SUMMARY

In the Post-Soviet Russian debate on media, there is a considerable incongruence between the understanding the nature and social role of the media by media insiders and by outside researchers. While at least some of the former still believe the industry to be a means of public information and enlightenment and concentrate mainly on the freedom of speech, the latter tend to view it rather as a system of social control and manipulation or a closed system of infotainment. So what exactly is media? If it cannot be profitable, how is it supposed to survive? If it survives, can it be made socially responsible? In this issue, we have addressed the nature and basic purposes of media, the character of the relations between media and society, various national and cultural models of distributing information (or mass communication, if you like), and the main trends of media development. How is the Russian media positioned in the world media market? How are the current distortions in the national media market going to unwind? As always, we have collected articles that represent a wide range of views, so that opposing voices can be heard.

At the dawn of modern society, the emerging sphere of public was opposed to the sphere of state as a subject of media interest. Printed media was designed as a tool of political influence upon the state and “the voice of the public.” But no matter how humane its proclaimed intentions were, media that was claimed to be a tool of liberation and democratization, turned out to be a tool of manipulation and oppression. The free market that is notably the main source of supporting the work of media is at the same time clearly the main factor of eroding media independence. In a historical- philosophic overview, Vitaly Kurennoi traces the main stages of media evolution, its functions and purposes, and the standing of Russian media in this context.

In a profound overview of the structure and evolution of theoretical knowledge, Alexander Oslon describes a historical process as a neverending struggle for dominance between theories. Everything – from political or scientific debates to political murders and military interventions – is due to this struggle. Media is an institution of “replication theories,” whereas polls are an institution and a tool of “measuring theories.” The latter are probably the only way to really get to know what is happening “in the world of theories,” i. e., what people think, how theories are reflected by their conscience.

The media are always manipulative, and always claim to be “enlightening.” The media world is comprised of multiple correlated communication systems and conveys “knowledge without consciousness” rather than cultivates a “true judgment” of reality. Can the nature of media be altered? What would be the most considered way to view the media? Oleg Nikiforov overviews and evaluates modern “anthropocentric” and “system-theory” media concepts.

At a time of crisis of the nation state, media functions are changing. Is diversification of media leading to the demise of the industry? If not, what kind of power is media going to be? How is the current media evolution going to affect our personal lives? In a thematic discussion, Valery Bardin, Simon Kordonsky, Linor Goralik, Alexander Gavrilov, and Vitaly Kurennoi debate aspects of the institution transformation.

According to Vladimir Sungorkin of “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Russian capitalism is corrupted, oligarchic, senseless, and ruthless. However, Sungorkin knows how to maintain independence from the will of politicians and oligarchs. The good “chef” shares the secrets of his cuisine; he knows what diet is good for his readership. He describes relationships between privately owned media and the state, and between regional media, on the one hand, and governors and businesses, on the other. Sungorkin asserts his view of the prospects for the Russian media market. Supposedly, economic independence of a medium can serve as a basis for its editorial independence. However, national media continue to live by “non-economic” rules, and, despite proclaimed freedom of speech and information, Russian media remain mainly propagandistic. Floriana Fossato examines the structure, progress, and problems of the distorted Russian media market in the last decade based on extensive empirical study of the subject.

At the time of Gaidar’s reforms, the media that faced severe economic crisis applied to the state for subsidizing. Alexey Pankin maintains that it created a precedent for an “economies of exclusions,” which is the reason for today’s problems. Having contributed to the formation of the anti-liberal economy, our media have remained a specific tool of this economy. The economies of the media business were fit to producing paid-for biased publications rather than making a profit from advertising. However, Pankin emphasizes, the political investment in the Russian media was not effective either: media cannot significantly influence voters.

The direct monetary contribution of the media to the national economy is not high even in most prosperous countries. Still the indirect impact on the economic sphere is extensive. Publishing business consultant William Dunkerley analyzes the Russian media’s influence on the country’s economic development and considers ways of improving the situation that he finds tragic. In an acute critique of Russian political and social attitudes, Alexander Khramchikhin notes that the dominant political discourse made anybody who would want to have a personal opinion to position himself either on the left or right, and nowhere in between. The author argues that the country is heading towards fascism. The government does not do anything meaningful; all it cares about – just like the TV channels – is high ratings. Domestic media have caused huge damage to the country. He analyzes the reasons and outcomes of the profound Russian psychological crisis which he identifies as the main reason for all the country’s losses and failures.

In the modern world, visual media is probably the most powerful teacher of values; they broadcast to the masses role models and behavioral norms that determine national well-being in psychological, social, economic, and all the other spheres of life. Daniil Dondurei maintains that values taught by today’s Russian cinematography are profoundly destructive in their essence: they profess promiscuity, pessimism, sense of insecurity, and disbelief in law and order. This negative impact of our film and television industry contrasts with a thoroughly positive message of Hollywood that models respect to family, private property, law and order, and inspires optimism. Dondurei calls for the establishment of professional analysis of media content in Russia.

One of today’s commonplaces is that while the worldwide web made it is easy for people to get published, it is hard for an individual site to be noticed by visitors. Anton Nosik contests the notion: the Internet “oligarchs” who get about 90 percent of the readership are search engines that take an investigative web surfer everywhere on the net where he could find the information he needs.

In his interview to OZ, Mikhail Kozhokin of “Izvestia” forecasts foreigners’ advent to the Russian media market. They will care not only about gaining profit but also about a fundamental structuring of this market. According to Kozhokin, newspapers are going to be replaced by media holdings, just as supermarket chains supplanted old-fashioned produce shops in the West.

Except for special occasions, the Russian authorities use statistics in merely a ritualistic manner. How exactly was the Russian “democratic media” born? When and why do the Russian authorities need relevant information – sociological, for example? How is the worldwide web essentially used: as a technologically advanced way of interpersonal communication, a source of independent information for the active minority of population, or an up-to-date sophisticated controller of personal and social freedom? Gleb Pavlovsky, Ivan Zasursky, and Vitaly Kurennoi explore the nature of media in their old and new forms.

In his interview with Vitaly Kurennoi,Modest Kolerov delineates trends in the Russian media market and raises controversial issues. Television on the federal scale remains a molding image-and-myth-creating force that keeps about 90 percent of the population at the TV set. The active 10 percent of the population – those who do not watch TV but read news instead — are manipulated by news agencies who define the proportions of information flows, or the structure of information supply, reachable by a modern information consumer. All media in Russia, just like in the “civilized countries,” can be bought; they differ only be the price. Is there a way for a medium in such environment to sustain its values?

To protect itself from governmental despotism and monopolization by large businesses, the larger society must control their activities. Investigative journalism is one tool for this purpose, but alone it is not equal to the task. Besides freedom of speech, society needs free access to information. However useful, the freedom of informational transparency is a controversial issue and is not liked by everybody. However, we do not have an alternative, Dmitry Zavalishin suggests.

So far, the main detrimental feature of the media business has been its independence from its consumers. Dmitry Volkov suggests that the new technology that allows information users to become active on their side could change the status quo. Volkov uncovers the roots of the partisan engagement of media that has long been striving to become the society’s “fourth estate,” and defines conditions under which achieving media independence would seem sensible.

From the moment the wheel was invented, information has always been a motivating power of economic progress. Yasen Zasursky outlines the history of media development focusing mainly on the economic and technological aspects of the process. Zasursky believes that in the modern information society, fast-moving technological advancement promotes democratization. He questions whether the distribution of texts through the Internet is going to kill the advertising business.

In Russia from 1870-1910 where industrial capitalism and urbanization were just picking up speed, printed media acquired not the Western form of “mass communication” but rather the form of “mass information,” or informing the masses from above. As the level of literacy of the masses increased, printed media increasingly served as a catalyst of social and political discontent.Boris Dubin and Abram Reitblat give an account of the complex processes of that time.

Although the facts of life and newspaper headlines are not exactly the same, many individuals as well as professional associations believe in the possibility of pursuing truth in journalism.Olesya Koltsova juxtaposes objectivist and constructivist approaches to news making and outlines new trends in this field.

According to classical media theory, power, death, and relations between sexes are the three dominant topics that are capable of attracting public attention most effectively. It is the ratio of coverage of these topics that shapes the individuality of a mass medium. The great disparity between the mythical picture of reality created by media and our personal experience causes public frustration and distrust in media. However, we hardly have a good alternative to this “fish bowl” world of media, according to Yaroslav Shimov.

We live in a society that is heavily addicted to consuming news. News production is not concerned with “truth” or “falsehood” of phenomena and ideas it transmits. It is rather a didactic broadcasting of the domineering system of values. The “news world” is merely a historical paradigm that is going to demise soon, Kirill Kobrin professes.

News on Russia in the leading Western media tend to be brief and primitive. World media writes about a country when it is interested in it, Natan Katz explains. This interest is caused by business opportunities opening in a country at a particular moment, and the political stability allowing to use these opportunities.

A mass of grass-root historical material was lost during the Soviet era due to the fear of repressions and neglect. Luckily, some survived. Olga Edelman’s story of a new contest of students’ compositions on the history of their families based on family archives shares subtle observations.

Evgeny Abov defines the existing federal legislation designed to support media as utterly ineffective and outdated. Media should become a wellorganized and considered business profiting from circulation and advertisement sales. The state has to concentrate on supporting not publishers but the low-income and other socially deprived and vulnerable segments of readership. The only exclusion must be made for the unprofitable but socially demanded media as children’s and maybe scientific magazines. Abov names conditions under which a successful media business is built.

It is program rating that makes TV producers include programs of inferior quality into their schedules. According to Oleg Dobrodeev’s interview with Tatyana Malkina, TV administrators are not content with the situation; they are torn between the need to earn money and better their channel’s reputation. Dobrodeev confesses to have a personal ambition to deliver his channel from mediocrity.

It may seem from the outside, that advertising in the Russian print media is a well and prospering business. A deeper examination shows that the business suffers hollowness of content and marketing ineffectiveness. Popular local print media cannot compete with the versions of Western magazines that, quite understandably, recoup a fortune from mainly Western ads; so the locals are being pushed out of the market. The audience is not crazy about this fact: a domestic reader is looking for something addressed personally to him. Besides, just as too many brands of yogurt at the counter often prevent a customer from buying any, the exaggerated variety of monotonously colorful glossy covers repels a reader. Do advertisers realize that their audience is shrinking? Olga Nikulina points to a paradoxical trend in the Russian advertising market.

For a member of the information society, the notion of “life experience” lacks direct contact with actual life and most often means experience gained through mass media. The endless flux of aestheticized images creates a sort of quasi-reality living by its own inner logic. Vera Zvereva examines, to what extent the TV reality affects the “real” one, the scope of authoritative power of media and audience’s ability to actively participate in the process.

From the point of view of advertising, TV’s main resource is its audience. The larger the audience, the greater the TV companies’ profit. The majority of the larger audience is not well educated and is inclined to relax before their TV sets after work rather than to be involved in watching high-quality intellectual programs. Creative workers of television, such as scriptwriters and producers, are forced to adapt their initial ideas to the entertaining needs of their audience. The result is normally inferior to their own creative ability; it is at best a mediocrity. Viktor Kolomiets explains the social phenomenon of contemporary Russian TV rating: why we are so obsessed with it and why the variety of TV programs is fading away.

Throughout the times of political turmoil, Russian niche radio programming ruled only by the laws of the market managed to create a successful business model. And public radio, continuously undersubsidized by the state, suffered severe material and organizational losses. Today both survive but some of the previously demanded genres as radio theatre or children’s programs are extinct. Speaking of the broadcasting policy,Viktoria Sukhareva doubts that the state should support such non-commercial genres. First of all, the public is content with the “fast food” of the popular music and infotainment mix it is being fed. And if non-commercial genres are really demanded, commercial radio channels might include them in their schedules, she suggests.

Russian TV channels (with the exception of the Kultura (Culture) channel whose addressees constitute 1,5 percent of the population) are intended for the mass audience and claim to form their schedule based on program ratings. Irina Poluekhtova analyzes preferences of the Russian TV audience and “menus” of TV channels by type and genre of a program. Poluekhtova points to tendencies and problems of contemporary domestic television watching.

TV program ratings are supposed to inform advertisers and television managers about the effectiveness of advertising and program quality.Sergei Keshishev testifies that domestic television managers do not have an effective system of telemetric measurement of TV audience, which allows TV management to engage in shady transactions. As a result, channel budgets are underfunded, advertising businesses and politicians are misled, and nobody gets to know what the audience is really interested in. Telecasters are not interested in realistic evaluations of their audience. Keshishev suggests a model of independent and objective assessment of TV audience that would be beneficial for advertisers, channel management, and the audience itself.

Nikolai Plotnikov analyzes the ideology of Russia-related rhetoric in German media. At its core is the presupposition of Russia’s being not just distinctively different from the West, but rather an undeveloped and backward version of Western civilization. German journalists unambiguously interpret this “civilizational inadequacy” as a negative feature that has to be overcome. This critique conflicts with polls results but is congruent with prevailing Russian self-reflecting discourse. Plotnikov discusses possibilities of creating an alternative language of understanding and describing reality.

The impact of media on language, despite popular misconception, is inconsiderable. Media only magnifies current linguistic tendencies that in their turn depend on deeper social and technological shifts in national life. Depending on the situation, media can either preserve the literary norm while sterilizing the language or shatter the norm thus inducing creativity. Maxim Krongauz describes the alternative tendencies and their outcomes.

For people of traditional culture, norms of everyday life are based mainly on spoken tradition, knowledge received from elders, the Scriptures, and religious literature in general. Media is the main agent in forming their political, scientific, and historical ideology, being virtually their exclusive source of information in these fields. Natalia Kuznecova examines the role of media in shaping beliefs and attitudes of Russia’s rural population.

In the Publication section, there are translations of “Broadcasting and National Identity” byDavid Cardiff and Paddy Scannell and “Press: Government by Newsleak” from Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. We also publish synopses of Die Realitat Der Massenmedien by Niklas Luhmann and Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power byMonroe E. Price.

In the OZ discussion section, we continue to publish articles considering the subject of labor.

What are the main sociological characteristics of the modern Russian agrarian worker? Has the agrarian reform of the 1990s improved both economic conditions and the mentality of the Russian peasant? Has he or she become more ambitious, eager to work, and conscientious? Ilya Shteinberg analyzes the reasons of the reform failure and suggests an alternative.

A class approach implies analysis of social classes as social-economic groups related to each other. In Soviet Marxism-Leninism, social class analysis was substituted for analysis of social strata.Vladimir Iljin points to the potential of class analysis in both a global and Russian context.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, publicizing documents from historical archives came into vogue in Russia. In the Country of OZ section, there is an essay by Olga Edelman about the controversy of archive usage by the media. Edelman writes about the responsibility of journalists and historians in treating historical issues.

An analysis of “mentalities and sentiments” allows a historian to document a vague and imprecise substance that could be called the spirit of the age. Anna Minaeva and Evgeny Kuleshov’s work based on the detailed diary of a Leningrad woman-pensioner describing poor work of the city’s utility service provides a good notion of Russian life of the period.

In the Old World section, there is a biographical essay based on the memoirs of , former aviation constructor, engineer, and ordinary Soviet man. The diaries that vividly demonstrate conditions at which people could accept Bolshevik ideology depict the typical course of moral evolution of a Russian proletarian of the time and a typical career of boy from a poor rural family that culminated in a meeting with Lenin during his study at the Supreme Party School. Unlike refined literary memoirs, these records are remarkable for their spontaneity.