conflict and the changing composition of the different Russian
actors and forces involved, in a pioneering effort based on the
painstaking compilation and analysis of the huge volume of
disparate sources of information on the war that has been made
available online by Russian independent investigations into the
presence of Russian troops in Ukraine.
We round off this special issue by giving the floor to the
journalists who wrestle with the practical and ethical issues
surrounding war reporting and propaganda on a daily basis. We are
grateful to Rory Finnin, Director of the Cambridge Ukrainian
Studies Programme, for kindly allowing us to include here the
transcript of a panel discussion from the conference “Ukraine and
29 On the resulting mixed messages and their effects, see Yelena Racheva, “Aleksei
Levinson: Nel’zia krichat’: ‘Rossiia sdurela’”, Novaia gazeta, no. 125, 7 November
2014, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/65985.html.
30 On which see Mark Galeotti, “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian NonLinear War”, In Moscow’s Shadows, https://inmoscowsshadows.word
press.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/;
Peter Pomerantsev, ‘Non-Linear War’, London Review of Books blog, 28 March
2014, http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/03/28/peter-pomerantsev/non-linearwar/; and Peter Pomerantsev, ‘How Putin is Reinventing Warfare’, Foreign
Policy, 5 May 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/05/how
_putin_is_reinventing_warfare.
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12
JULIE FEDOR
the Global Information War”, held at the University of Cambridge
in October 2014 and organized by the Cambridge Committee for
Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) jointly with the
Legatum Institute in October 2014. The panel featured leading
journalists and analysts who have been at the forefront of reporting
on and interpreting the war in Ukraine for Western audiences. In
this discussion, moderated by Anne Applebaum and Rory Finnin,
the panelists share their experiences of reporting on Ukraine, and
their reflections on the challenges posed by the Russian state’s foray
into the Western news environment. As a follow-up, we then invited
a number of specialists in post-socialist media to join this
conversation by contributing their thoughts and reflections on the
journalists’ panel discussion. These responses, which can be found
following the transcript, offer a range of stimulating perspectives on
the problems arising out of the information war over Ukraine and,
we hope, represent the start of a deeper, ongoing conversation.
-- JSPPS 1:1 (2015) --