Mediating Post-Soviet Difference: An Analysis of Russian Television Representations of Inter-Ethnic Cohesion Issues

该项目介绍了俄罗斯国家电视台处理民族紧张局势的方法，结合了后苏联媒体研究、种族和俄罗斯国家建设方面的专家的互补专业知识。它将有助于我们抓住转型国家的一个紧迫问题，并有助于研究当代媒体在促进社区凝聚力方面的作用，解释世界上最复杂的社会之一如何面对全球化和后帝国国家建设的双重影响。该项目将开辟创新的跨学科领域，针对当代俄罗斯的特殊情况，测试关于媒体在多元文化社会中建设国家功能的一般概念，在当代俄罗斯，情况因以下原因而复杂化：(A)后苏联时代多元文化主义概念背后的紧张局势，(B)后帝国种族冲突和民族主义极端主义的兴起，(C)对外国干预的反复怀疑，(D)在后共产主义精英之间重新分配资源的斗争，以及(E)缺乏有效的共识建立机制。重点是国家主要电视频道(第一频道)的新闻和相关节目。基于这样一种观念，即即使是俄罗斯严格监管的媒体体系也能容纳官方和非官方含义的循环，目的是调查俄罗斯电视如何在政府关于种族多样性和冲突的政策与民族主义仇外情绪的话语之间进行调解。其目的是(I)解释这种传播的性质，因为它与社区凝聚力有关；(Ii)阐明对新闻简报中问题的处理方法与它们如何渗透到非新闻节目之间的关系；(Iii)向相关政策制定者和智库提供关于俄罗斯政府在国内和国际舞台上行动的关键驱动因素之一的见解。我们将解决以下研究问题：官方职位进入媒体环境时发生的变化；极端立场在多大程度上渗透国家电视台并受到国家电视台的调节；反映的声音范围及其框架方式；与种族有关的问题如何进入非新闻体裁。我们的分析将受到两种理论的影响：一种是识别后帝国时代国家建设的特殊性，另一种是将电视新闻作为一种共识管理工具。在每一种情况下，更广泛的理论都适用于俄罗斯的背景。在我们的方法中，我们确定了要分析的几类新闻问题：移徙；族裔犯罪和冲突；分离主义暴力和动乱；官方促进民族团结和其他凝聚力倡议；东正教和教派间事务。相关报道的文字记录将得到精选非新闻节目的录音、两个省级城市的平行录音、政策声明和相关政府文件的累积档案以及突出的民族主义互联网帖子的补充。在质量数据分析软件的支持下，巴赫特式的批评性话语分析能够解释关键行为者(官方、半官方和非官方)的互动动态，这将构成我们的主要方法工具。结果将帮助我们确定“主流”和反少数极端思想减弱之间的平衡，以及这些过程与联邦促进“多元文化和谐”的关系。项目成果将通过一本专著、3篇期刊文章、一期期刊特刊、一次国际会议和一个可下载的新闻目录条目数据集来传播。知识转让将包括向相关非政府组织和政府部门提交报告，以及由俄罗斯和英国的学者和记者参与的一系列公开辩论。

The project addresses Russian state television's approach to ethnic tension, combining the complementary expertise of specialists in, respectively, post-Soviet media studies and ethnicity and Russian nation building. It will contribute both to our grasp of an urgent issue in transition countries, and to the study of the contemporary media's role in fostering community cohesion, explaining how one of the world's most complex societies confronts the dual impact of globalisation and post-imperial nation building. The project will break innovatory interdisciplinary ground, testing general conceptions of the media's nation building function within multicultural societies against the particular situation obtaining in contemporary Russia, where matters are complicated by (a) tensions underlying post-Soviet conceptions of multiculturalism, (b) the rise of post-imperial ethnic conflict and nationalist extremism, (c) recurrent suspicions of foreign interference, (d) struggles for the redistribution of resources among post-communist elites, and (e) the absence of effective consensus-building mechanisms. The focus is on news and related programming on the main national TV channel (Channel 1). Based on the notion that even Russia's highly regulated media system accommodates a circulation of official and unofficial meanings, the aim is to investigate how Russian television mediates between government policy on ethnic diversity and conflict, and discourses of nationalist xenophobia. The objectives are (i) to account for the nature of that circulation as it relates to community cohesion; (ii) to elucidate the relationship between approaches to the issues within news bulletins, and the ways they filter through into non-news programming; (iii) to provide relevant policy makers and think tanks with insights into one of the key drivers of Russian government actions in the domestic and international arenas .We will address research questions concerned with the transformations official positions undergo when entering media environments; the extent to which extreme positions infiltrate, and are moderated by, state television; the range of voices reflected and the manner of their framing; the ways in which ethnic-related issues find their way into non-news genres. Our analysis will be informed by two theoretical strands: one identifying the specificities of post-imperial nation building, and the second addressing television news as a consensus management tool. In each case, broader theorisations are adapted to the Russian context. Within our methodology we identify several categories of news issue to be analysed: migration; ethnic crime and conflict; secessionist violence and unrest; official promotions of national unity and other cohesion initiatives; Orthodoxy and inter-confessional affairs. Transcriptions of relevant reports will be supplemented by recordings of selected non-news programming, parallel recordings from two provincial cities, cumulative archives of policy statements and relevant government documents, and prominent nationalist internet postings. With its ability to account for the interactive dynamic of the key actors (official, semi-official and unofficial), a Bakhtinian variant on Critical Discourse Analysis, supported by qualitative data analysis software, will form our central methodological tool. The results will help us determine the balance between the 'mainstreaming' and the attenuation of anti-minority extremisms and the relationship of these processes to the federal promotion of 'multicultural harmony'. Project findings will be disseminated through a monograph, 3 journal articles, a journal special issue, an international conference and a downloadable dataset of news catalogue entries. Knowledge transfer will consist of reports presented to relevant NGOs and government departments and a series of public debates involving academics and journalists from Russia and the UK.