The article presents the results of a comparative visual analysis of popular Russian and British music videos. The sample was based on the most viewed music videos on YouTube in 2019. The authors used the modern interpretation of Bourdieu's theory of capital as a theoretical framework for analysis. Bodily capital is considered as an independent type of capital that has physical, erotic, gender, and aesthetic dimensions. One considers that the capitalization of corporeality in a music video is connected with the plot visualization of the accumulation of bodily capital, i.e. the process of body transformation, by working on its physical features, constructing gender identity, modeling erotic behaviour, and aesthetic attributes of appearance. Moreover, the capitalization of corporeality in the video includes demonstration of obtaining direct or symbolic benefits resulting from the conversion of bodily capital into economic, cultural, or social capital. The crucial features of the capitalization of corporeality in Russian videos are the replication of markers of video characters' social status through body attributes, demonstration of aesthetically idealized bodies, and general irony over corporeality. In the British videos, there is less tongue-in-cheek narrative, especially associated with corporeal attributes; more unified body types are demonstrated.
As of July 2021, more than 153 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 globally. Russia has 5.5 million cases with more than 135,000 deaths; while Kyrgyzstan has nearly 132,000 cases and 2000 deaths. While the virus hit the two nations at different times and with different severities, the two nations, as with so many others, both experienced cases of prejudice toward minority groups blamed for the spread of COVID-19. Using integrated threat theory (ITT), this study cross-culturally examines the link between prejudice toward minorities blamed for the spread of COVID-19 in Russia (Asians) and Kyrgyzstan (migrants) and intergroup contact. Results revealed intergroup contact had a positive effect on realistic and symbolic threat. Additionally, results show Kyrgyz respondents had lower levels of symbolic threat than Russian respondents.
ABSTRACT 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 is anchored in compassion to the Eastern Ukraine population speaking the Russian language, the Syrian war is framed to fuel the feeling of national pride by focusing on the Russian greatness as a political and military superpower. This research, thus, extends the theoretical understanding of media representation of war, especially how the changing political context impacts which identities are represented and made potent through different emotional appeals. The article conceptualises visual images as affective anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses and construct emotional relationships between the audience and mediated events.
ABSTRACT In its cinematographic dimension, Soviet Constructivism turns the city into a stage upon which amazing deeds, burlesque situations and acrobatics are performed. The circus, music-hall and variety shows are the new genres that are incorporated first into the theatre, advocated by the Left Front of the Arts (LEF), and shortly afterwards into the cinema. At the same time, the urban space becomes the epitome of the technology propelled by the Soviet state, which drove the industrialisation of the country: factories, machines and engines, road traffic, telecommunications and, of course, the cinema. The present paper addresses these questions – the ‘technification’ and the eccentric view of the city of the Soviet cinema-makers – through the analysis of three period-defining works. The first of these is Glumov's Diary (S. M. Eisenstein, 1923), a satirical short film integrated in the mise-en-scene of Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, a play by Aleksander Ostrovski; the second is The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov, 1924); and the third work studied is The Adventures of Oktiabrina (Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, 1924), the first film by the FEKS group.
ABSTRACT New media introduce mechanics in the news consumption and deliberation of public agenda capable of disrupting the democratic process's normative assumptions (echo chambers, filter bubbles). However, most research has been concerned with cases from Western Europe and the US. In this paper, we examine the fragmentation of the Russian public sphere online. We build on previous works with evidence on networked connections between segments of the online public sphere. We collected news items (N = 210,197) and metadata of 12 news outlets with offline and online reach posted on the largest Russian-language platform during one year (2017). Following a computational approach based on topic modeling and qualitative reading, we match the network segments with their news agendas. Although we do not find evidence of fragmentation, we find divergencies in their agendas. We discuss these findings and their contribution to the discussion of fragmentation of publics and agendas in the digital environment.
