Mickiewicz Ellen.Television, Power, and the Public in Russia

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. — 2008. — 220 p. — ISBN: 13978-0-511-38650-3 eBook (EBL)
The Russian media are widely seen to be increasingly controlled by the government. Leaders buy up opposing television channels and pour money in as fast as it hemorrhages out. As a result, TV news has become narrower in scope and in the range of viewpoints which it reflects: leaders demand assimilation and shut down dissenting stations. Using original and extensive focus group research and new developments in cognitive theory, Ellen Mickiewicz unveils a profound mismatch between the complacent assumption of Russian leaders that the country will absorb their messages, and the viewers on the other side of the screen. This is the first book to reveal what the Russian audience really thinks of its news and the mental strategies they use to process it. The focus on ordinary people, rather than elites, makes a strong contribution to the study of post-communist societies and the individual's relationship to the media.Русский перевод этой книги находится здесь:
Мицкевич Эллен. Телевидение, власть и обществоHalf-title.Copyright.
Figures.The missing term in the equation.
A note on methods.
The circle of the day: how important is television in Russians’ lives?
Post-Soviets: youth, energy, and opportunities.
High-school-educated participantsthe day dims.
College-educated participants: a better life, more options, and still devotion to television.
Why do Russians consume unsatisfying news so avidly?
The college-educated.
Newspapers.
Radio.
Television.
Television, negotiating messages, and control.
Appendix: Further information on methodology.Detecting channels.
Choice and advocacy.
The state channels.
Global dimensions of HIV/AIDS as an avoidance strategy.
Bureaucratic solutions.
The nonstate channels.
Sensationalism.
Nonstate stations better reflect reality.
Weaknesses and divisions.
Approaches to coverage of corruption.Election news and angry viewers.
Taking the problem apart.
Western research on heuristics.
The Russian elections context.
The election story as mandatory template: the merging of time and space.
Channel and viewpoint diversity: smothered by the template.
The election story as the unrolling of the Kremlin’s preferences.
The election story and the limits of heuristics.
Thinking about votingthe potent and vanishing ‘‘against-all’’ option.
(2 minutes, 45 seconds).
(5 minutes, 43 seconds).
(3 minutes, 37 seconds).
Excavating concealed tradeoffs.
Information processing and assimilating the news.
Cues in the political environment, heuristics, and low-information rationality.
Tradeoffs as tests for citizens.
How the focus groups worked.
After the first positive story.
Security tradeoffs.
Social class and corruption.
Opportunity costs.
The price of joining the club: domestic costs of international linkages.
Reversing the tradeoff direction: after the fourth story, negative views.
Downsizing the ecological threat: tradeoffs countering the message.
Individual and collective interests: revenue versus trees.
Sources of tradeoffs.
‘‘Commissioned’’ but objective: Russian viewers and Western research on tradeoff behavior.
(2 minutes, 14 seconds).
(2 minutes).
(2 minutes, 13 seconds).
(2 minutes, 49 seconds).
Theories of childhood and memory.Soviet television: Russian memories
Post-Soviet evaluations of Soviet television.
Attitudes toward Soviet television.
A further complexity.
Substitute old for new? Retain the new?
Capturing complexity.
The college-educated remember Soviet television.
High-school-educated and college-educated: how similar are the viewers?
Two accounts: two conversions.
The hypothetical substitution.Endings.
The end of TV-6: what prompts viewers’ reactions?
Discourse restricted to what difference having or losing TV-6 programs make on ‘‘me’’.
Discourse pushing beyond the personal frame and invoking overarching elements, such as human rights, foreign policy, the basis of viewpoint diversity, and the nature of precedent for society.
Moscow.
Volgograd.
Rostov.
TV-6 closes down on January 22.
Ouster and change at REN-TV.The other side of the screen.
The many meanings of ‘‘trust’’.
The components of persuasion.
High-school-educated, Moscow.
College-educated, Moscow.
Trust, comprehension, and facts.
High-school-educated, Volgograd.
College-educated, Nizhny Novgorod.
Longing for positive news...
...And rejecting it on television.
The case of TV-6.
Higher education makes a difference.
The configuration of blame.
Heuristics at work.
Changes in election rules.
Russian viewers’ adaptations of cue sources.
The individual and society at one.