Description
This interdisciplinary paper aims to examine Russian foreign policy agenda through news coverage of the Russian state-funded international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today), often accused by journalists and foreign politicians of being the country’s foreign policy tool and ‘propaganda machine’. Employing media and journalism studies as well as scholarly writing on international politics, public diplomacy, and propaganda the study aims to:
1) explain in what degree the channel acts as a public diplomacy outlet for Russia by analysing the narratives and messages and comparing them with narratives and messages of the official Russian foreign policy documentation;
2) analyse the differences and similarities in narratives and messages sent out to two distinct audiences by studying the channel’s output in Russian and English languages (where Russian content is directed at Russian speakers abroad, including first of all citizens of former Soviet states), and trace these discrepancies and overlaps to the Russian foreign policy agenda towards different groups;
3) analyse how the narratives and messages that do not match the official Russian foreign policy agenda fit into the overall narratives and messages, and why.
Thus the study aims to add to the understanding of the relationship between foreign policy and international broadcasting as a form of public diplomacy and further to advance the understanding of Russian foreign policy and the ways in which it is understood by scholars and practitioners. It also argues for a wider use of media and journalism theory in studies of public diplomacy.
This paper uses both quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (textual analysis and document analysis) methods and is a part of my PhD thesis at which I am now preparing to submit for examination at City, University of London.
