Visual images as affective anchors: strategic narratives in Russia’s Channel One coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts

Grigor, Irina; Pantti, Mervi

doi:10.1080/19409419.2021.1884339

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…This vulnerable positioning serves to show the immorality and illegitimacy of the opposing side and appeals to a moral, masculinised obligation to protect the defenceless (Lenz, 2016, p. 100). The repertoire and its positioning resemble Grigor and Pantti's (2021) analysis of Russian media visuals of war, showing how the vulnerability of women and children, including the trope of the mourning Babushka, is used to construct a dichotomy between good and evil. The Ukrainian soldiers here are positioned as acting in ways that disrupt the norms of war.…”

Section: Repertoire Of Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, since the annexation, the pro-Russian side has utilised traditional and social media to spread disinformation and to foster fear, anxiety and hate among ethnically Russian and other non-Ukrainian groups living in Ukraine (Lange-Ionatamishvili et al, 2015). The conflict was framed as Russian struggle against fascism, relying on the narrative of Soviet victory over Nazism in WWII (Grigor & Pantti, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The war in Ukraine and the ambivalent figure of ‘Babushka’: Intersectional nation‐building and the delegitimisation/legitimisation of war on YouTube

Lönnroth‐Olin,

Venäläinen,

Menard

et al. 2023

Nations and Nationalism

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In this article, we demonstrate how international social‐media discussions offer a platform for taking a stance on the war in Ukraine, redrawing national boundaries and legitimising their defence. We do so by analysing data that consist of comments triggered by a viral YouTube video depicting an encounter between an ageing civilian woman, labelled ‘Babushka Z’, and a Ukrainian soldier. Using a critical discursive psychological framework, we identify five interpretative repertoires: vulnerability, incapacity, national continuity, masculinised warriorship and righteousness. Our analysis illuminates how these repertoires draw on and reproduce intersecting categorisations based on gender, age and ethnic heritage. With the help of these categorisations, the repertoires build competing images of the actions of the figures in the video, which come to symbolise in various ways both patriotism and treason, heroism and cowardice. By aligning with competing historical‐national narratives, the commentors use these images to (de)legitimise the war and its actors.

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Section: Repertoire Of Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The war in Ukraine and the ambivalent figure of ‘Babushka’: Intersectional nation‐building and the delegitimisation/legitimisation of war on YouTube

Lönnroth‐Olin,

Venäläinen,

Menard

et al. 2023

Nations and Nationalism

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The News Media Organizations RT and Sputnik and Their Audiences

Hellman

2024

The Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication

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This chapter introduces the two Russian state-affiliated news media organizations, Sputnik and RT, and provides background on their development. It also discusses what is known about their journalistic culture with regard to organization and journalistic style. Scholars have highlighted that although they are international news organizations producing and disseminating information and current affairs for a global audience, in a similar way to other news media outlets, there are significant differences between RT/Sputnik and news organizations such as BBC World or CNN International. These differences in journalistic ethos have a bearing on the storytelling techniques used, and these are therefore also analyzed in this chapter. Finally the chapter presents previous research findings on the audiences for RT and Sputnik, why people turn to these channels and how they perceive and engage with the news content. Having thus positioned RT and Sputnik as international news organizations and given an account of what is known about audience reception of their messaging, Chap. 3 focuses on how RT and Sputnik have used disinformation and targeted various states.

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Everyday Disinformation: RT and Sputnik News Coverage

Hellman

2024

The Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication

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This chapter seeks to explain why disinformation should be seen as an everyday practice and how this is connected to digital news media. It takes its point of departure in the notion that the digital media ecology enables the construction and dissemination of strategic narratives (Oates, 2014) and that media technological developments have expanded the digital news media market and its audiences globally. At the same time, these organizational, technological, and political media developments are being used increasingly successfully by authoritarian regimes to suppress, control, and surveille. Sweden is one of the Western countries that has been heavily targeted by Russian disinformation by way of international news. RT and Sputnik news coverage tends to reflect Russian perceptions of the West as a threat to the values that the Kremlin has declared it will defend. They can be summarized as the promotion of typical national conservative values such as the promotion of Orthodox Christianity, “morality”, and “traditional family values”. More importantly, these Russian state media center their coverage on explaining the decline of Western states as a consequence of the increase of Islam in politics and society, LGBTI+communities, and migration. The chapter reviews studies about how RT and Sputnik construct denigrating depictions of a number of different countries attempting to use such imagery to sow distrust between citizens and politicians, and between citizens and public institutions both on a day-to-day basis and centered on events such as election campaigns or foreign policy crisis.

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Visual images as affective anchors: strategic narratives in Russia’s Channel One coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts

Cited by 8 publications

References 71 publications

The war in Ukraine and the ambivalent figure of ‘Babushka’: Intersectional nation‐building and the delegitimisation/legitimisation of war on YouTube

The war in Ukraine and the ambivalent figure of ‘Babushka’: Intersectional nation‐building and the delegitimisation/legitimisation of war on YouTube

The News Media Organizations RT and Sputnik and Their Audiences

Everyday Disinformation: RT and Sputnik News Coverage

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