by Janne Suutarinen

On 12 October the Media Self-Regulatory Organizations Network (MSON) gathered for a meeting at the Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki. The network brings together the media self-regulatory bodies of seven post-Soviet countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. MSON is supported by Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe (AICPE).

The network was created in 2011 as a platform for regional and cross-country cooperation and exchange of experience and best practices. The main output of their work is to influence public and professional opinions through recommendations and statements, for example on how to confront propaganda or political pressuring.

Russian Media Lab interviewed two of the meeting participants: Boris Navasardian, Armenia, and Viorica Zaharia, Moldova. Based on their descriptions, it seems that Armenia is taking a step towards wider press freedom, while Moldovan free journalism still struggles under political pressures.

---

Boris Navasardian is the president of Yerevan Press Club and member of Media Ethics Observatory, the Armenian media self-regulatory body founded in 2007. Navasardian thinks that the recent Armenian Velvet Revolution of 2018 has opened positive sights for Armenian press freedom. However, the battle against corruption has brought also a new economic challenge for media.

Continue reading “Revolutions and corruption – A glimpse at post-Soviet press freedom in Armenia and Moldova”

The Russian Media Lab is well-represented at the 18th Annual Aleksanteri Conference “Liberation – Freedom – Democracy? 1918–1968–2018”. The project is hosting one round table, six panels and one plenary session! Further details on Russian Media Lab’s stream can be found below. Please consult the Conference website for the latest version of the programme. We look forward to seeing you there!

Russian Media Lab I: Roundtable “Researching Russian Media – Challenges and Future Perspectives”
Venue: Hall 10, University of Helsinki Main Building, 3rd floor, Fabianinkatu 33

24 October 15:30-17:00

Participants: project members Mariëlle Wijermars, Katja Lehtisaari, Olga Dovbysh, Saara Ratilainen, Jussi Lassila

There will be opportunity for informal talk with project members during and after the roundtable. We are open to new ideas, projects and cooperation!

Continue reading “Russian Media Lab at the Aleksanteri Conference – 24-26 October 2018, University of Helsinki”

by Janne Suutarinen

“To me, it is not clear what would be more important for the society: to feel satisfied with these narrow streams of alternative information, or to forget about them and strive for more open opposition; to fight the propaganda and to protect the rights of journalists.”

Dmitry Yagodin is a postdoctoral researcher in Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki. His PhD The Blogization of Journalism (2014) dealt with how blogs politicized media and social space in Russia. Yagodin has broadly studied Russian media and journalism, as well as gathered experience as a journalist in Russia.

Currently Yagodin is working in the Russian Environment research group headed by Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen.

In the early 2000’s the Russian blogosphere appeared as an alternative and less constrained space for people to express themselves. This sparked Yagodin’s interest to study the topic.

What is the current state of blogosphere in Russia?

First of all, it is hard to define ‘blogosphere’ nowadays. Ten years ago that was much easier, since it was centered around LiveJournal – the most used platform back then. Now the term is difficult, because there is Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki… An explosion of blogosphere has occurred. The single platform was abandoned, and the blogosphere has spread to all kinds of different platforms.

Continue reading “Shouts from shadows: peculiar play in the Russian blogosphere – Interview with Dmitry Yagodin”

by Janne Suutarinen

Photo: Grigori Vorobjov

Kerstin Kronvall is a journalist of Yle, Finland’s national public broadcasting company. Kronvall has worked as a foreign correspondent in Kiev, Ukraine and in Moscow, Russia. She has also worked as a Culture Councillor in Finland’s embassy in Moscow.

Currently Kronvall is based in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she writes news stories for Yle in Finnish and in Swedish. The journalist’s views on Russia’s press freedom and freedom of speech are bleak.

In your work, how do you encounter the problems relating to Russia’s freedom of press and freedom of speech?

A concrete example of this is the politicians’ and officials’ reluctance to give interviews. Getting an interview might also take a very long time, and often there is no possibility for follow-up questions.

Continue reading ““The situation is very difficult” – Finnish correspondent in Russia, Kerstin Kronvall, on Russia’s press freedom”

by Janne Suutarinen

Elizaveta Gaufman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on the exploration of verbal and visual enemy images through big data analysis. Dr. Gaufman’s research combines International relations theory with media and cultural studies.

Russian Media Lab asked Dr. Gaufman a couple of questions as she was visiting Aleksanteri Institute for the workshop on Digital Humanities.

Could you tell a bit about your latest project relating to Russian media?

Right now I’m working on a project that is tentatively called “Everyday Foreign Policy”. In the project, I am trying to track how foreign policies are refracted by social network users. They are not just repeating blindly what the government says, but modifying and subverting the narratives they hear.

Continue reading “Interview – and Soviet jokes – with Elizaveta Gaufman (University of Bremen)”

by Janne Suutarinen

“The question of algorithms concerns much of human action and control of one’s own life. Thus it is in the core of the whole idea of humanity.” – Markku Kangaspuro

This week Aleksanteri Institute hosted a workshop (Politics of) Digital Humanities in Eastern European Studies, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to present their research and to discuss about the future of the ever-digitalizing world of humanities. The presentations dealt with for example challenges and possibilities of digital archives, computational linguistics, memory politics in a digital age, as well as Twitter activity of Kremlin trolls.

Markku Kangaspuro, Aleksanteri Institute’s director and the host of the event, believes that the progress in the field of digital humanities opens up new possibilities in the research or Russian media as well. For instance Integrum, the vast archive of Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet countries’ media sources, has proven to be essential.

What are the potentials of digital humanities in the research of Russian media?

“The potential is great. Besides Integrum, where we have almost the whole Russian media starting from about mid-90’s digitalized in one data base, the media in general is moving to the internet as we speak. This opens up a huge bulk of sources, and in the case we can get these sources for the use of research, we really need new research methods and tools also.

The current situation is not even comparable to the old style media studies, in which one used papery newspapers, listened to radio and maybe read microfilms.”

Continue reading “On Digital Humanities – Interviews with Markku Kangaspuro (Aleksanteri Institute) & Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute)”