Irina Khaldarova Grigor

University of Helsinki | HY · Department of Social Research

The power of actors in contemporary conflicts is no longer simply defined by mil- itary equipment and the outcome of tactical operations but by the support of the public at home and within the area of operations. Russia has mastered the ability to conduct an information war—as shown during its conflict with Ukraine—in which media campaigns are targ...

This article explores and compares the visual images used by Channel One (Ch1), Russia’s biggest state-aligned television broadcaster, to justify Russia’s intervention in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent history: the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and Syria’s civil war. The data reveal that while Ch1’s projection of Ukrainian conflict...

This article explores how Russian television news deconstructed the narrative embracing Ukrainians as ‘brothers’ through repositioning them within an imagined social reality wherein Ukrainians assume the guise of a threatening ‘Other’. The research material comprises extracts from Channel One, which is one of Russia’s most significant and popular t...

The crisis in Ukraine has accentuated the position of Russian television as the government’s strongest asset in its information warfare. The internet, however, allows other players to challenge the Kremlin’s narrative by providing counter-narratives and debunking distorted information and fake images. Accounting for the new media ecology—through wh...

The paper explores how the participatory audience disseminates the online content produced by news media. Here, user-distributed content (UDC) acts as a conceptual framework. The concept of UDC refers to the process by which the mass media converge with the online social networks through the intentional use of social media features and platforms in...