This article is an attempt to theorize around such three extensive concepts as fashion, politics, and gender. Broadly covered in academic research, the theme of fashion and representation of female politicians, however, requires further analysis and new definitions. Coming from the media studies and having in mind the two common approaches to interconnections between media and politics, namely mediatized politics and politicized media, we transfer these approaches into the sphere of fashion and introduce the notions of politicized fashion and fashionized politics. By doing that, we, on the one hand, are suggesting to view fashion as a part of the political communication sphere[1], as one of the many existing mediums, involved into production and reproduction of the political ideas. On the other hand, fashion can be understood on a more significant level as production and marketing of new styles, which makes it a broad field, of which political and any other communication is just a part.

The article seeks to explore the common ground between bio-politics, gender, patriotism and war nostalgia. Taking off from the Foucaldian notion of biopolitics as a control apparatus exerted over a population, we provide an insight into the modern construction of Russian nation, where personal and collective sacrifice, traditional femininity and masculinity, orthodox religion andwar become the basis for patriotism. On carefully chosen case studies we will show how the state directly and indirectly regulates peoples lives by producing narratives, which are translated into media discourses and with a core of time create specific “gender norms” – women are seen as fertile mothers giving birth to new soldiers, while men are shown as fighters and defenders of their nation. In the constructed discourses nostalgia for a war plays one of the central roles and becomes a ground of a creation of an idea of a nation as one biological body, where brothers and sisters are united together. In these popular culture narratives people’s bodies become a battlefield of domestic politics. Popular culture hence produces a narrative of a healthy nation to ensure the healthy work- and military force. The authors tackle the above-mentioned aims by conducting visual analysis of several films, where the main characters are women in contrast to the majority of films about war. (Batallion (2015), A zori zdes’ tikhie (2015)). 

Ukrainian media community since 2013 is undergoing a painful process of continuously adjusting to and counteracting the circumstances of conflict, with external and internal propaganda, economic pressure being a consequence of the more general crisis, and guidelines coming from the state institutions, such as the Ministry of Information Policy (MIP) (e.g. Bolin, Jordan & Ståhlberg 2016, Pantti 2016, Nygren & Hök 2016). Nygren et al. (2016), based on content analysis and interviews with journalists, conclude that one of the main challenges for the Ukrainian journalists today is a conflict between the ideal of neutrality in coverage and favoring of “patriotic journalism” in practice. According to Ukrainian scholars, there are today three groups of journalists: patriotism-charged, who give up standards for the sake of fighting propaganda; supporters of universal standards; and a mixed group (Dutsyk 2017). 

In order to highlight the role of professional journalism organizations in this divide, this paper focuses on a specific case: project “Two countries – one profession” initiated and supported by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Being based on the dialogue between Ukrainian and Russian professional journalism organizations around professional standards and safety of journalists, the project is perceived as contradictory and provocative by a part of the Ukrainian media community who suggest that it is “non-patriotic” and “anti-Ukrainian”. 

The paper is based on analysis of observations of meetings between the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and the Russian Union of Journalists, interviews with representatives of these and other media organizations and experts in Ukraine, focus groups with the journalists involved in the project, and negative and positive reactions to this project by the Ukrainian media community. It uses Hanitzsch’s model of deconstruction of journalism culture (Hanitzsch 2007, Nygren et al 2016) and Mouffe’s (2013, p.7) conceptualization of agonistic vs. antagonistic struggle.

In a process of continuously adjusting to and counteracting the circumstances of conflict since 2014, the Ukrainian media community has become polarized (Budivska & Orlova, 2017). Nygren et al. (2018) observe a confrontation between the ideal of neutrality in coverage and favoring “patriotic journalism” in practice among Ukrainian journalists. This article takes this discussion further and highlights the role of professional journalism associations and international organizations in the struggles within the journalism culture in the situation of conflict. The article uses Ginosar’s (2015) interpretation of Hanitzsch’s (2007) model of journalism culture and Mouffe’s (2013) conceptualization of agonistic vs. antagonistic struggle to discuss the project Two Countries — One Profession is initiated and supported by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Finally, it draws on the reactions by the Ukrainian media community.

This chapter focuses on the attitudes of Russian journalists toward media representations of women politicians. It seeks to answer the following questions: How does the culture of political journalism influence gendering of women politicians? And what makes the Russian culture of political journalism unique when it comes to the coverage women politicians get? The chapter addresses the journalists’ interpretations of the low number of women politicians in media content, and turns to the journalists’ reasoning behind gender spotlighting and stereotyping. Highlighting the contradictions between the ideas, practices, and ideals present in the culture of the ‘quality’ political journalism in Russia, the chapter discusses how journalists envision the future of media representations of women politicians and how this relates to the problem of gender inequality in the political realm.

Kirill Polkovs doktorsavhandling Queering Images of Russia in Sweden: Discursive hegemony and counter-hegemonic articulations 1991–2019 tar ett kritiskt perspektiv på internationella relationer, särskilt med fokus på kulturella representationer av nationer. I en konfliktfylld värld föreslår Polkov att queer mångfald i föreställningar om sexualitet och nationer är ett svar på både den »homofobiska heteronationalismen» i auktoritära regimer och kolonialismen inom den västerländska HBTQ-rättighetsdiskursen.

The Ukrainian Euromaidan protests in 2013, alongside the Brexit vote and the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, have strongly changed the imaginary of Europe. Apart from ideological shifts and geopolitical changes, the situation in Ukraine has led to a geographic relocation and displacement of media producers and audiences alike. Yet, in the Ukrainian context and beyond, little is known about dislocated journalists in conflict situations. This article addresses the specific experiences of immigrant and internally displaced journalists, their imagined audiences and the overarching construction of post-revolutionary Ukraine as an imagined community. The argument draws empirically from the dislocatory experiences and relocatory trajectories of two groups: immigrant journalists, who moved to Ukraine from Russia, and journalists who migrated internally – to Kyiv and other government-controlled Ukrainian regions from Crimea and non-government-controlled areas of Donbas. For immigrant and internally displaced journalists, the search for new identities and positions is strongly related to their imagination of the audiences. The journalists notice a simultaneous fragmentation and unification of the audiences driven by both top-down and down-up intentions of post-revolutionary nation building. They hope to contribute to turning the fragmented communities into a media nation that will perceive them as ‘us’.

Journalism culture is described by scholars as “one of the resources journalists draw upon to coordinate their activities as reporters, photographers, and editors” (Zelizer 2005, p. 204). Importantly, journalism cultures should be analyzed not only in connection to the contexts, but also in and as processes (Voronova 2014, p. 221). While most journalism cultures in the world face similar challenges, such as commercialization and digitalization, some of them are challenged by more radical challenges, such as war conflicts. Ukrainian journalism culture since 2013 is undergoing a painful process of continuously adjusting to and counteracting the circumstances of conflict, with external and internal propaganda (e.g. coming from the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk), economic pressure being a consequence of the more general crisis, and guidelines coming from the state institutions, such as the Ministry of Information Policy (MIP) (e.g. Bolin, Jordan & Ståhlberg 2016, Pantti 2016, Nygren & Hök 2016). 

Nygren et al. (2016), based on content analysis and interviews with journalists, conclude that one of the main challenges for the Ukrainian journalists today is a conflict between the ideal of neutrality in coverage and favoring of “patriotic journalism” in practice. This paper takes this discussion further and suggests to look at how the professional journalism organizations in Ukraine reflect upon this conflict, which journalists themselves define as a split between journalists and “Glory-to-Ukraine-journalists” (Sklyarevskaya 2016, October 20th). How does the participation of Ukrainian journalism organizations in the discussion of objectivity vs. patriotism look like on different levels – international, regional, national and local? Is there a possibility to retain a national culture of journalism in the situation of crisis, or does it inevitably end up in splitting to many journalism cultures that have their own rules, beliefs and ideals? 

Using Hanitzsch’s model of deconstruction of journalism culture (Hanitzsch 2007, Nygren et al 2016), and focusing specifically on the dimension of epistemological beliefs, this paper analyzes a specific case: project ”Two countries – one profession” initiated and supported by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. The project consists of regular round tables where senior representatives from Ukrainian and Russian professional journalism organizations meet to discuss ways to improve professional standards and safety of journalists, as well as collaborative projects between young journalists from the two countries. The project is perceived as contradictory and provocative by a part of the Ukrainian media community (e.g. Rudenko 2016, December 15th). The paper is based on analysis of observations of meetings between the National Union of 

Journalists of Ukraine and the Russian Union of Journalists, interviews with representatives of these and other media organizations and experts in Ukraine, focus groups with the young journalists involved in the project, and negative and positive reactions to this project by the Ukrainian media community.

The chapter poses a question whether and where in the situation of conflict there is a space for dialogue. What is the role of journalism and journalists in the discursive construction of the dialogic spaces? The chapter focuses on the discursive construction of the spaces for dialogue by international organizations, professional associations, and individual journalists in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

This paper suggests to study the phenomena of gendering in political journalism from intersectionality perspective (Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005) in order to understand gendering in the framework of other discriminatory and promoting mechanisms in political news. Gendering is understood as the perceived imprint of gender on the media portrayal of politics and politicians, as well as the processes whereby gendered media representations materialize ( V oronova, 2014). The paper is based on forty semi-structured interviews with political journalists working for the quality press in Russia and Sweden. The choice of the countries is driven by the wish to explore the difficulties and similarities of the journalists’ conceptualizations of gendering and other discriminatory and promoting mechanisms in two very different political and cultural contexts. The paper shows that the journalists in both countries highlight the importance of not only gender mainstreaming, but diversity in the content as a democratic value, where gender stands in the same row with other difference-making categories (such as ethnicity, sexuality etc.). The paper highlights the difficulties and contradictions the Russian and Swedish political journalists face trying to achieve their diversity ideal. The paper suggests a definition of intersectional labelling in political journalism, and proposes that it is an ambiguous process, which can be either discriminatory or promoting, depending on its manifestations. Moreover, its application is contextual, and is related to the journalists’ vision of ethics, commercial benefits of the media organization, and press freedom. 

This article focuses on the gender politics of the news broadcast on the Russian state-controlled TV channels – Channel One (Pervyj kanal), Russia-1 (Rossiya-1), Russia-24 (Rossiya-24), NTV and RT (formerly Russia Today) – from January to September 2015, a period when the TV news closely followed the conflict in Ukraine and the growing tensions between Russia and Europe. The study shows that the news on the state-controlled TV channels interpret the state politics in only one possible way – ascribing the most traditional and essentialist characteristics to the country, prioritizing male actors and military activities and suggesting no alternatives to ‘(re)masculinization’ of the image of Russia in the situation of the conflict on the territory of another state, despite the alleged disengagement of the country in it. The article concludes that the state-controlled TV channels use essentialist gendering as a part of nation-branding and nation-building strategies, with an aim to construct the gendered and intersectionalized ideology of the ‘Russian world’ that would target both internal and external audiences and go beyond the borders of the Russian Federation.

Гендер в политической журналистике как вопрос демократии: российские и шведские журналисты о свободе печати и гендерном равенстве

Воронова Людмила Александровна, PhD, преподаватель кафедры медиа-исследований университета Седерторн (Стокгольм, Швеция)

Гендерные медиа-исследователи часто обсуждают гендерные стереотипы как проблему демократии. Так, Китцингер (Kitzinger 1998) понимает политическую журналистику как «гендер-политику», дискурсивную практику, несущую в себе потенциал как для продвижения демократического идеала гендерного равенства, так и для воспроизведения традиционных стереотипов и утверждения существующей гендерной иерархии. Калламар (Callamard 2006) предлагает считать гендерные стереотипы в СМИ особым видом цензуры, которая, как правило, действует в пользу мужчин, сокращая для женщин возможность быть объективно представленными в медиа-дискурсе. Более того, гендерное равенство, по мнению исследователей, практически рифмуется со свободой печати, причем равенство мужчин и женщин воспринимается ими как «показатель реализации настоящей и зрелой демократии» (Hermes 2013).

Проведя интервью с сорока журналистами, работающими в качественных изданиях России и Швеции (интервью проводились в 2011-12 гг.), мы выяснили, что российские и шведские журналисты воспринимают свободу печати и гендерное равенство как непременные атрибуты демократии. Тем не менее, между их представлениями о балансе этих двух идеалов есть существенные различия. Так, российские журналисты находят свободу прессы гораздо более ценным элементом демократии, чем гендерное равенство, и готовы поступиться принципом продвижения последнего, если это необходимо для выполнения роли «сторожевой собаки» власти. Гендерные стереотипы, хоть и идут вразрез с демократическими идеалами качественной прессы, могут становиться одним из инструментов критики политиков. Более того, по мнению российских журналистов, политики могут использовать гендерную повестку для «обуздания» свободной прессы.

Шведские журналисты не видят никакого противоречия между идеалами гендерного равенства и свободы печати, считая естественной ситуацию, когда в продвижении гендерного равенства одинаково заинтересованы и качественные издания, и власть, что позволяет им вступать в гармоничный диалог. Хотя шведские журналисты крайне критично настроены по отношению к каким-либо ограничениям относительно контента, вводимым извне, они признают необходимость тщательной проработки внутренних ограничений: так, к примеру, они внимательно прислушиваются к гендерной критике контента, поступающей не только от читателей, но и от политиков.

Таким образом, и российские, и шведские журналисты считают гендер в политической журналистике вопросом демократии. Несмотря на бóльшую критичность российских журналистов по отношению к ограничениям свободы печати, их позиция защиты более уязвима, чем позиция их шведских коллег: оправдывая использование гендерных стереотипов в прессе, они поощряют и традиционное представление о гендерной иерархии в обществе, где власть воспринимается как мужчина и доминанта, а пресса как зависимая женщина. Тем не менее, позиция шведских журналистов тоже неоднозначна: воспринимая шведскую политическую и медийную систему как воплощение демократии, они перестают критически воспринимать исчезновение гендерного равенства как темы в журналистской повестке дня – факт, отмечаемый гендерными экспертами и активистами (Rönngren 2014).

The news media are expected to provide equal space to female and male political actors, promoting the idea of equal access to political power, since they are recognized as a holder of power with a social responsibility to respect gender equality. However, as previous research shows, political news coverage is characterized by so-called “gendered mediation” (Gidengil and Everitt 1999), i.e., gender imbalance, stereotypes, and a lack of discussions about gender inequality. Scholars point to media logic, organization, and individual characteristics of journalists as the main reasons for this pattern, but still very little is known about how and why gendered mediation is practiced and processed in political news.

This dissertation focuses on gendering understood as the perceived imprint of gender on the media portrayal of politics and politicians, as well as the processes by which gendered representations materialize. By applying a perspective of comparative journalism culture studies (Hanitzsch 2007; Hanitzsch and Donsbach 2012), it examines the processes and modes of origin of gendering as they are perceived and experienced by journalists. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 40 journalists working for the quality press in Russia and Sweden.

The results show that the national culture of political journalism, and the context it is located within, are of crucial importance for understanding gendering and its modes of origin. Gendering may cause problems to the democratic development of society and the position of the quality press in it; however, it also offers a potential for promoting gender equality. The choice of the form of gendering does not fully depend on journalists. It depends on the contextual possibilities for journalists to fulfill the gender-ethical ideal of the quality outlet as long as they need to meet the demands of society and market, and to face the challenges of political communication.

Since the 1960-s, when gender media studies originated, a special attention of gender media scholars has been paid to the different aspects of political communication. “Gendered mediation” (Gidengil and Everitt 1999), or “gendering”, of politicians and politics is considered to have a crucial influence both on the voter recognition of female and male candidates, and political participation of women and men. Scholars have provided potential reasons, which can explain the way women and men politicians, as well as the problem of the gender imbalance in political sphere are covered in political journalism (e.g. Braden 1996, Ross 2002, Falk 2008). Despite the media institution (its logic, organization, and individual characteristics of the media producers) being defined as the key “guilty party” of the patterns revealed by the scholars, journalists have remained silent producers of the assumed “gendered mediation”.

This paper turns to the political journalists’ vision of the (gendered) media portrayal of politicians and politics. Its aim is to explore the reasons of gendering in quality press, as they are conceptualized by political journalists. The study focuses on journalists working in two different cultural and political contexts – in Russia and in Sweden. The choice of the cases is driven by the wish to define the similar and different elements in the journalists’ conceptions of the reasons of gendering in different political and cultural contexts, where the two cases work as an illustration of the global tendency of mediatization of politics.

Based on the analytical framework suggested by Hanitzsch (2007), the paper turns to the journalists’ conceptions of gendering in relation to their concern of the professional norms and ethical standards, institutional roles, and epistemological beliefs. The concluding discussion links gendering as a component of the national culture of political journalism and the global tendency of mediatization of politics.

This paper explores gendering in political journalism – the perceived imprint of gender on the media portrayal of politics and politicians, as well as the processes whereby gendered media representations materialize. Gendering here is understood as an ambiguous process, which can be either discriminatory or promoting, depending on its manifestations (e.g. gender stereotypes or counter-stereotypes, gender-spotlighting or gender-aware story). Moreover, this paper suggests to study this phenomena from intersectionality perspective (Davis 2008, McCall 2005) in order to understand gendering in the framework of other discriminatory and promoting mechanisms in political news.

The paper is based on forty semi-structured interviews with political journalists working for the quality press in Russia and Sweden. The choice of the countries is driven by the wish to explore the difficulties and similarities of the journalists’ conceptualizations of gendering in two very different political and cultural contexts. The paper shows that the journalists in both countries highlight the importance of not only gender mainstreaming, but diversity in the content in general as a democratic value, where gender stands in the same row with other difference-making categories (such as ethnicity, sexuality etc.). The paper highlights the difficulties and contradictions the Russian and Swedish political journalists face trying to achieve their diversity ideal. As such, the paper discusses the reasons for the “double othering” of foreign women politicians in the Russian press and the ridiculing of Russian male politicians in the Swedish press, the attempts of the Russian journalists to remain gender-neutral in the current homophobic context and their Swedish colleagues’ striving for keeping gender as an issue on the media agenda when it is being replaced from the political agenda by the discussions of race and ethnicity issues.

Since the 1960-s, when gender media studies originated, a special attention of gender media scholars has been paid to the different aspects of political communication. “Gendered mediation” (Gidengil and Everitt 1999), or “gendering”, of politicians and politics is considered to have a crucial influence both on the voter recognition of female and male candidates, and political participation of women and men. Scholars have provided potential reasons, which can explain the way women and men politicians, as well as the problem of the gender imbalance in political sphere are covered in political journalism (e.g. Braden 1996, Ross 2002, Falk 2008). Despite the media institution (its logic, organization, and individual characteristics of the media producers) being defined as the key “guilty party” of the patterns revealed by the scholars, journalists have remained silent producers of the assumed “gendered mediation”.

This paper turns to the political journalists’ vision of the (gendered) media portrayal of politicians and politics. Its aim is to explore the reasons of gendering in quality press, as they are conceptualized by political journalists. The study focuses on journalists working in two different cultural and political contexts – in Russia and in Sweden. The choice of the cases is driven by the wish to define the similar and different elements in the journalists’ conceptions of the reasons of gendering in different political and cultural contexts, where the two cases work as an illustration of the global tendency of mediatization of politics. The study is based on forty semi-structured interviews with political and international reporters, department- and chief-editors working for the quality press in the two countries.

Based on the analytical framework suggested by Hanitzsch (2007), the paper turns to the journalists’ conceptions of gendering in relation to their concern of the professional norms and ethical standards, institutional roles, and epistemological beliefs. The concluding discussion links gendering as a component of the national culture of political journalism and the global tendency of mediatization of politics.

This article focuses on gendered media representations as an instrument of getting economicbenefits and a tool of interaction with readers. Based on interviews with Russian and Swedish quality press’ employees, this study shows that gendered media representations are one of the resources of the quality press’ competitiveness on the media-market. However, the choice of the gendered representations, which attract both the audiences and advertisers, is strictly context-dependent.

Since 2013, scholars have been discussing events happening in Ukraine from the perspective of the “war of narratives” (Khaldarova and Pantti 2016). In this war, information has become one of the main weapons (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010), and fight for the publics has crossed the borders of the ordinary economic and political struggles. Previous research has mainly focused on the attempts of the Russian mainstream state-controlled media and other actors (e.g. trolls on social media) to influence the Russian-speaking audiences in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere by spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda (see Pantti 2016). Less attention has been given to the Ukrainian media community and the internal processes in it in the period of crisis (Bolin, Jordan & Ståhlberg 2016). Being a part of the research project ”From nation branding to information war”, this paper focuses on the visions of the publics by the Ukrainian media community today. How do representatives of the media community imagine and perceive their audiences? What are the changes that have occurred along with the territorial changes – loss of Crimea to Russia and establishment of selfproclaimed ”people’s republics” in the East of the country? And which language do media producers choose today to speak to their audiences? Through the prism of “imagined audiences” (e.g. Litt and Hargitai 2016, boyd 2008) and “imagined communities” (Anderson 2006), this paper discusses several aspects of the changes in the visions of the audiences by the Ukrainian media community. First, it focuses on the visions of the audiences by the journalists who due to the crisis had to move geographically and, thus, work for a different audience today. As such, it takes up the cases of journalists who moved from Crimea and the socalled LPR and DPR to Kyiv or other Ukrainian regions. Another case is journalists from Russia who moved to Ukraine for ideological reasons. Second, the paper discusses the reactions of the media community to the need for reaching out to the audiences in Crimea and so-called DPR/LPR, the technological and ideological challenges of this communication. Third, it focuses on a serious challenge and change concerning the language, in which the audiences are addressed. Due to new legislative proposals and, according to some media experts, economic reasons, Ukrainian language is becoming more and more dominant both in broadcast and printed media. Yet, simultaneously Ukraine is one of successful producers of transnational entertainment products in Russian language (e.g. popular travel show “Oryol i Reshka” by TeenSpirit Production which is broadcast in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan).

В то время как гендерные исследования СМИ стали признанной областью медиа-исследований, использование т.н. интерсекционального подхода (Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005) встречается редко. Интерсекциональный подход предполагает, что вместо отдельной категории «гендер» исследователь обращает внимание на всю «матрицу доминирования» (Collins, 2000) - пересечение таких категорий, как гендер, класс, этническая и расовая принадлежность, религиозные взгляды, сексуальные предпочтения, физическая и умственная полноценность и т.д. Это позволяет исследователю лучше понять дискриминационные механизмы и механизмы продвижения определенных акторов и групп. Матрица доминирования может использоваться как в исследованиях медиа-контента (например, для получения представлений о стереотипах, присутствующих в новостном или развлекательном контенте), так и в исследованиях медиа-организаций (для того, чтобы понять, какие группы имеют доступ к производству медиа и на основании чего в разных контекстах выстраивается «стеклянный потолок», который не позволяет представителям определенных групп продвигаться по карьерной лестнице в медиа-индустрии).

Как показало основанное на интервью исследование процесса гендеринга в политической журналистике в качественной прессе России и Швеции (который характеризуется присвоением гендерных категорий политикам и политическим процессам - см. Voronova, 2014), сами журналисты в обоих контекстах заявляют о неотрывности категории гендера от других категорий (этническая и расовая принадлежность, класс, сексуальные предпочтения, религиозные взгляды и т.д.), которые могут быть задействованы в производстве новостей. Как и гендеринг, акцентирование других категорий может носить как дискриминационный, так и позитивный характер. Российские журналисты отмечали, что высказывания зарубежных женщин-политиков часто подаются как особенно чуждые в связи с пересечением двух категорий (гендер и национальность), а шведские журналисты говорят о высмеивании российских мужчин-политиков в прессе Швеции, связанным с несоответствием их характеристик мужественности тем, что приняты в Швеции. Журналисты, работающие в качественной прессе, в обеих странах сталкиваются с проблемой несоответствия их убеждений о демократической роли СМИ с реалиями медиа-ландшафта. Если в российском контексте разнообразие (diversity) в медиа-контенте и обсуждение разнообразия как общественной задачи зачастую не считается выгодным с точки зрения рекламных продаж и конкуренции на медиа-рынке («стереотипы продаются лучше»), в Швеции гендерная проблематика сегодня вытесняется обсуждением вопросов, связанных с категориями этнической и расовой принадлежности, что неоднозначно воспринимается журналистами: разнообразие важно, но ведь и гендерное равенство все еще не достигнуто. Более того, медиа-контент во многом является, по мнению журналистов, отражением интерсекциональной иерархии в медиа-организации, которая также должна стать более открытой и неоднородной.

Таким образом, с точки зрения журналистов, для борьбы со стереотипами в медиа-контенте и преодоления дискриминационных механизмов в медиа-индустрии, необходимо обращать внимание не только на категорию гендера, но на всю «матрицу доминирования». Этот же подход, несмотря на методологические сложности (см. Lünenborg and Fürsich, 2014), можно рекомендовать для рассмотрения и медиа-исследователям, особенно в пост-советском пространстве, где включение категории социального класса традиционно считается важным.

Since 2013, scholars have been discussing events happening in Ukraine from the perspective of the “war of narratives” (Khaldarova and Pantti 2016). In this war, information has become one of the main weapons (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010), and fight for the publics has crossed the borders of the ordinary economic and political struggles. Previous research has mainly focused on the attempts of the Russian mainstream state-controlled media to influence the Russian-speaking audiences in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere by spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda (see Pantti 2016). Less attention has been given to the Ukrainian media community and the internal processes in it in the period of crisis (Bolin, Jordan & Ståhlberg 2016). Being a part of the research project ”From nation branding to information war”, this paper focuses on a very particular group of the representatives of the Ukrainian media community – Russian journalists who moved to Ukraine and work for Ukrainian audiences. This paper applies the theoretical prism of “imagined audiences” (e.g. Litt and Hargitai 2016, boyd 2008) and “imagined communities” (Anderson 2006). The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with seven journalists conducted in 2017. What are the motivations behind their choice of the new geographic location and place of work? What are the challenges that they face adjusting to the new journalism culture and how do they see their role in the “war of narratives”? How do they imagine and perceive their audiences? And how do they relate to the language issue, as Ukrainian language is becoming more and more dominant both in broadcast and printed media?

Interrelations between politics and media are often described as a powerplay, a rumba or even a danse macabre, and the key question of political communication is “who leads and who follows” in the “power-play between politicians and journalists” (Ross, 2010, p. 274). As today “[m]eaning, media and politics become blurred, but arguably in highly gendered ways” (Holmes, 2007, p. 12), gender inevitably enters the discussion of the journalists-politicians’ interactions. Based on interviews with 40 Russian and Swedish political reporters working for the “quality” press, this paper discusses the role of gender as a social practice (Löfgren Nilsson, 2010) in journalists-politicians’ communication in different political and cultural contexts, which Russia and Sweden represent. The paper answers the following questions: Do journalists perceive the interrelations with politicians as gendered? Do they use gendered interrelations strategically to acquire information efficiently? How do the gendered political communication practices differ dependent on the political and cultural context?

Today the boundaries between professional and amateur photography are increasingly blurred. The ubiquity of amateur images raises concerns about the field's ‘de-professionalisation’ [e.g. Good and Lowe 2017; Josephi and O’Donnell 2023; Mäenpää 2023b; Nilsson 2021). This article explores perspectives on professionalism and non-professionalism from educators and students enrolled in full-time photojournalism and documentary photography programmes in Russia and Sweden. Through individual interviews and focus groups, this study shows that photography educators and their students are responding to the challenges of ‘de-professionalisation’ by seeking to better navigate the digital attention economy. They suggest to re-evaluate professionalism in photography through feelings, meaning-making and a ‘(r)evolution’ of photographic practice.

Army marching towards the European capitals, missiles with sarcastic yellow smileys on their boards, arrows depicting the distance between Moscow and the potential targets of Russia's "friendly" invasion – the TV news cast by the national Pyatyj channel of the Russian television (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemPHeiamBo) raised a broad discussion both inside and outside of the Russian borders. Should this and similar messages be read as an outright threat to the West, a mockery, or as populist flirting with the Russian citizens (see Schreck 2015)? From the perspective of gender media studies, understanding political journalism as "gender-politics" in itself (Kitzinger 1998), such messages can be viewed as an ultimate case of gendering in political journalism (Voronova 2014). Represented by thousands of male soldiers, Russia appears as a man, or even the Man – ready to penetrate and explode, come and take, enter and appropriate. This paper explores political news broadcast on the Russian state-controlled TV-channels – Pervyj, Rossiya-1, Rossiya-24, Russia Today and NTV starting from January 2015. Year 2015 is chosen due to two reasons. First, the news constantly follow the continuing conflict in Ukraine and escalation of the tensions between Russia and Europe. The conflict here is viewed as an accelerator for masculinization of the image of the country. Second, this year sees the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, which becomes yet another reason for discussions of the military image of Russia. The news are analyzed with the use of multimodal discourse analysis (Wildfeuer 2014) and some elements of feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar 2005). The study applies intersectional perspective (Davis 2008; McCall 2005) and observes a broader tendency in the Russian political news of constructing a homogeneous image of Russia as a Slavic, heterosexual, orthodox Christian man.

One of the few well-known Russian women politicians Irina Khakamada wrote in her book “Sex in big politics”: “[As awoman] you are welcome to be sniper, tamer, war reporter. You are, however, not welcome to politics, because politics ispower”. The way women politicians are perceived in political circles, as well as in public in general, to a high degreedepends on politicians’ media representations. It makes intersection of gender, media, and politics, and its dimensionalcomplex of powers, an especially important arena to study. With few women in the political sphere and highly feminizedjournalistic profession, Russia constitutes an interesting case, especially taking into account the Soviet interpretation ofgender equality achievement and the Post-Soviet backlash. Journalists and editors of the Russian quality press will beinterviewed in an attempt to answer the question why, when and by what means women politicians are gender framed in themedia discourse.

The article is devoted to comparative analysis of women-politicians’ coverage in quality press of Russia and Sweden. Author presents image systems used by the media of two countries as systems of myths and antimyths able to strengthen traditional stereotypes or, vice versa, promote gender equality in political sphere.

Понятие «информационная война» используется сегодня все чаще как в медийных, так и в академических дискурсах. Под информационной войной понимают конфликт, в котором информация становится одним из основных видов оружия (напр., Pantti 2016, Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010), а т.н. информационный менеджмент – техники распространения дезинформации и попытки влияния на медиа – является одним из основных измерений конфликта (Tumber & Webster 2006). Украинский кризис – события, происходящие в стране с 2013 года: протесты в Киеве («Евромайдан»), смена правительства, присоединение Крыма к Российской Федерации, продолжающееся военное противостояние на востоке страны, - сегодня все чаще становится объектом международных исследований, рассматривающих происходящее как один из ярких примеров «войны нарративов» (Khaldarova and Pantti 2016). Трудности с верификацией информации, пристрастность информационных источников, вовлеченность в конфликт сторонних интересов поставили журналистов, освещающих события на Украине (как украинских, так и представителей других стран), перед вызовом (Pantti 2016).

Проблема, которую отмечают при этом некоторые исследователи, - фиксация международного академического сообщества на российских медиа как источнике информационного менеджмента или даже пропаганды (см. Pantti 2016). Лишь немногие исследования предлагают анализ информационного менеджмента внутри Украины (Bolin, Jordan & Ståhlberg 2016). Между тем, даже предварительный взгляд на это медиа-пространство выявляет его неоднородность. Украинское медиа-сообщество оказалось расколото: приверженцы глобальных и «вечных» журналистских идеалов не находят понимания у сторонников «патриотической журналистики». Первые обвиняют вторых в само-цензуре и следовании интересам институтов власти, а вторые первых – в сотрудничестве с «вражескими агентами».

Данный исследовательский проект на различных примерах (запрет на определенные российские медиа-продукты; радикальная инициатива по поиску «пособников террористов» среди журналистов – «Миротворец» и др.) рассматривает проблему, с которой столкнулось украинское медиа-сообщество, как частный случай общей тенденции. Эта тенденция может быть обозначена как идеологизация СМИ, что с одной стороны, является результатом, а с другой стороны, благодатной почвой для информационной войны. Этой тенденции противостоят различные инициативы, направленные на сохранение приверженности журналистского сообщества профессиональным принципам и стандартам: например, проект ОБСЕ «Две страны – одна профессия», где Союз журналистов России и Национальный союз журналистов Украины обсуждают противодействие языку вражды, или критикуемое внутри страны сотрудничество между украинскими и зарубежными корреспондентами при освещении событий в зоне АТО на востоке Украины.

In a time when neo-conservative tendencies in gender representations are acquiring more and more popularity in the media worldwide – and the domain of humour is certainly no exception (e.g. the US show The Talk) – are there parallel trends to be detected in countries where feminism never has received widespread recognition, as in the case of Russia? What can we learn about gender stereotypes from contemporary Russian infotainment TV shows? This paper will explore these questions by studying two popular shows, Projectorparishilton (“The Paris Hilton’ Projector”) and Devchata (“The Girls”). These weekly ironic-analytical programmes are broadcast prime time on the national channels Channel One and Rossiya-1 and somewhat resembling the format of programmes like Loose Women and The View. With its four male anchors, Projectorparishilton aimed to attract a younger and more progressive audience of both genders and from the beginning ignored any specific gender orientation. By contrast, Devchata – with its female anchors – was explicitly launched with a female audience as their target group, producing a type of humour recognized by essentialists as “female”.Applying a critical perspective, we study verbal and non-verbal constituents of the programmes (including music, gestures, etc.), the interior of the studio, the appearance, behaviour (and jokes!) of the anchors, in order to study how gender, age, culture and nationality are encoded/signified. Based on Laura Mulvey’s term “male gaze”, we introduce the notion of “male humour”, which is implicit not only in the way the anchors appear as subjects and objects of jokes; but also in the position taken by the viewer, regardless of gender. At heart, we question the gendered nature of humour in general and the creation of “women’s space” in the media, which in fact is a reinforcement of traditional gender (and other) stereotypes.

In eighty countries of the world (excluding Russia), there are produced around 3,5 thousand media in Russian language for 30 million Russian speakers (Astafyev 2012). Russophone diaspora is specific, as it has a multilayered (different waves of migration) and multiethnic character (see Pivovar 2008, 2010). The printed media of the three first waves of the Russian emigration are thoroughly studied (e.g., Bogomolov 1994, 2004; Esin 2003; Mikhalev 2009; Suomela 2014; Zhirkov 2003). There are as well several studies on the online space of the “Russian abroad” (e.g., Morgunova 2014; Reut and Teterevleva 2014). Yet, the currently existing printed Russian-language media remain somewhat of a blind spot on the map of the diaspora studies and media studies alike, despite the scale of this media segment.

This study focuses on the printed media segment of the Russophone media abroad. The study is based on a twelve-year long monitoring of Russian-language press that consisted of a basic content analysis of 65 printed media and survey of 64 journalists working for 50 outlets. The materials were collected during the trainings for these journalists organized by the Universal Association of Russian Press (VARP) and Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University.

The study maps the space of the Russian-language press abroad, describes the tendencies characteristic for it, and highlights the typological models within this segment. On the one hand, the Russian-language media abroad are influenced by global processes, which lead to their commercialization, standardization, concentration and integration with non-established media online. On the other hand, these media are oriented at specific audiences, united by the language and culture. The current challenges of these media are related to the political events (such as Ukrainian conflict), as well as the broader problem of self-identification of the Russophone diaspora.

Army marching towards the European capitals, missiles with sarcastic yellow smileys on their boards, arrows depicting the distance between Moscow and the potential targets of Russia’s “friendly” invasion – the TV news cast by the national Pyatyj channel of the Russian television (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemPHeiamBo) raised a broad discussion both inside and outside of the Russian borders. Should this and similar messages be read as an outright threat to the West, a mockery, or as populist flirting with the Russian citizens (see Schreck 2015)? At the same time, in Sweden, the media turn to the discussion of gender mainstreaming as a “weapon” that a “feminine” country like Sweden can use for handling the conflict situations with more “masculine” countries like Saudi Arabia (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/522139?programid=1300).

From the perspective of gender media studies, understanding political journalism as “gender-politics” in itself (Kitzinger 1998), such messages created in the times of external conflict or confrontation can be viewed as ultimate cases of gendering in political journalism (Voronova 2014). Represented by thousands of male soldiers, Russia appears as a man – ready to penetrate and explode, come and take, enter and appropriate, while Sweden appears as a woman – educating, caring, encouraging and using manipulative power rather than force.

This paper explores Russian and Swedish political journalism constructing gendered images of the countries in the time of external conflict or confrontation. The chosen period is year 2015 that provides possibility for analyzing two different conflictual situations that are viewed as accelerators for gendering of the images of the countries involved: the war conflict in Ukraine that Russia is directly involved in, and the diplomatic conflict between Sweden and Saudi Arabia.