Please send an abstract of 350 words and a short cv to the issue’s editors Saara Ratilainen (saara.ratilainen@helsinki.fi), Mariëlle Wijermars (marielle.wijermars@helsinki.fi) and Justin Wilmes (wilmesj15@ecu.edu) by 15 October 2017. Notification on acceptance will be sent by November 20. The deadline for full articles is 31 January 2018.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND CRITICAL JOURNALISM IN RUSSIA
Taking Stock of Current Realities
24 October 2017 – 14:00-17:30 hours
@University of Helsinki, Aleksanteri Institute, 2nd floor (Unioninkatu 33)
The Russian Media Lab is hosting an afternoon seminar on freedom of speech and critical journalism in Russia to precede the Aleksanteri Conference (25-27 October). At this pre-conference event, Russian Media Lab researchers and members of our international research network will present their (ongoing) research. The second part of the seminar is dedicated to discussing joint publication plans and exploring areas for future collaboration. If you would like to join in our discussions, you are kindly requested to register your attendance before 21 October.
14:00 – 14:05 Word of welcome by Markku Kangaspuro
14:05 – 14:45 Panel 1: Russian Media Lab – ongoing research
Katja Lehtisaari (University of Helsinki): Public Discussion on Media Policy in Russia
Saara Ratilainen (University of Helsinki): In the Land of Hidden Truths and Self-Censorship: Moscow Cultural Industries Commemorating the 1917 Revolution (or Not)
Freek van der Vet (University of Helsinki): When They Come for You: Protecting the Freedom of Information in Russia’s Surveillance State
Mariëlle Wijermars (University of Helsinki): Control the News Feed, Control the News? The Impact of Russia’s News Aggregator Regulation on the Online News Landscape
14:45 – 15:30 Panel 2: Paper presentations
Svetlana Bodrunova (St. Petersburg State University): Mediatization and Politicization of Twitter Ad Hoc Discussions: Russia in Comparative Perspective
Mikhail Tyurkin (St. Petersburg State University): Russian ‘Patriotic’ Online Media and Blogs and Their Impact on the Current Political Agenda
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break
15:45 – 16:15 Panel 3: Joint publication plans
Freedom of Speech and Critical Journalism inthe Russian Media Sphere. Edited volume, eds. Mariëlle Wijermars & Katja Lehtisaari
“Beyond Repression and Resistance: Reconceptualising New Media and Creative Industries in Post-Socialist Contexts”. Special issue, eds. Saara Ratilainen & Mariëlle Wijermars
“Russia’s Changing Media Landscape.” Special issue Russian Journal of Communication, eds. Katja Lehtisaari & Galina Miazhevich
16:15 – 17:30 Plenary discussion moderated by Markku Kangaspuro
E.g., opportunities for future collaboration
In an exclusive interview with Vlad Strukov, Ivan Kolpakov, Editor-in-Chief of Meduza, discusses the current editorial trajectory of the online media outlet. Watch the full interview below, or read excerpts from the interview that reveal what it means to be an independent media active on the Russian market – economically and politically, as well as in terms of audience participation.
Ivan Kolpakov is the Editor-in-Chief of Meduza.io, a Russian-language media outlet based in Riga. Since its establishment in 2014, Meduza has become one of the leading independent Russian media outlets.
Vlad Strukov is an Associate Professor in Film and Digital Cultures at the University of Leeds.
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Vlad Strukov: Could you identify two or three pivotal moments in the making of Meduza that helped it to develop to the way it is now?
Ivan Kolpakov: The first point concerns the content: we are trying to combine traditional investigative journalism and reporting with new formats. We have been doing this ever since we launched the project in 2014, which was a tough year for Russian and European history, but a good time for starting a new Russian-speaking media project. Six months ago, we started with videos. We are not trying to make viral video clips but sophisticated journalism. Further, a couple of months ago we started making podcasts, which is a huge thing in the US and Europe, but in Russia the market is non-existent. So we are trying to become pioneers and leaders in this sphere in Russia.
The second important thing is the way we think about ourselves as a media and as a brand. When we started in 2014, we decided that Meduza is not going to be a website media. We started from creating an application for iOS. It was the first time in the history of Russian media when somebody created an application first and a website afterwards, even if the website eventually became our main channel. We consider Meduza to be a multiplatform media. This means that we do not see channels of distribution as buttons for making traffic to the website, but instead we want to create a brand everywhere simultaneously: in the applications, on the internet, on Facebook, on Vkontakte, even in messengers.
And thirdly, I think one of the biggest problems of Russian journalism is that we have a huge lack of journalism focusing on general interests. How does post-Soviet journalism look like? There are two main streams. The first stream is business journalism, which is top Russian journalism. In the 1990s the major media was Kommersant, ten years later it was Vedomosti, then RBK. All of these are business media and this means that they talk to an audience which consumes business news, which again implies the use of a special language. The other mainstream form of media are tabloids. — There is Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty i Fakty and LifeNews. — Even the main stream television speaks to you using tabloid language. So there are these two points and an empty space in the middle.
In Meduza we are trying to build the media in the middle. We are trying to reconstruct the language of media and to speak to our readers using all the new practices that have appeared on the internet in recent years. That is why I think we are successful especially among the young audience.
VS:You described Meduza as a media outlet that exists in the Russian media market. Could you confirm whether such market actually exists in Russia, and describe it: Who drives it? Who regulates it? What does it consist of?
IK: It is not a market. The media market was destroyed during the last ten ‒ fifteen years. The monopoly is taken by the state. If we’re talking about television we have two independent TV channels – or two and a half, I would say – TV rain, RBK and RTVi. There is a small range of independent media and they include some important regional media.
VS: As you are such a technologically infused media, how would you describe people that work with you? What kind of categories would you use? Are they IT-personnel, journalists, lifestyle specialists?
IK: When you are a media today, it’s impossible not to be a technological company. For example, we have ten people out of fifty doing technological stuff, which is a lot. It takes a lot of resources to make applications, to constantly support them and to develop all your channels of distribution. Fifteen years ago journalists would go to a tech company and tell them that they wanted to make a website. Company would make the website and journalists would use it without any developments for years. Nowadays, you need to develop these things every day – and we’re not talking only about the website.
So I think Meduza is also a technological company. But we call ourselves journalists and everyone who isn’t making advertisements in Meduza is a journalist. — When we started it was absolutely clear that we need to create a special space where programmers and design people can meet with journalists to discuss new projects together. Usually our coders and our design people are involved throughout the process. They take part in everyday editorial meetings. — They always have what to put on the table. Sometimes they bring topics, sometimes they suggest to make a project, a game or something like this. —
VS: How do you work with your – I don’t even know what to call them – viewers, readers, users, fans, audiences? About ten years ago there was this hype about user-generated content. Is this something Meduza is developing? Could you tell us about an instance when you found a fantastic guy somewhere and you brought her into Meduza as a freelancer or something like that?
IK: This is a really good question. We started Meduza in really difficult circumstances in 2014. There was the information war, right? What does it mean from the reader’s perspective? It means that the agenda is depressing and negative all the time. If you’re an average consumer of the so-called liberal Russian-language media you are getting news about prosecutions, stupid laws that were made by our previous Russian parliament. But if you switch to the television, it’s the same or even more scary. Because what kind of news can you see on television? The world is a disaster; ‘migration crises happening everywhere’, ‘Muslims are conquering Europe’, ‘the institute of family is being destroyed by the LGBT people’, ‘Russia is being surrounded by enemies’ and so on. According to these programmes, the world is not really a good place because there is no truth and everyone is bad. This is the ideology of the current regime. It’s hard to consume this kind of news as your mood depends on this.
And what is the consequence of this depressing and negative environment? Apathy! People don’t want to consume news at all. Trump boosted media in the USA. Putin doesn’t boost media in Russia, because he has existed since 1999; he became a president when I was at school. People just prefer not to read, not to watch, not to listen. And I totally understand that. I wouldn’t consume Russian news if I wouldn’t be a journalist. So our first and hardest goal was to bring back interest to news, especially among young people who are not interested in news at all.
Our answer to the question of how to return readers to news is – and it’s a very popular word among media people – engagement. So we started creating a community around Meduza. We started from reconsidering the relationship between media and readership. Because the problem with American media and why they didn’t expect Trump to happen is that the US is a huge country and there is a left liberally-biased media, a huge part of which are in the same relation with their readers as newspapers in the middle or beginning of 20th century: the media is on the top and below are the masses consuming it.
In Meduza we started from the idea that we’ll try to make this distance smaller. We started creating an infrastructure to actually have an opportunity to communicate with people. We started with newsletters. We have this extremely popular everyday newsletter which is called Evening Meduza [Vecherniia Meduza] and we call it the shortest newspaper in history.
Meduza itself is a fact-based media and we do not publish opinions because propaganda always uses opinion journalism. However, Evening Meduza is exactly the space where we talk to our readers directly and editors of Meduza can say what they think about different stories.
Then we have this platform project where you can push a button and send ideas to the editorial team and we also have this chat under every article. It is literally a chat, this is the place where you can talk to other readers, with the author of the article or the editor, or with me. It is so important that we do not save these conversations because everything is saved on the internet and, you know, ‘Big Brother is watching you’. It is a kind of a snapchat idea, it’s just happening, you just have a real chat.
We get a lot of relevant, smart letters with ideas, critiques, topics, and they are really helpful. We really know our readers. For example, one day some school boy from some Russian city – not Moscow – contacted us and offered to code something. We have small resources and, as we always have something to code, we said ‘yes’ and he made a couple of projects for us. Another example is the school of journalism for journalists from post-Soviet countries called The Farm, which we started last year. We invited 54 people from the Baltic States, Ukraine and Belarus, from everywhere. Eventually, one girl from Belarus became a journalist in Meduza.
VS: This takes me to my last question about Storm, a professional conference for journalists. You’re clearly working at the grassroots level but you’re also working with professionals. What is the point of such activities for Meduza?
IK: Firstly, we wanted to make something offline, and secondly, we have an ambition to be the leader of the market in many ways. And even if we are not the biggest media on the internet and also not the biggest media on the internet in Russia – though we are not far away from the leaders – sometimes we act like a mainstream media. This year the conference is dedicated to new things happening in the media, podcasts, videos, virtual reality…. I understand that nobody creates virtual reality projects in Russia, even we are not producing these projects. But let’s pretend we have a real media market and we are making world level journalism – because we are trying!
VS: Ivan, thank you very much for your inspiring conversation.
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The interview took place as part of the international seminar on Russia and freedom of expression ‘Media, Capital, and Culture: Institutional Spaces in Between’, organized at the Aleksanteri Institute on 19 May 2017.The seminar was jointly organized by the Culture Cluster of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies ‘Choices of Russian Modernization’, Russian Media Lab research project, and the Leeds Russian Centre ‘Russia[n] in the Global context’.
Reference info: Interview with Ivan Kolbakov by Vlad Strukov, 19 May 2017, University of Helsinki (Aleksanteri Institute), at the seminar ‘Media, Capital, and Culture: Institutional Spaces in Between’. Transcribed and edited by Roosa Rytkönen and Vlad Strukov.
Call for Papers: Special issue on ‘Women and Tech in the Post-Soviet Context: Intelligence, Creativity, Transgression’, Studies in Russian, Eurasian, and Central-European New Media (www.digitalicons.org)
The development of the internet as a democratizing tool fostering freedom of information, grass-roots activism, and peer-to-peer support is closely related to and engrained in hacker communities. In the early days of the internet’s development, these groups consisted primarily of young white men from with access to higher education and technology. In popular culture, the image of the successful programmer, software developer and ‘hacktivist’ remains predominantly male and is based on such well-known examples as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Snowden, and Pavel Durov. Meanwhile, there are few if any stories or representations of women who have led the hacker revolution. As access to computer-programming-based technology becomes democratized on the user-end, gender (and other) inequalities on the developer side continue to persist with women drastically underrepresented in tech professions.
These representations contradict what we know from history, including the fact that there are several women who have led crucial advancements in math and computing. Ada Lovelace, Victorian mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron, was notably the inventor of algorithms. She introduced the ‘calculating machine’ one hundred years before the existence of modern computers. Another pioneering female computer scientist and feminist figure, Joan Clarke, worked as a cryptanalyst in the British Government’s Code and Cypher School with the task of decrypting the German Enigma machine code during World War II. Clarke’s work was brought to the attention of international film audiences by The Imitation Game in 2014 and biographies of Lovelace are being published in different languages. Despite some renewed interest, we still know far too little about women’s work in computing, internet activism, and technology industries in general.
Studies in Russian, Eurasian, and Central-European New Media (www.digitalicons.org) invites submissions that address women, feminism, and the internet in post-socialist contexts to be published in a special issue ‘Women and Tech in the post-Soviet Context: Intelligence, Creativity, Transgression’. The issue aims to consider what is it like to be a female programmer, online activist, or digital artist in the era of global connectedness through the internet. According to a study conducted by HackerRank (blog.hackerrank.com), of the ten nations with the best women coders three are Eastern European/post-socialist countries, which prompts the question whether female programmers are better off in post-socialist countries than they are in Silicon Valley? Against this background, the issue also seeks to examine feminist activism and women’s creative work online. Did Pussy Riot pave the way for transnational feminism to grow through online communications? What is the role of internet-based ‘cyber feminism’ (feminist theorizing, critiquing and exploiting the internet and new media technologies) for the grass-roots work of women’s groups across the post-socialist space and beyond? How do women artists, writers, and poets advance their careers through online networks and computer programming?
The proposed articles can include (but are not limited to) themes such as:
Female coders
Women in software developer communities
Gender representation of hacktivism
Women and artificial intelligence
Feminist groups online
Feminist internet sites
Female gamers/women in the gaming industry
Women’s online poetry and literature
Women in digital art
Female idols on Runet
Female pioneers of Runet
Women in the history of computing and internet in the post-socialist context
Please send an abstract of 350 words and a short cv to the issue’s editors Saara Ratilainen (saara.ratilainen@helsinki.fi), Mariëlle Wijermars (marielle.wijermars@helsinki.fi) and Justin Wilmes (wilmesj15@ecu.edu) by 15 October 2017. Notification on acceptance will be sent by November 20. The deadline for full articles is 31 January 2018.
Ellen Rutten is Professor of Literature, with a focus on Slavonic literature and culture, at the University of Amsterdam. Her latest book, Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History, was published by Yale University Press earlier this year.
Photo by Jeroen Oerlemans
Could you tell a bit about your work relating to Russia and media?
In my new research project Sublime Imperfections, I examine discussions in which the imperfect or the non-polished is framed as something positive — as a guarantee for authenticity or humanness in a digitized age, for instance. Together with two PhD students, I examine how the logic and aesthetics of imperfection function across different world regions. We look at and compare discussions about such diverse objects and spaces as torn jeans, glitch music, repurposed post-industrial sites, and purportedly blurry photographs or films in art, cinema, and advertizing.
With my background as Russianist, and as someone born and raised in the Netherlands, I pay special attention to the positive feelings that are projected onto the non-polished and non-perfected in the Netherlands and in Russia, in print, online, and social media. In (both Russophone and Anglophone) public discourse about Russia, for instance, you see that speakers frame the country as a place that owes its beauty and authenticity to being imperfect, flawed, or chaotic. In our project, we monitor this type of discourse – and we also critically interrogate this stereotype: after all, the habit of reducing Russia to a faulty-but-wonderful space is often a downright orientalist, damaging habit.
How do you see the current state of freedom of speech in Russia?
Of course, in Putinist Russia, after a period of complete freedom just after the downfall of the Soviet Union, we once again witness serious local problems with freedom of speech. I always make sure that I explain to my students that this does not mean that we are ‘returning to the Soviet Union,’ as some journalists argue. The take of the current authorities on freedom of speech differs fundamentally from that of the Soviet era – when the authorities wanted citizens to comply with state views in public, but also in private spaces (and not just in their kitchens, but in their ‘hearts and minds,’ too). The situation is quite different today. Putin and the Putinist elite do not care that a small group of intellectuals criticizes and mocks them in private: they just do not tolerate mockery and critique via mainstream or lushly visited media. That difference with the Soviet situation is often overlooked in western media, but you need to acknowledge it if you want to understand how media work in present-day Russia.
By pointing to the difference between Putin-era and Soviet-era censorship, I am not trying to say that the current media modelling is no reason for grave concern, by the way. It is – and I agree with scholars who frame the Putinist approach to media as semi-authoritarian. The past year or two, I even find myself wondering sometimes whether ‘semi-‘ is still an appropriate prefix for the contemporary Russian media model.
Can we also observe positive or exciting developments? Could you mention concrete examples?
What interests and inspires me, is the smart ways in which many higher-educated young Russians in journalism and the arts operate within the current mediascape. Both online and in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, in the past years I witnessed multiple new initiatives which, without being anti-Kremlin or overtly politically motivated, clearly boast a subtle and critical tone and take on life in Russia. These initiatives are not activist enough to clash with the authorities, but progressive and professional enough to offer helpful alternatives to mainstream work and entertainment domains. Existing and new (online) publication platforms like the New Literary Observer, Colta, and InRussia are good examples. I am also thinking of the exciting academic and public events hosted by my colleagues at Smolny College and the Higher School of Economics — and I spotted the same Kremlin-ignoring-and-progressive/energetic working mode at a lecture series by art and culture professionals at Moscow’s Museum Night this year.
How do you see the future of media freedom and freedom of speech in Russia?
Hard to say without a crystal ball. In any case the types of initiatives that I just mentioned will, I think, play a vital role in that future.
Russian media managers see the state’s increasing attempts to control the media as the main trend in communications in Russia. The restriction of and influence on media companies’ activities take place not only through direct political influence, but also by means of economic policy (e.g., import substitution, state support).
How will the state support the media industry and how is the media legislation likely to change? These were among the questions we asked leading media companies’ top-managers in the project “The Russian media as industry of production and transmission of digital content”. The project was carried out in 2015-2016 by the Department of Media Theory and Economics of the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov at Moscow State University. About 50 top managers of the largest Russian media companies representing different segments of the industry took part in the expert interviews.
Eighty-five percent of the top managers considered that state regulation of different media segments will change during the next 5−10 years. Top-managers noted several different areas where strengthening of the state influence on media could take place. Qualitative analysis of the respondents’ answers shows that they considered influence coming from both political and economic factors. Political factors affecting media regulation concern both external and internal policy.
Firstly, there are limitations related to protecting the domestic media market as a reaction to the current geopolitical situation and economic sanctions. For example, the Foreign Investments to Media Act adopted in 2014 and put in force in the beginning of 2016 limited the share of foreign investors in any Russian mass media company to 20%. Furthermore, it prohibited foreigners from founding mass media organizations or companies in Russia. According to the respondents, in addition to preventing the administrative influence of foreign owners to Russian journalists, these changes can limit mass media freedom and competition in the media market. Several respondents believed that limiting foreign investments in mass media would also affect glossy magazines and entertainment segments in the future.
The respondents’ assumptions made in 2015 proved to be correct. In the summer of 2016, the State Duma discussed the possible adoption of an act preventing foreigners from measuring the channels’ audiences. De-facto, this would mean prohibiting the activities of one single company, TNS (included in the Kantar group, a research division of the British holding WPP), whose ratings both television channels and advertisers use.
Secondly, top-managers identified goals related to the promotion of state interests. As the system of informational support of a country and its citizens is a part of the defence system, respondents believed that the state will address these issues. This does not imply direct regulation and control of all the media content in the country, but it does mean granting some media (TASS, VGTRK) relative priority and exclusive rights to state information. According to the respondents, the state is likely to continue to actively create and promote its own information resources. This can be seen in the state’s increased participation in the internet news presentation. For example, Moscow city government, according to one of the respondents, “has arranged a crazy number of web-sites” and district papers and began to produce journalistic content regarding its own affairs. Thus, the city government changed the agenda of Yandex news and other news aggregators. Overall, media representatives see themselves as reacting to media-political decision-making in a “state-driven media policy” (Vartanova 2012), instead of viewing themselves as active agents in the sphere of media policy.
The third direction concerned the implementation of journalists’ liability for information distribution. The respondents considered that the state would strengthen its control over information distribution by journalists. The consequences of this were mixed; on the one hand, this would, according to the respondents, lead to less false information. On the other hand, the respondents believed that the state control would become more pronounced. These prognoses have partially been proven to be accurate. For example, the editing managers of the largest independent Russian media holding RBC were fired in May 2016. Multiple informed sources claimed that the Kremlin’s dissatisfaction with RBC’s publications was the reason behind this action, particularly with respect to investigations regarding Putin’s relatives and the “Panama papers”.
Fourthly, the interviewed media managers mentioned combating extremism and terrorism. Nowadays, the prohibition (or limitation) on distribution of extremist information or information unsuitable for certain age groups can be considered as one the main restrictions for the media. Respondents considered that such restrictions would be strengthened. This has already been seen in practice; a bill regarding banning propagation of suicide has been suggested to the State Duma. The bill was drafted as a response to material encouraging teenagers to commit suicide in the social media site VKontakte in the spring of 2016. The bill suggests adding to the Russian Criminal Code a new article 110.1, which would set forth liability for propagating suicide by means of persuasion, bribery, fraud, formation of attractive representations of suicide, including via mass media and the Internet.
At the same time, technical developments undermine such restrictions. According to some respondents, this fight of the government is a wasted attempt to control what “already cannot be controlled”. For example, an oppositional media website, Grani.ru, was banned in March 2014 upon the demand of the General Prosecutor’s Office due to materials and appeals to illegal actions and participation in non-approved mass events. However, Grani.ru is still available thanks to mirror-pages.
In contrast, when it comes to economic factors, the respondents assess the possible strengthening of state regulation positively. The respondents singled out the following directions of the economic regulation.
State support of federal and regional media (primarily, the print media) in the form of grants and subsidies.
Import substitution could, according to the respondents, positively influence the advertising market, as “new trademarks will need promotion, the audience will get used to paying for this, and the legislation on protection of intellectual property will actually start working”.
Restrictions on foreign investments may have a positive effect; according to many respondents, income from taxes on advertising of media co-owned by foreign investors will increase the budget funds. At the same time, respondents agree that the state restrictions should consider both general tendencies of the market as well as tendencies in consumer priorities.
According to legislation amendments and responses of the media top managers, protection of the domestic market and promotion of the state interests are important elements of the state media policy. No other important actors can be singled out on a political level; the media market players react to the ready solutions provided by the state, but cannot influence or determine the “issues”. Thus, the media industry maintains its reactive role.
Vartanova E. (2012). The Russian media model in the context of post-Soviet dynamics. In: Hallin D. & Mancini P. (Eds.) Comparing media systems beyond the Western world. NY, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 119–142.
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Marina Galkina is a Researcher at the Problem Research Laboratory for Integrated Studies of Current Issues of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
This workshop calls attention to the cultural and economic policies which condition and govern, directly and indirectly, individual and collective entrepreneurship and freedom of expression. Focusing on the Russian-language culture and media, the workshop analyses the interaction between institutionalized networks and how they impact freedom of expression in the neoliberal economic context. The workshop aims to explore how creative professionals working in media and cultural institutions negotiate political agency, cultural diversity and social critique in the age of digitalization, transnational mobility and global consumption. Russian-language culture and media offer a productive framework for exploring questions of official and unofficial discourses, hybrid identities, transgressive border-crossings, convergent intellectual and communication technologies. Nowadays, these complex questions need to be reconsidered in terms of Russia’s role in cultural globalization. The workshop brings together scholars of Russian culture, theoreticians of media and cultural and media practitioners.
The seminar is jointly organized by the Culture Cluster of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies ‘Choices of Russian Modernization’, Russian MediaLab research project, and the Leeds Russian Centre (Russia[n] in the Global context).
Image: courtesy of Sergey Elkin, Moscow-based visual artist
PROGRAM
10:15-10:30 Opening words: Sanna Turoma (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Vlad Strukov (University of Leeds, UK)
10:30-11:45 Panel I: Hybridization of Culture, Media and Politics
Saara Ratilainen (University of Helsinki): Collaborative Media and Cultural Practices in Russian Cities Vlad Strukov: Gamification of Russian Politics: Where Media and Culture Converge
Discussant: Ilya Kalinin (Saint Petersburg State University, NZ Debates on Politics and Culture, Russia)
11:45-13:00 Break
13:00-14:30 Panel II:
Re-considering the Impact of Legislative, Technological and Educational Developments
Mariëlle Wijermars (University of Helsinki): The Russian Internet ‘Blacklist’ Law – Five Years on: The Curtailment of Freedom of Speech Online
Vera Zvereva (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): Targeting Youth: New Media State Propaganda and Popular Culture
Susan Ikonen (University of Helsinki): Popular History Books and Russian Book Market Discussant: Olga Shevchenko (Williams College, USA)
14:30-15:30 Panel III Pioneering Media and Cultural Practices: Meduza and the Success of Russian Media Abroad Ivan Kolpakov (Editor-in-Chief of Meduza, Riga, Latvia) in conversation with Vlad Strukov
15:30-16:00 Coffee
16:00-17:30 Panel IV: New Emerging Spaces for Media, Arts and the Market (Roundtable discussion)
Moderator: Sanna Turoma
Participants: Andrey Bogush (Artist), Liisa Roberts (Artist), Ilya Kalinin, Ivan Kolpakov, Vlad Strukov
Galina Miazhevich is a Lecturer in Media and Communication in the University of Leicester, UK. She was a visiting fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute in March–April 2017.
Could you tell a bit about your work relating to Russia and media?
I’ve been working on post-Soviet media for a number of years and have done two post-docs on the matter: one on the representations of Islam as a security threat in the Russian, British and French contexts at the University of Manchester and another independent project as a Gorbachev Media Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. The latter project focused on the issues of censorship and press freedom in the post-Soviet space. We organized a series of Gorbachev Press Freedom lectures, with several prominent media personalities and practitioners as invited speakers, including the director general of the BBC. It was an interesting time to discuss these topics also in the UK, due to the debates on how media regulation should proceed in the country.
My research approach is qualitative as I’m coming from the field of media and cultural studies. I study indirect indicators of media management and freedom of speech, looking at what can and cannot be expressed in the official and unofficial media. This includes not only texts but also visual images, as when I explored political satire memes in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It’s important to understand the meanings generated at the grassroots level. For example, when reading online forums right after major events, the wealth of information one can get there is remarkable. For a number of years, I’ve been studying the Eurovision Song Contest, and discussions around it are not only about the music, but about the relationship between the East and the West, homosexuality, antisemitism, camp culture…
How do you see the state of freedom of speech in Russia currently?
It’s a very difficult question and becomes more sensitive with every new election cycle. One can see the tightening of regulations, as in the case of the internet recently. These changes need to be placed in the context of wider processes. A number of years ago someone said that the Russian media follows the Belorussian path. Belarus is known for quite stringent controls and it seems that Russia is following this model.
At the same time, there is another kind of development, as one can see in the diversification of the products offered to the public. You can see a variety of voices and different programmes being aired…it seems that there is a creation of a more diverse and less clear-cut scene, where there is a wide choice for the public. However, the choice is more related to entertainment. They are trying to go for this hybrid type of management, with entertainment and consumption, and less straightforward expression of ideologies or something directly related to politics.
At the same time, it seems that even TV series try to promote some messages or core values. There are many very well-made TV dramas that go back to different periods of the Soviet times, not maybe exactly romanticizing the era (even though they are semi-nostalgic), but utilizing it to create some kind of common space that the audiences can identify themselves with. There are also all these TV presenters from the Soviet era, which creates a kind of feeling of stability and continuity.
Talk show Projectorparishilton is an interesting example. The show was halted for five years and only recently re-vived. The hosts discuss, in a satirical way, topical news, which is not necessarily an easy issue for the establishment. The question is why this programme re-emerged right now? When you talk about Russian media you can’t just talk about strict regulation and ‘contained’ voices, but you need to look at dynamics and nuances, and place them in the wider context to understand why these programmes or trends are appearing. As some scholars argue, even in a very tightly controlled media environment there might be different voices (at times, accidentally) coming through. And then the question is, ‘why is that?’ Whether it was accidental, whether it is a sign of genuine disagreement or maybe it was done on purpose to demonstrate diversity or act as a safety valve. The situation with Russian media is not clear-cut and is therefore interesting for a media scholar. For example, internet management is much more complex and poses challenges, but at the same time provides a rich field for analysis and identifying trends.
Do you have any predictions concerning the future of media freedom and freedom of speech in Russia?
It’s very difficult to predict the future. Some of the trends we observe right now, such as diversification and hybridization, will persist. However, it’s difficult to say what the developments will be like concerning the attitudes to journalists, their ‘intimidation’ and corresponding self-censorship. It’s going to be interesting to compare the management of journalist practice within the country and abroad: I’ve also been studying Russia Today, which is a ‘product’ for the external audiences and has a different idea of the journalist practice. Another idea that comes to my mind is that because Russia is such a huge state with different regions, there might be some developments concerning the regional media. Some of these, including TV broadcasting and radio, aren’t so strictly regulated and they have the ability to produce good quality content. Whether the establishment will tolerate this is interesting because some of the regional media are more popular than the mainstream ones. So one can see these different levels of management concerning production for external, national and regional audiences.
Mariëlle Wijermars, post-doctoral researcher in the Russian MediaLab project, will be presenting the following papers at two upcoming conferences:
‘Website Blocking as a Means of Silencing Non-Systemic Opposition: The Russian Internet ‘Blacklist Law’ – Five Years On’
Workshop ‘Telecommunication Politics in Authoritarian Contexts’, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, 9-10 May 2017
‘New Media and the Expression of Alternative Views on the Past in Russia: The Russian Revolution as a Social Media Feed’ Workshop ‘Trauma Studies in the Digital Age’, University of Amsterdam, 10-12 May 2017
Russian MediaLab is attending the BASEES 2017 Annual Conference (31 March – 2 April 2017, Cambridge, UK) with a panel “Fields, Forums and Freedom of Speech in Russia and Moldova.” The panel will take place Saturday 1 April at 16:00-17:30.
Presenters:
Saara Ratilainen (University of Helsinki) ‘Russian Urban Online Magazines and New Platforms for Civic Discussions’
Dmitry Yagodin (University of Tampere) ‘Russian Cultural Diplomacy through Social Media on the Example of Moldova’
Katja Lehtisaari (University of Helsinki) ‘Media Policy in Russia: Processes and Outcomes’
With discussant comments from Vlad Strukov and Markku Kangaspuro as the Chair.
