The “Gardening” of an Authoritarian Public at Large: How Russia’s Ruling Elites Transformed the Country’s Media Landscape After the 2011/12 Protests “For Fair Elections”
The “Gardening” of an Authoritarian Public at Large: How Russia’s Ruling Elites Transformed the Country’s Media Landscape After the 2011/12 Protests “For Fair Elections”
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DOI：
10.1007/s11616-019-00486-2
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发表时间：
2019-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Anna A. Litvinenko;F. Toepfl
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Anna A. Litvinenko;F. Toepfl
为了应对2011/12年震撼俄罗斯的大规模街头抗议“为了公平选举”，该国领导人实施了一系列旨在遏制异议的措施。自2011年以来，俄罗斯的政治精英们是如何、为什么以及以什么样的后果改变了该国的媒体格局？为了回答这些问题，本文利用了作者之一最近提出的“威权公众”理论。根据这一理论，当代专制政权的多重公共领域可以富有成效地想象为由三种类型的无数相互竞争的部分公共组成：（1）不批判的，（2）政策批判的，（3）领导批判的。采用这个框架作为一个透镜，文章认为，俄罗斯的领导人在抗议活动后实施的措施显着减少了观众的领导关键的公众，但并没有完全消除这种类型的公众。在更抽象的层面上，所采取的措施在这里被解释为该国统治精英为了微调三类公众之间的平衡而采取的“机构园艺”措施。通过这样做，他们创造了一个更好地满足他们重新配置的需求的独裁公众。
In response to the massive street protests “For Fair Elections” that shook Russia in 2011/12, the country’s leadership implemented a range of measures aimed at curbing dissent. How, why and with what consequences have Russia’s political elites transformed the country’s media landscape in the years since 2011? In order to answer these questions, this article leverages a recent theory of “authoritarian publics” proposed by one of the authors. According to this theoretical account, the multiple public sphere of contemporary authoritarian regimes can be productively imagined as being comprised of a myriad of competing partial publics of three types: (1) uncritical, (2) policy-critical, and (3) leadership-critical. Adopting this framework as a lens, the article argues that the measures implemented by Russia’s leadership in the wake of the protests significantly reduced the audience reach of leadership-critical publics, but did not entirely eradicate publics of this type. On a more abstract level, the measures taken are interpreted here as measures of “institutional gardening” deployed by the country’s ruling elites in order to fine-tune the balance between the three types of publics. By so doing, they created an authoritarian public at large that better met their reconfigured needs.