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 Seminar Propaganda in Russia Today Kars Boeschoten Student number: 1604571 Class: ​
ECONCD 08 / 01 / 2016 Table of contents Introduction: 3 What is Russia Today?:
4 How did propaganda become so important for the Russian media?
5 What kind of propaganda techniques did Russia Today use regarding to this topic (Part. 1) 6
Propaganda methods
7 What kind of propaganda techniques did Russia Today use regarding to this topic (Part. 2)
11 Conclusions
15 Bibliography
16 2 Introduction Propaganda is a term that we are all familiar with, most people who know what propaganda is, already have an image on how it would look like. When you do a quick Google search on propaganda, you immediately get many images posters we still remember from the either ​
cold war​
and ​
WWII. Most of the images that are linked with propagande, originate from either the United states of America, North Korea or the Soviet Union, and mostly these are targeted towards each other. Because of this, the word propaganda is usually linked to one of these countries and these events. It makes perfect sense that the word propaganda is usually linked with these countries and events. There was a lot of propaganda and although the word originated from 1622, it remained a fairly unused word until after the second world war. (​
Dictionairy.com, 2016) After this, propaganda was a very present and recognizable way of communication between countries and their populations. This was very present at that time, but how does that work today, with current conflicts? So propaganda is still around nowadays, but with new media and with different ways of communicating, how does a government funded news channel still actively influence the opinion of their viewers? In this report, i want to highlight the conflict of Crimea in 2014, and by doing so, i want to show how the Russian media channel ​
Russia Today ​
uses propaganda in a modern way to influence the public opinion about this conflict. Because of this, my research question goes: What kind of propaganda did Russia Today use, r​
egarding the annexation ​
of Crimea, and around the time​
of that annexation? 3 What is Russia Today? Russia Today(RT) is a Russian television network, that is completely under control of the Russian government, via TV­Novosti. It is the not the main Russian television channel, but provides the official published television news of the Russian government. It’s headquarters is located in Moscow and the news channel is being broadcasted worldwide. The TV channels and website versions of Russia Today’s publications are being delivered in a variety of languages. Those languages include Russian, English, Arabic and Spanish. In the online editions of Russia Today, there is also a French and German language version available. The channel even made Russia Today part of the national television networks of Venezuela and Argentina. The global reach of Russia Today is over 700 million people that live in over 100 countries. By providing the channels’ services in such a wide variety of languages, the channel makes sure that their messages can reach every corner of the planet. (​
Russia Today, ​
2016) Ever since its foundation, the news channel has been criticised by many other journalists. The critics believe that the influence of the Russian government is too big. The channel would act as a way for the Kremlin to spread their own political ideology, and cover it up by using news stories to do so. (​
Voice of America, 2009​
) Because of this, the channel is being accused of spreading pro­Russian propaganda, where they worship anything that the Kremlin is saying. (​
New Republic, 2009) Next to the fact that Russia’s government is being worshipped by Russia Today, the critics also state that the news channel is spreading anti western and specifically anti American news reports. The stories would have a strong focus on blaming the United States for whatever is happening in the world, while making a bad and inaccurate reflection on the events that have been written about. (​
New Republic, 2012) The reliability of Russia Today was even more damaged in 2014, when Russia Today’s American news anchor Liz Wahl resigned while being live on air. She stated that the news coverage of Russia’s intervention in Crimea was so distorted, that she was not willing to cooperate with this kind of journalism. ​
(CBC News, 2014) And of course, the conflict in Ukraine is for Russia Today not any different from previous conflicts and the reporting of those. The channel has been posting an enormous amount of news reports regarding the conflict in the Crimean Peninsula. Countries and politicians are being accused and the Russians are portrayed as a liberator. 4 How did Propaganda become so important for the Russian media The Soviet Union, what later came to be Russia, was a state with an Marxist­Leninist political philosophy. One of the main ideological characteristics of this concept focuses on equality in a society. Everything was based on a universal social welfare and (almost) all services and possessions of the state was divided and shared with the whole country. In order to achieve these commitments, it was important that the population shares the same opinion on this matter. Having a different opinion would only cause segregation within such a homogenous society. ​
Reflections on a Ravaged Century. ​
(2003) To achieve these unified opinions, the Communist Party used a lot of propaganda to spread their message. Because the party also used a lot of pervasive censorship, the propaganda was very present. This started in 1922 after The Bolsheviks took power and institutionalized the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. ​
(The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1999) In the times of the Cold war, the Soviet Union came to be an enormous communist superpower. It was the the largest state in the world and the only one that could oppose a threat for the power of the United States. After the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country lost a chunk of 5.303.958 square kilometers. For comparison, The Netherlands is only 41.500 square kilometers. There were many newborn countries, that now have Ethnic Russians living there. They mostly live inside separate regions of countries that are now being occupied by Latvians, Ukrainians and Kazakhs. ​
(Russians left behind in Central Asia, 2005) One of these regions in particular, has a large Russian population living there: ​
The Crimean Peninsula. The ethnic Russian population that lives in this part of Ukraine, does not affiliate with the Ukrainians, and are dissatisfied with how they are being treated by the Ukrainian government. You can see how this, for a country like Russia that has only been losing land, this could be an opportunity to get a piece of the country back like how it was before. Especially if the people living there have been calling out for it. The Russian population want to feel proud again, proud of the country that once was so powerful, but has only been in decline for the last 20 years. This would have been a reason for Vladimir Putin to interfere in this area and call out a referendum. In order to do this, it is important that the population shares the same opinion, so propaganda is being used heavily to create these unified thoughts. The viewer needs to agree with Russia, and they have to think that it is good that Russia is doing this. The consumer needs to get the idea that Russia is “liberating” the people in Crimea from an oppressive Ukrainian government. The west disapproves this so called liberation, so the west should be displayed as the party that is against Russia’s actions. 5 What kind of propaganda techniques did Russia Today use regarding to this topic The propaganda techniques that Russia used are still active today, but is now not as directly visible as it was in the cold war. Russia Today is one of the ways for the Russian government to communicate their message to the global audience. The unique thing about Russia Today is that it is the main channel for Russia to communicate their message to the rest of the world. The publications of Russia Today are not targeted to just the Russian population, or the Russian diaspora. Russia Today’s reports are also directly targeted at people who are not linked with Russia. That is the reason why the news reports are in these various languages. Because of the conflict regarding the annexation of Crimea, the news channel posted a large amount of news reports. With my research, i wanted to analyse these reports regarding the annexation. Russia Today has been posting so many publications regarding this topic, that a timeframe is needed to create a clear view on the subject. The Crimean Peninsula was annexed on March 18th 2014. Of course, around the annexation date, many news reports can be found on Russia Today that were focused on this conflict. In my research i decided to analyse all the news reports in a time period of three days. These are from March 17 until March 19th of 2014. In this way, you see a range of news reports on the day before the annexation, on the day itself, and the day after the annexation. For this research, i used the English version of the website of Russia Today. Most of the English publications on the website are either based or directly translated from the Russian version of Russia today, so the publications that i read should be somewhat equal to the original Russian posts. In this analysis, i wanted to see which propaganda methods Russia Today used in their publications. 6 Propaganda methods The Institute of propaganda analysis ​
was an American organisation, created by Kirtley Mather, Edward A. Filene, and Clyde R. Miller. The institute created a division in 1939 where they show a differentiation in the types of propaganda that were being published. Their first intention of creating this analysis was because they were worried about the rise of national­socialism in Nazi Germany and what kind of effect their propaganda could have on the United States. By creating this analysis, the institute wanted to warn the population for this. Many, if not all propaganda messages nowadays are still somewhat based on these techniques. ​
(Media en Publiek, 2003) Those seven techniques were: ● Name calling ● Glittering generality ● Transfer ● Testimonial ● Plain Folks ● Bandwagon ● Card Stacking Name calling With Name calling, you want to tell the person who reads the message to despise a possible opponent. You create a sense of fear or anger, by blaming someone else. In many cases, the opponent is portrayed as something that makes it look more threatening. Countries that are in conflict with each other, are very present with their name calling. It is one of the most popular methods of using propaganda by many countries. 7 Glittering generality Glittering generality is one of the most seen methods, it has been used with various propaganda publications throughout history. The glittering generality technique focuses on the positive effect that it has. It should deliver a positive connotation to a certain person, idea or object. This makes it the exact opposite of name calling. Glittering generality has been used mostly to show the strength of a nation or country. The leader of a group, political party or country is idolized when glittering generality is being used. Transfer With Transfer, the messenger tries to use associations as a technique for convincing the reader. With association, you create a desired behaviour, and link this to either positive or negative associations. This can be exaggerated, as the image suggests. The image shows a man with a ghost of Adolf Hitler. The advertisement tells the viewer that you should not drive alone, and if you do, you are riding with Hitler. Of course the ghost of Hitler will not step next to you in your car, but the advertisement uses this to create an association with negative feelings. By doing this it tries to convince the viewer to join a car sharing club, and not drive alone. 8 Testimonial A testimonial is being used if a message is supported by someone influential. Someone who is influential, like a role model or a political leader is being used to spread the original message. This message does not have to be positive, testimonials have been used widely in combination with name calling. In that case, a testimonial uses the words of the influential person to blame someone else. This can be in a political way, but this is also being used widely from an economic point of view. Role models like Lionel Messi is being used in this case to promote a bag of Lays chips. Plain folks By using plain folks, you create a certain feeling with the audience and how they should behave. The “plain folks” represent what the regular people would do. With this, you let the audience feel a desire to behave like the plain folks would. The plain folks suggest what should be the right thing to think or do. In this example, you see how a happy family is enjoying a day on the beach with some Coca Cola. If the audience want to identify themselves with these people, they should be buying Coca Cola too. 9 Bandwagon Bandwagon is a technique that is being used to create a movement. You are being convinced about something because everybody is doing this. You make it seem that other people have been doing the cause, and are enjoying this or getting an advantage out of it. This has been used for example in the campaign around the capture of Joseph Kony in 2012. Many people wanted to join this movement in order to create awareness for capturing him. The usage of symbolism and showing how other people were part of this, gave the campaign a snowball effect and made even more people want to join this bandwagon. Cardstacking Card stacking is a method that uses selected arguments to convince someone. It emphasizes on the presentation of these arguments to portray an idea, person, company or product in either a positive or negative way. For example, a cleaning product uses arguments like “50% stronger” and “Removes built up grime” to convince a customer to buy that cleaning product. The seven propaganda techniques listed above are the main ones that were described by the Institute. Because this has been around since 1938, most propagandist executions that were made, originated from these basic principles. More propaganda techniques have been developed later, such as ​
Public Relations​
, ​
Code Words​
, ​
Newspeak​
and ​
Buzzwords​
. However, these have developed either from the seven basic techniques, or are based on them. This analysis focuses just on the seven basic techniques that have been listed by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis. 10 What kind of propaganda techniques did Russia Today use regarding to this topic To do this analysis, i started by collecting all the news reports from Russia Today in that timeframe, and started looking at it from the perspective from the institute. After this, i divided all the news reports in the propaganda methods that were being described before. I made the separations by looking at both the images that were being used in the reports. Next to that, i also looked at the texts in the report. The texts tell the story and propaganda can be hidden inside there as well. In total, In total, there were 22 news reports that were published by Russia Today in that time period. Those news reports all had the Russian intervention and the conflict in Crimea as their main subject. 11 After dividing the 22 different articles, i started categorizing the articles in the corresponding type of propaganda that was present in that article. When all the articles were separated, the stack of articles looked like this: The first thing that stood out was that, from all the propaganda methods that are being described in the propaganda analysis, every method has been used and is covered by Russia Today. This is especially striking that this only took three days. So we can say that Russia Today is still very active in their propaganda communication Two of these methods in particular stick out. First of which, the Testimonials​
were used a lot, representing inside five news reports. However, ​
Name Calling​
shows to be the most used propaganda method according to the analysis. Name calling has been used seven times in the three days that Russia Today posted about this annexation. With this conflict, Russia Today mostly targeted their name calling towards mostly Ukraine, but also Europe and the USA. These are the groups that disagree with the annexation, and don’t acknowledge the referendum and Crimea’s independence. In this way, Russia Today wants to convince the viewers that those countries (UA, EU & US) are on the ​
wrong ​
side of the conflict, and are being portrayed as the enemy. This corresponds with how the Western countries were portrayed in the Cold War. 12 Next to the fact that the Name Calling was the most used propaganda method, some other interesting things stood out from the analysis of the news reports. Mikhail Gorbachev was a former Soviet leader, he was the last person to lead the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991. In this news report, you can find a ​
testimonial​
which is cited from something he said. The report states that Gorbachev thinks that the returning of Crimea to Russia is a correction from the splitting of The Soviet Union. Now why is it special that he is saying this? Mikhail Gorbachev was in the eyes of many Russians of the least popular Soviet leaders. He was held partially responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union. With this statement, he claims to be on the same page as the Russian population. Even he agrees with the fact that Crimea should not be a part of Ukraine and would belong to Russia. This is what Russia Today has been trying to communicate the whole time, and now that one of the former counterparts of the Kremlin agrees with this, the opinion Russia Today tries to spread would be even stronger. 13 While all different methods were being used, one of them stood out because it was the first publication that was made in the analysis. The first report that was published after the declaration of the independence of Crimea shows the ​
Plain folks ​
technique. This is something that stood out as well. There could have been many ways of showing the declaration of independence. This could be done by showing a politician signing a declaration, or showing a defeated Ukrainian prime minister. Russia Today decided to show the people of Crimea celebrating their independence from Ukraine. Why did Russia Today decided to show this? A possibility could be that Russia Today tries use this image to show the world what the Crimean population wants. That the referendum is legit because the people living in the peninsula actually want to be part of Russia. Thus making it what the ​
plain folks w
​ant. This could be a reason for Russia Today to use this kind of image, it would make it the strongest way of telling the story in a visual way. 14 Conclusions If we look at this analysis, we can say that all the propaganda methods that are listed by the Institute of propaganda analysis have been used by Russia Today. The analysis, which is made in 1939 proves to still be pretty relevant today. This counts especially if you take into account that the analysis of these news reports only took place in a timeframe of just three days. You can imagine that Russia Today doesn’t limit their propagandist way of news reporting to just this conflict. This way of news reporting has been seen in various conflicts where Russia is involved with. Such as the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, Syria, and the rising tensions between Russia and Turkey. Name Calling has been the most important used technique in this conflict. The Russian population clearly needs to know who the enemy is and that Russia is ​
helping ​
its citizens by liberating them from their so called oppressor: The Ukrainian government, which is supported by the west. Another method that has being used a lot in that timeframe were the Testimonials. Apparently, Russia Today wants to use the opinion from influential people to create an image on the situation that matches their own. The Plain Folks was the first method that was used to show the viewers the declaration of the independence of Crimea. This has probably been used to show the world that this referendum is helping the people who live in Crimea. That this is what the plain folks of the disputed area wants. After this research, i got a new perspective on how Russia Today writes about certain events. Propaganda seems to be still around, and have grown with new types of media. Russia Today proves to be exact the way as it receives its criticism. They gladly blame other countries, and praise their own president. Something that possibly does not come as a surprise. Question More​
is the slogan that Russia Today uses, a slogan that hopefully created a new connotation for some people. After this research Russia Today gave me some new insights, and made me want to question more indeed, especially about the publications that Russia Today themselves post. 15 Bibliography Boer, C., & Brennecke, S. (2014). ​
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