The dark double: the American media perception of Russia as a neo-Soviet autocracy, 2008–2014
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395715626945 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
research-article2016
Research Article
Politics
2017, Vol. 37(1) 19 –35
The dark double: the American
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
media perception of Russia
DOI: 10.1177/0263395715626945
pol.sagepub.com
as a neo-Soviet autocracy,
2008–2014
Andrei P Tsygankov
San Francisco State University, USA
Abstract
This article combines quantitative and textual analysis of editorials in leading American newspapers
devoted to Russia’s internal politics from 2008 to 2014. Despite rapprochement under President
Dmitry Medvedev, the media image of Russia has been overwhelmingly negative since 2008.
Negative media editorial opinions of Russia reflect fears of autocratic political systems that are
represented as a dangerous mirror image of the American system. To maintain this binary, aspects
of Russian politics that did not fit into the neo-Soviet autocracy narrative were ignored. An original
contribution of the article is its identification of key frames used by leading American media outlets
to construct a narrative about contemporary Russia as a neo-Soviet autocracy. It demonstrates
that this narrative is instrumental in confirming domestic perceptions of American national identity
that emphasize its association with freedom at home and leadership of the ‘free world’ abroad.
As such, these findings are significant for reaffirming the importance of media framings, associated
narratives, and control over them to global governance and soft power.
Keywords
identity, media framing, narratives, Russia, United States
Received: 18 May 2015; revised version received: 5 November 2015; accepted: 29 November 2015
There is no way to ignore the dark side – the soul-crushing repression,
the cruel new antigay and blasphemy laws and the corrupt legal system in
which political dissidents are sentenced to lengthy terms on false charges.
The New York Times (7 February, 2014a)
Corresponding author:
Andrei P Tsygankov, Department of International Relations, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway
Drive, HSS 336, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA.
Email: andrei@sfsu.edu
20
Politics 37(1)
Introduction
In June 2008, the leading American newspaper The New York Times (NYT) observed in
one of its editorials that Russia was returning to the old Soviet days in the way the govern-
ment controls information. It also noted that a ‘troubling aspect of this slide toward those
dark old days is that many Russians insist they are fine with government-controlled TV’
(NYT, 2008a). This was not the first time that Western media relied on the Soviet analogy
to make sense of Russia’s political system. Struggling to understand the country’s transi-
tion from the USSR, the US media commonly describes Russia in terms of fitting within
its old pattern. Media frequently assess contemporary Russian politics not on the scale of
how far it has gotten away from the Soviet Union, but, rather, how much Russia became
a Soviet-like ‘one-party state’ driven by a ‘KGB mentality’ and dependent on the use of
propaganda, ‘Cold War rhetoric’, and repression against internal opposition in order to
consolidate state power.
As everywhere, the American media serves important social functions by contributing
to shaping American identity, values, and beliefs about the outside world. Before the dis-
solution of the Soviet Union, the United States defined itself through the Soviet ‘other’
(Dalby, 1988; Oren, 2002). American officials saw their country’s values as incomparably
superior to those of the USSR and its interests as more legitimate than Soviet ones. The
comparison was both a method of gaining knowledge and the essence of establishing the
identity of the United States and the US-led ‘free world’ relative to that of the Soviet
Union. America was the land of freedom and law, whereas the Soviet state was the
oppressive, evil empire that sought to dominate neighbours through force. The United
States therefore continued the European tradition of viewing Russia as the mirror image
of the West. As the historian David Foglesong (2007) wrote, ever since the late 19th cen-
tury, influential circles in the United States have viewed Russia as their ‘dark double’ –
disrespectful of religious freedoms and property rights and an object of ideological
transformation. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the Cold War in the 20th century
served to strengthen such perceptions of Russia in the West.
Today, after the confusing years that followed the end of the Cold War, American
media outlets are increasingly returning to the old binary opposition between the morally
superior values of Western ‘freedom’ and those of a backward and ‘autocratic’ Russia. For
a short period of time, it seemed that the United States would rebuild its relationship with
a new Russia and the two nations would re-define themselves as partners jointly facing
threats of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and regional instability. Now, it is increasingly
clear that US elites are failing the test of inventing a new national identity free of negative
comparisons with the former enemy. By reading American media and statements from
mainstream members of the US political class, it is hard to not have the impression that
the American national identity remains dependent on Russia for confirming the excep-
tionalism of American values and showcasing its way of governing around the globe
through economic incentives and political persuasion.1
Since early in 2008, despite the two countries’ relative rapprochement under President
Dmitry Medvedev, the media image of Russia has been overwhelmingly negative. The
situation deteriorated further after the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2012.
In recent years, there have been serious setbacks to democratization in Russia, yet the
puzzle is not why prominent US media outlets, such as the NYT, The Wall Street Journal
(WSJ), and The Washington Post (WP), are critical of Russia’s political system, but why
their criticisms lack nuance and a sense of proportion. For instance, media assessments
frequently failed to account for important changes between Medvedev’s presidency
Tsygankov
21
(2008–2011) and Putin’s return (2012–2014). Many analysts recognize that there are
important differences between the two periods and that Russian politics incorporates a
mixture of democratic and authoritarian characteristics (Petrov et al., 2014; Robertson,
2011), even granting that the space for radical criticisms within country’s political sys-
tem narrowed in response to the Ukraine crisis.
In order to argue my case, I survey editorials devoted to Russia’s internal politics that
appeared in the leading American newspapers identified above from 2008 to 2014. While
editorials may not be fully representative, they do reflect the views held by those in
prominent leadership positions at these important newspapers and therefore constitute an
important media sample. By explicitly stating views on various issues, editorials not only
influence their audiences, but also send important signals to staff reporters and potential
authors in the opinion pages. This article is divided into three sections. The first section
reviews scholarship on the media narratives, the power of frames, and the notion of auto-
cratic Russia (AR). The second section provides details on methodology and data. It also
describes main themes, spikes, and degree of Russia criticism in the American press by
focusing on issues such as elections, justice system, property rights, media freedom,
mechanism of power transfer, and others. The final section identifies and discusses key
frames and priorities by the identified US media in constructing a narrative of the AR.
Narratives, media, and Russia
The power of narratives
Scholars have long established that the media play important social functions validating,
developing, or challenging various collectively held myths, prejudices, and stereotypes.
From a social constructivist perspective, mass media is an essential contributor to a pres-
entation of popular identity which then shapes the formation of critically important inter-
national decisions (Campbell, 1992; Skonieczny, 2015; Turner, 2013; Weldes and Saco,
1996). In his classic work, Edward Said (1997) has documented a series of ethnocentric
assumptions underlying Western perceptions and media analysis of the Orient as associ-
ated with religious radicalism, terrorism, and oppressive regimes. David Foglesong
(2007) has revealed similar biases in the United States’ views of Russia since the late 19th
century as disrespectful of religious freedoms and property rights. Edward S Herman and
Noam Chomsky (1988) introduced what became known as the propaganda model of US
media as spreading and perpetuating dominant ideological assumptions. Other scholars of
media documented ways in which mass media connects to the public via various cultural
devices (Bennett, 2003; Entman, 2009; Wolfsfeld, 2011).
Even when media strives to be independent by promoting its own viewpoint in public
discussions, it does so under particular cultural constraints and within particular social
boundaries. Indeed, as Kari Hafez (2007) has argued, globalization has not fundamentally
changed the dominance of local and nationally oriented mainstream media that remain
deeply connected to local and national identity structures and narratives. As a social insti-
tution, mass media...
To continue reading
Request your trial