Non-democratic discourse of democratic mass media in Russia: analysis of frames

The procedure for conducting a review of current research on Russia's public sphere. The conceptualization of the concept of a democratic discourse to define variables and indicators and description of the data. Evaluation of the discourse of the media.

Рубрика Журналистика, издательское дело и СМИ
Вид дипломная работа
Язык английский
Дата добавления 02.09.2016
Размер файла 77,2 K

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For example, in the article «The dialogue of non-main enemies» (19 October 2015) the author considered Russian military activity in Syria as a way to overcome the diplomatic isolation, caused by Russian participation in the Ukrainian crisis. Despite the author tries to combine different topics, he articulates all considered issues in one framework. He emphasizes the instrumental rationality of Russian military and diplomatic activities and conclude that they enables Russia to achieve its goals: «during the last Democratic party debates Russia was not called as one of the dangers to global security».

Critical frame of Novaya gazeta is imlicitly biased in favor of political opposition. Despite Novaya gazeta did not provide any articles in favor of oppositional parties or leaders, it discursively provided a political bias of media coverage. Intensifying the unity of political body, a war provides media loyalty (at least - neutral coverage) to national government. Thus, the logic of the supreme form of the unity is manifested here. Despite this logic, Novaya gazeta strongly criticized Russian government activity in foreign in domestic policy.

However, the political bias of Novaya gazeta does not presuppose its political loyalty to other states. Political bias in this sense means that Novaya gazeta does not restrain itself by the logic national loyalty. This idea was directly articulated in several articles. Authors stated their solidarity with global journalist community (e.g. «Voentorg» is open, 23 October 2015). This the another political logic, which is devoted to the global civil society and universal moral solidarity. Nevertheless, in the context of nation-state (as we have already mentioned, context models are ideologically biased due to subjective representations of communicative event and its participants as members of groups or categories) this logic leads to an inevitable political bias in favor of political opposition.

Discussion

The first hypothesis was particularly approved. The results showed that media discourse of Echo of Moscow is biased in favor of political opposition and oppositional views. Despite Echo of Moscow provides a tribune for adherents of all political views and ideologies, a presenter has a variety of ways to promote its own point of view and shape the air discourse.

TV-Rain media discourse was subordinated to nationalistic logic, which provided a vast framework for contestation of frames. This contestation produced intertextuality effect - the interception of different competing discourses under the common umbrella.

Novaya gazeta discourse was implicitly biased in favor of political opposition, which undermined the intertextuality effect. Moreover, Novaya gazeta discourse was subordinated to the logic of effectiveness, rather than deontological morality.

We have already stated that in order to provide democratic discourse media source must be (1) inclusive for all interested actors (if there are formal or informal restrictions, that discriminate an actor, they must be rationally justified to be legitimate), (2) an editorial policy does not discriminate certain participants in favor of others (editorial impartiality). Discussing the results of discourse analysis we conclude that only TV-Rain discourse corresponds to these two criteria. Unlike TV-Rain, Echo of Moscow does not provide editorial impartiality. Vice versa, providing the editorial impartiality (there were no editorials in Novaya gazeta) it broadcasted only particular points of view discriminating, for instance, Russian government's position on current issues.

The results show that Russian public sphere does not fully correspond to the logic described in the literature of media functioning in authoritarian regimes. Only one analyzed democratic media corresponds to the criteria of democratic discourse. Moreover, TV-Rain is the youngest mass media among all analyzed. Providing the theoretical framework for the research we considered the «democraticness» of media discourse as a dummy variable. The results show that the continuum schema is much more productive. Moreover, this schema should contain more that one parameter. At least it should pay attention to the type of mass media - to this parameter second hypothesis was devoted.

Furthermore, the results show mass media functioning are substantially shaped by the political regime. Authoritarian government undermines the very possibility of political pluralism. Thus, independent mass media in authoritarian regimes becomes inevitably politicized. Despite TV-Rain does not privilege pro-governmental views, its activity is politicized by the regime, which identify independent media as a political enemy.

The second hypothesis was fully approved by the results of discourse analysis. Media coverage of the Russian military invasion in Syria substantially varied according to the type of the media (see the table below):

Inclusiveness

Editorial impartiality

Echo of Moscow (radio)

+

-

TV-Rain (television)

+

+

Novaya gazeta (newspaper)

-

+

Radio and press contained different type of biases, which reduced the complexity of reality, made it more perceivable and helped to achieve the condition of «high definition». This logic can hardly be applied to TV-Rain due to the media complexity. Despite according to M. McLuhan, television is «cool» medium, contemporary television is much more complicated. Television has already stopped being a traditional media; integrating with social media and other internet platforms it has evolved into «nested doll» of different mediums. According to McLuhan medium always contain the other medim. Thereof, McLuhan schema must be improved and developed for analyzing contemporary television.

Conclusion

This research scrutinizes the political bias of democratic mass media in Russia. There is a lack of consensus in literature on the issue of the type of political regime in contemporary Russia. However, the majority of scholars agrees, that Russian public sphere is predominantly controlled by the government. There are few mass media, which are considered as independent or democratic. Moreover, the very «democratic» mass media highlight its editorial independence, opposing themselves to mass media, which editorial policy is controlled by the government.

Despite the democratic mass media highlight their political impartiality, scholars of contentious politics connect these media with anti-governmental activity, considering it as one of the instruments of mobilization of protest movement and regime collapse. Furthermore, state officials and state controlled mass media accuse democratic media in political bias. This study addresses this problem issue.

Scrutinizing the literature, we defined two major approaches to the problem issue - historical-institutionalist approach and social constructivist approach. Historical-institutional perspective enables to reveal the path dependence - institutional development over time. Despite historical institutionalism considers institutions in dynamics, it poorly elaborates the issue of institutional change. Historical institutionalism suffers from the kind of historical determinism, which neglects the role of agency on institutional development. Thereof, historical institutionalism tends to reduce the complexity of real-life practice to certain historical logic.

This research bases on discursive-institutional framework, which has been developed by Vivien Schmidt. According to Schmidt, institutions are «not external-rule-following structures but rather are simultaneously structures and constructs internal to agents whose «background ideational abilities» within a given «meaning context» explain how institutions are created and exist and whose «foreground discursive abilities,» following a «logic of communication,» explain how institutions change or persist».

The discursive-institutional approach determined the major concepts of the research. We used the concept of discourse, developed in van Dijk's version of critical discourse analysis framework due to his focus on the problems of power and biases in discourse. To provide CDA it by external theoretical framework we adopt the deliberative democratic theory, which enables to exhaustively discuss the results of discourse analysis.

Two hypotheses are tested in the research:

· Discourse of Russian democratic mass media does not correspond to normative claims of authentic democratic discourse due to the bias in favor of opposition.

· Media bias in medias differs due to the type of media.

We have collected the data from three sources: Echo of Moscow, TV-Rain and Novaya gazeta.

The analysis on media discourse particularly approved the first hypothesis and fully approved the second hypothesis. The results showed that media discourse of Echo of Moscow is biased in favor of political opposition and oppositional views. Despite Echo of Moscow provides a tribune for adherents of all political views and ideologies, a presenter has a variety of ways to promote its own point of view and shape the air discourse. TV-Rain media discourse was subordinated to nationalistic logic, which provided a vast framework for contestation of frames. This contestation produced intertextuality effect - the interception of different competing discourses under the common umbrella. Novaya gazeta discourse was implicitly biased in favor of political opposition, which undermined the intertextuality effect. Moreover, Novaya gazeta discourse was subordinated to the logic of effectiveness, rather than deontological morality.

The results show that «democraticness» of a media is a continuum. The particular position on this continuum dependent on a variety of factors, which must not be reduced to the type of the political regime. For instance, the type of the media substantially contributes to the manner of coverage.

The results contributes to the discussion on mass media functioning in hybrid and authoritarian regimes and put new issues to the research agenda for communication studies and political science. Further research should focus on the connection between democratic media and other sources of information. Whether the former either substantially impacts the public discourse due to the authoritarian nature of the regime or becomes an exclusive domain for marginal political views and ideologies? Answering this question enables to define the specific features of public spheres in non-democratic regimes.

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