Lead Data Analyst: Kohei Watanabe
Lead Russian Media Consultant: Yulia Netesova
It is now widely accepted that Russia has skilfully leveraged state-controlled media to further its domestic and foreign policy objectives. To analyse the precise strategies that Russia has used to control and manipulate public information, our media experts have devised innovative electronic content analysis tools to investigate how Russian state media—including such leading state-controlled outlets as the Television channels Channel 1, NTV, Russia 1; and the newspapers Rossiyskaya gazeta, Komsomol’skaya pravda, and Izvestiya—frame important political and public policy issues and events. Of particular importance for understanding patterns of support for state leaders or, alternatively, of the willingness of citizens to vent their anger at the regime through protest, is exploring how state-controlled media manipulate information on public discontent. Our new methodological tools for electronic content analysis of the framing of protest in Russian-language state media allow us to analyse systematically these media manipulation trends over time.
Recent Publications and Working Papers
- Lankina, Tomila. 2017. “Russian Media’s Flexible Coverage of Protest as a Regime Survival Strategy.” In Russia’s New Domestic Scene: Economy, Nationalism, Power, Opposition. PONARS Eurasia Policy Perspectives. September 2017. Washington, DC: George Washington University, pp.21-27.
- Lankina, Tomila, Kohei Watanabe, Yulia Netesova, “Framing Protest in Autocracies: How State Media Control, Manipulate and Leverage Public Discontent.” Working paper.
- Lankina, Tomila V., and Kohei Watanabe. 2016. “‘Russian Spring’ or ‘Spring betrayal’? The Media as a Mirror of Putin’s Evolving Strategy in Ukraine.” Europe-Asia Studies, ISSN 0966-8136. Forthcoming.
- Lankina, Tomila V. 2016. “It’s Not all Negative: Russian Media’s Flexible Coverage of Protest as a Regime Survival Strategy.” No. 449. PONARS Eurasia, Washington, DC.
- Lankina, Tomila, and Kinga Niemczyk. 2015. “What Putin Gets about Soft Power.” In Russia’s Foreign Policy, eds. David Cadier and Margot Light. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
