IN-DEPTH BRIEFING // #57 // JULY 23
WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION
AUTHOR Dr Jade McGlynn is a Leverhulme EC Researcher in the War Studies department at King’s College London. Her book Russia’s War was published in March 2023.
The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research is the British Army’s think tank and tasked with enhancing the conceptual component of its fighting power. The views expressed in this In Depth Briefing are those of the author, and not of the CHACR, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Ministry of Defence or the British Army. The aim of the briefing is to provide a neutral platform for external researchers and experts to offer their views on critical issues. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. www.chacr.org.uk
AN ANALYSIS OF RUSSIA’S POST-INVASION MEDIA
V
LADIMIR Putin set out to establish the state’s formative influence over the media from the earliest days of his first presidential term in 2000,1 assuring that most major television stations and newspapers were owned by the state or government-friendly businessmen. Although the presidential administration did not change the market basis in 1 ridl.io/from-professional-to-reliablejournalists-the-revolution-of-russian-media
doi.org/10.1177/1077695817719137
2
Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev. Princeton University Press, 2023. 3
which the outlets functioned, and which had made mass media highly dependent on advertising revenue, Putin and his successive governments did curtail media freedoms drastically compared with the relative (if oligarchcontrolled) liberties of the 1990s. Traditionally, Putin’s governments have used a wide array of methods to control the media and direct its coverage, including bribes, preferential treatment, indirect control through ownership, control over advertising and refusal to provide access to information.2 This political control has in turn been reinforced by self-censorship. The Ministry of Justice has also
1 // IN-DEPTH BRIEFING // CHACR
played a central role, namely by designating critics of the government as ‘foreign agents’. Consequently, while the term ‘informational autocracy’3 – denoting a country where manipulation as much as fear is deployed to maintain public support – has been a useful term to apply to the Russian information space over the last two decades, over time the autocratic part has been edging out the informational element, spurred by, or blamed on, internal and external events. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022 signalled a stark degradation towards media authoritarianism