Russian Journal of Communication

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrjc20

Visual images as affective anchors: strategic

narratives in Russia’s Channel One coverage of the
Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts

Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) & Mervi Pantti

To cite this article: Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) & Mervi Pantti (2021): Visual images as affective
anchors: strategic narratives in Russia’s Channel One coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian
conflicts, Russian Journal of Communication, DOI: 10.1080/19409419.2021.1884339

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19409419.2021.1884339

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa

UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group

Published online: 15 Feb 2021.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rrjc20
RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/19409419.2021.1884339

Visual images as affective anchors: strategic narratives in

Russia’s Channel One coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian
conflicts
Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) and Mervi Pantti
Media and Communication Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article explores and compares the visual images used by Received 15 November 2020
Channel One (Ch1), Russia’s biggest state-aligned television Accepted 22 January 2021
broadcaster, to justify Russia’s intervention in two major
KEYWORDS
geopolitical conflicts in recent history: the armed conflict in Strategic narratives; visual
eastern Ukraine and Syria’s civil war. The data reveal that while images; affective anchoring;
Ch1’s projection of Ukrainian conflict is anchored in compassion emotions; war reporting;
to the Eastern Ukraine population speaking the Russian language, television news; Russia
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.

Introduction
Russia has been involved in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent years: the armed
conflict in Ukraine and the civil war in Syria. Both conflicts have been accompanied by
remarkable Russian media campaigns to mobilise public support for its interventions
(e.g. Casula, 2015; Hutchings & Szostek, 2015; Jensen, 2018; Roman et al., 2017).
Russian television channels, which were set up as the main propaganda platform
during the Soviet era (Mickiewicz, 1999; Oates, 2013), play a key role in reproducing
and refining national strategic narratives that work to legitimise military involvement
specifically and foreign policy more generally. Strategic narratives can be defined as a
form of soft power as they aim to justify policies and shape perceptions about certain
actors and events (Roselle et al., 2014).
Throughout President Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the journalistic profession in Russia
has failed to live up to the ideals of keeping the power elite in check (Roudakova, 2017).

CONTACT Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) irina.grigor@helsinki.fi

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

While digital media ecologies generally allow for competition between state television
narratives and counter-narratives in various media forms, they also allow global publics
to watch domestic television channels through different platforms (Hoskins & O’Loughlin,
2010). In the Russian media ecology, alternative voices have been marginalised (Hoskins &
Shchelin, 2018), and the traditional news media has retained its key role in bolstering pro-
government narratives (Gaufman, 2019; Szostek, 2018). In 2014, when the crisis in Ukraine
started to unfold, around 90% of Russians cited television as their main source of infor-
mation (Levada Center, 2014) and 59% were likely to trust their source of information
(Levada Center, 2016). Although the Russian television audience has decreased to 74%
by 2020, television remains the dominant and most pervasive news distribution
medium and enjoys a relatively high level of trust (48–57% depending on the news
topic) (Levada Center, 2020).
The present article contributes to the discussion on the projection of strategic narra-
tives in the Russian media ecology by analysing news coverage of the Syrian and Ukrai-
nian conflicts by one of Russia’s most watched broadcasters, Pervyi Kanal, or Channel
One (Ch1) (Levada Center, 2019). Ch1 is understood in this article as a key tool in articu-
lating the country’s position on international conflicts and creating identity claims around
those conflicts for Russian-speaking audiences (Miskimmon et al., 2012, p. 3). Specifically,
we examine how Ch1 has used visual images to shape the public’s view of Russia’s role in
the aforementioned conflicts and in the contemporary international order.
While the power of images to shape public perceptions of news events has been
emphasised in the extensive literature on media and conflicts (e.g. Domke et al., 2002;
Griffin, 2004; Mirzoeff, 2005; Powell et al., 2015), visual images have received little atten-
tion in the scholarship on strategic narratives. Visual images, we argue, bring emotional
resonance to strategic narratives. They provide the public with emotional resources
that are key to understanding complex political ideas and situations (Hariman & Lucaites,
2007, p. 156) and anchoring them in everyday discourse (Höijer, 2010) and collective
memory (Zelizer, 1998). Accordingly, we conceptualise visual images as affective
anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses
and construct emotional relationships between an audience and mediated events.
The present article is structured as follows: first, we introduce the background of the
Ukrainian and Syrian cases. Then, we discuss the theoretical framework of strategic narra-
tives and the role of the news media, especially images, in communicating strategic nar-
ratives during international conflicts. Finally, we outline the research design and present
the results of the empirical analysis conducted on Ch1’s coverage of the Ukrainian and
Syrian conflicts to account for main patterns as well as similarities and differences in
visual representation.

Context: Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts

Ukraine has been experiencing intense political unrest since November 2013 when Yanu-
kovych decided not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union (EU).
Many Ukrainians perceived this decision as a loss of their European dream, resulting in
deep disappointment in the political regime and protests on Maidan Square (Baysha,
2016). Initially, the protests were peaceful and predominantly consisting of young stu-
dents, however, after the Berkut, Ukraine Special Force, brutally dispersed demonstrators,
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 3

they quickly evolved into a nationwide contention against the authoritarian regime (Sha-
povalova, 2019; Zelinska, 2017). Domestically, this led to pro-EU governmental change in
Kiev, economic instability and a pro-Russian movement in the eastern parts of the
country, which escalated into a series of violent territorial conflicts.
The domestic turmoil was followed by the collapse of the Yanukovych regime in Feb-
ruary 2014 and Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea as well as Russia’s military incursion
into Eastern Ukraine under the pretence of support for the so-called people’s republics:
the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. This was followed
by intensification of the military confrontations between the Russian-backed insurgency
and the Ukrainian government forces. The Ukrainian government and the West have high-
lighted Russia’s provision of economic and political support to separatist militants (Miller,
2019) but Russian continues to deny its involvement (Freedman, 2019). The crisis has been
seen as the culmination of negative relations between Russia and the West (Charap &
Shapiro, 2015; Haukkala, 2015, p. 37; see also Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017, p. 114).
The EU and the United States (US) implemented sanctions against Russia, which were
extended after the annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysian Airlines passenger
flight MH17 in July 2014 by Buk missile, which was officially identified as a Russian weapon
in 2018 (Government of the Netherlands).
Meanwhile, in Syria, armed conflict began in early 2011 with political protests, which
were met with increasing violence by Bashar al-Assad’s government. This led to a civil
war between the government forces and opposition groups. The Syrian opposition con-
sisted of secular and Islamist armed groups, including a variety of jihadist groups, such as
the competing Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) (Anzalone,
2016). The expansionism of ISIS further contributed to the escalation of the conflict (Dal,
2016). In June 2014, after consolidating its hold over several cities in Iraq and Syria, the
group declared the establishment of a caliphate and changed its name to the Islamic
State (Hassan, 2018).
The rise of the ISIS threat created security and political challenges in many countries
and motivated the international community to intervene in the civil war. In September
2014, the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS was formed. While the use of force by
the coalition was officially requested and welcomed by Iraq government, the Syrian gov-
ernment characterised the coalition’s operations as a violation of its sovereignty (Gill,
2016, pp. 361–362). The US and its allies, in return, blamed the al-Assad regime for begin-
ning the civil war and increasing the number of civilian casualties. The Coalition sup-
ported Syrian rebels identified by the US as a moderate opposition (Casula, 2015).
Russia was a long-term ally of al-Assad’s government and started its military campaign
in Syria in September 2015 in response to a formal request by al-Assad for help against
anti-government groups. Russia has justified its foray into Syria as an effort to fight
global terrorism and defeat ISIS, but Russia’s strategic objectives included keeping its
long-time ally in power and securing continued access to the Tartus naval base. Mean-
while, Putin defined Russia’s goal in Syria as ‘stabilising the legitimate power in Syria
and creating the conditions for political compromise’ (Interfax, 2015). Its military and dip-
lomatic intervention has ensured Russia’s important role in conflict resolution processes
(Casula, 2015). Russia has used media coverage as an attempt to showcase its re-emer-
gence as a global superpower (Frolovskiy, 2019).
4 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

The Russian military intervention strengthened the controversy between Russia and
the US and its allies. Also, the relationship between Russia and Turkey deteriorated
because Turkey supported some Syrian rebel groups, first to overthrow the al-Assad
regime and later to fight the Syrian Kurds (Köstem, 2020). The downing of a Russian
Su-24 fighter jet by Turkish air forces in November 2015 resulted in a political crisis
between the two countries with severe political and economic consequences for
Turkey (Köstem, 2018). Russia criticised the operations conducted by the US-led coalition
and Turkey, claiming that they were not only erratic but also purposefully supported ter-
roristic groups in Syria (Casula, 2015). In return, international organisations accused Russia
of committing war crimes in Syria and killing hundreds of civilians in aerial attacks
(Amnesty International, 2018; Human Rights Watch, 2018).

Strategic narratives and media

Roselle et al. (2014, p. 2) defined strategic narratives as a ‘means for political actors to con-
struct a shared meaning of the past, present and future of international politics to shape
the behaviour of domestic and international actors’. This widely-quoted definition has
been used to show how strategic narratives are always intentionally constructed by pol-
itical actors to influence their target audience and facilitate their policymaking (Freedman,
2006; Miskimmon et al., 2012).
The conceptual framework of strategic narratives is recognised as a systematic and
specific approach to examining soft power (Roselle et al., 2014). In particular, it looks at
how and what narratives are used by foreign policy actors, including authoritarian
states, such as Russia (Hutchings & Szostek, 2015; Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017); blog-
gers and other narrative intermediaries (Hellman & Wagnsson, 2015; Zhabotynska & Veliv-
chenko, 2019); and international organisations, such as the EU (e.g. Chaban et al., 2017).
Strategic narratives are communicated on three levels. First, system narratives imagine a
desired international order. Second, issue narratives project a specific interpretation of
events to influence policy actions. Third, identity narratives construct appealing identity
claims and shape an understanding of ‘others’ (Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017; Roselle
et al., 2014).
The temporality of these narratives (‘the past, present and future of international poli-
tics’ (Roselle et al., 2014, p. 2)) refers to the quality of the narratives. A strategic narrative is
like a ‘palimpsest’ (van Noort, 2020, p. 186), a rewritten text that carries traces of the past.
In other words, strategic narratives appropriate past discourses, ideas and images to
explain political actions in the present. The persuasiveness of strategic narratives, as
van Noort (2020) noted, depends on how historical ideas are translated or articulated
in present narratives. The power of narratives, then, works through the activation of
associations that resonate with the intended audience’s values and emotions (Freedman,
2006, p. 23).
In the present article, we draw on the idea that strategic narratives are fluid and adap-
tive to the context; they are fluid in the sense that they are situated in a specific political
and media context and because they may combine miscellaneous discourses. For
example, throughout Putin’s presidency, Russian greatpowerness has been a constant
and dominant strategic narrative (Miskimmon et al., 2013; Teper, 2018), but blended
the legacy of the Soviet Union, the values of Orthodox Christianity and anti-Western
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 5

sentiments. The narrative is largely based on binary oppositions and a well-rooted set of
stereotypes that present Russia as spiritual, moral and loyal to traditional values, while the
West is seen as immoral and acting only in its vested interests (Malinova, 2014).
World War II (WWII) has been used to wield a powerful strategic narrative in contem-
porary Russia. This narrative is deeply embedded in the culture and loaded with symbolic
power, providing a framework through which the present is comprehended (e.g. Colley,
2019; Oates & Steiner, 2018). Strategic narratives that are tightly linked to WWII appear to
be naturally embedded in individuals’ worldviews and effectively invoke emotions and
cultural values. The literature shows that WWII has been heavily used to discursively con-
struct the Ukrainian crisis in Russian media, especially by associating WWII and fascist
crimes with the Ukrainian government (Edele, 2017; Gaufman, 2015; Spiessens, 2019).
An analysis of strategic narratives can focus on processes of narrative formation, nar-
rative projection and narrative reception (Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2019). As media scho-
lars, we are interested in the role of media in projecting or challenging dominant strategic
narratives. In an increasingly visual media ecology, it is important to account for the role
of visuals in sustaining or challenging strategic narratives. Therefore, our main focus on
the visuals that have been used by Ch1 to support the strategic narratives related to
the Ukrainian crisis and Syrian war.

War images and emotions

Visuals draw their importance not only from their content but also from the emotions that
their content evokes in their audience (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2020). Besides acting as
a driver of emotions, visuals can also function as representations of emotions (Schlag,
2018, p. 211). They direct our attention to specific events or issues and move us emotion-
ally. At the same time, images can make moments of distress visible to others. Thus,
images represent the feelings of individuals and symbolise the emotions of communities.
Therefore, emotions are not (only) personal but collective (Mercer, 2014). As collective
phenomena, emotions are regarded as political in the sense that they function as evalua-
tive judgments and social bonds between community members (Fattah & Fierke, 2009,
p. 70; Nussbaum, 1996, p. 35). Emotions are thus embedded in strategic narratives with
the same aim of constructing a shared feeling about events to help shape the behaviour
of domestic and international actors (Miskimmon et al., 2013, p. 19). Understanding
emotions on either an individual or a collective level as already mediated through rep-
resentations means understanding strategic narratives. From this perspective, visuals
that connect us with the historical and cultural narratives in which we locate ourselves,
become meaningful and normally evoke powerful emotional replies.
Historical and cultural narratives refer to how history is presented, what is considered
socially acceptable, how identities are imagined, who is considered evil and what signifies
our better self (religious norms, historical achievements and cultural values). Visual
images of war commonly represent certain tropes, such as the victimizable mother or
child, as a method of meaning-making, connecting current events with historical narra-
tives (Kotilainen, 2011) and our individual and collective experience of the past events
(Cottle & Nolan, 2007; Tumber & Palmer, 2004; Zarzycka, 2017) to generate specific
emotions (Loken, 2020; Shepherd, 2017). Due to numerous and structural repetitions
(Sturken, 1997; Winter, 2014), tropes in war imagery remain solid and unaltered,
6 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

despite the transformations in the nature of contemporary warfare driven by the available
technologies (Zarzycka, 2017). Williams (2018, p. 882) suggests that, through a combi-
nation of romanticised beliefs, norms and values, wartime visuals, as ‘mythic politics’,
are employed to generate ‘affective intensity’ in support of military involvement or vio-
lence. As O’Loughlin (2011, p. 71) has noted, the power of images to shape interpretations
and resonate with the general public depends on the historical narratives and visual dis-
courses in which the images are situated.
In her book about the construction of post-Soviet identity in films and television series,
Souch (2017, p. 5) argues that the contemporary Russian identity is created through nar-
ratives that invocate and rework popular tropes, including ‘myths of patriarchal authority
and brotherhood, the fantasy of the antagonistic other, the countryside idyll and,
especially, the family metaphor’. Similarly, the present article starts from the idea that
the visual images employed in Ch1’s coverage draw from larger discourses, myths and
familiar tropes to create an affective relationship with audiences. We approach war
images as ideological practices constructed to create affective intensity and provoke reac-
tions from their audience by using particular symbols and tropes. Easily recognisable and
well suited to mass-mediated collective memory, the tropes attain particular power in the
coverage of violence. Because of their familiarity, tropes act as conduits of remembering –
flashback or memories (Zelizer, 2010) and, thus, convey the un-picturable to the outside
word in a knowable form (Zarzycka, 2017, p. XIII). In other words, they are affective
anchors for abstract (political) ideas and collective identities (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007).
Emotional anchoring, as Höijer (2010, p. 718) noted, ‘makes the unknown known by bring-
ing it into a well-known sphere of earlier social representations so that we may compare
and interpret it’. We understand emotional anchoring as a communicative process by
which a new situation is attached to familiar emotions.

Methods
Television is a multimodal audio-visual medium. While there is no single methodologi-
cal approach to studying strategic narratives in a multimodal environment, we use the
framing research approach to conceptualise and understand how strategic narratives
are projected through audio-visual media. In general terms, framing can be defined
as a process of presenting elements of knowledge in a way that sustains or promotes
a particular interpretation of events or characters’ actions (Entman, 1993). We defined
a strategic narrative as a set of media framing practices undertaken to reinforce,
subvert, undermine, overwhelm or replace a pre-existing discourse on a subject that
is significant to the audience and the speaker, who is often a political elite (Price,
2014).
In this study, we focused on visuals that are represented in television news. We believe
that news images represent a powerful instrument of framing as they provide the tropes
of our collective past, ideology and culture and thus advance the construction and
reinforcement of strategic narratives (Dunleavy, 2015). However, our analysis did not
dismiss the verbal elements of news content. We applied a framing analysis of visual
elements in Ch1’s news reports while considering the text and verbal commentary com-
binations accompanying the visual images.
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 7

Thus, we have applied a multi-level model that is inclusive of textual and visual ana-
lyses and quantitative and qualitative analyses. The textual and visual analyses contribute
to a better understanding of meaning construction mechanisms, while the combination
of these analyses and quantitative and qualitative analyses allows for the identification of
patterns of meaning construction. We contend that this model of analysis can extend the
theoretical understanding of media representations of war, specifically how the changing
political context impacts which identities are represented and made potent through
emotional anchoring.

Data
We selected Ch1 as our data source due to its popularity and domestic trust rating.
Technically, Ch1 is only partly owned by the government, but it closely follows the
Kremlin line and is considered to be the Kremlin’s mouthpiece (Tolz & Teper, 2018).
In 2014, the channel was the most-watched media source in Russia; around 80% of
the domestic audience chose it as their favourite information source (Levada Center,
2014). Although Ch1 is still one of the most popular information sources in Russia,
its audience has decreased significantly in 2019 when only 47% of Russians have
cited Ch1 as their primary source of news; other popular channels in Russia in 2019
were Rossia-1 (48%), NTV (36%), Russia-24 (31%) and Ren-TV (17%) (Levada Center,
2019).
The dataset incorporated all news articles published on Ch1’s website concerning
the Ukrainian crisis and the Syrian civil war within a six-month period for each of
the conflicts. The time periods were defined by selecting politically significant
events. We examined the news coverage of the Ukrainian conflict from April 1, 2014
to September 30, 2014. In April 2014, the crisis deepened as pro-Russian protestors
seized control over a dozen towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, including two
major cities – Donetsk and Lugansk – and called for a referendum on independence
from Ukraine, which was on May 11, 2014. In response, Ukrainian authorities started
an anti-terrorism operation (ATO) against pro-Russian rebels (CrisisWatch, 2014;
Flikke, 2015). At the end of September 2014, after the first cease-fire agreement
(signed on September 5) was broken in an attack that killed several Ukrainian soldiers,
the violence re-escalated (BBC, 2014). The coverage on the Syria conflict was examined
from September 30, 2015 to March 31, 2016. This period was signposted by Russia’s
first air strikes in Syria (BBC, 2015) and Russia’s announcement of the withdrawal of
its military forces from Syria.
The dataset consisted of 3,529 news reports: 2,297 related to the Ukrainian armed
conflict and 1,232 related to the civil war in Syria. The data was collected with the
help of a specially designed computer programme, which scraped all news from the
Ch1 website containing specific keywords, including Ukraine, Donetsk, Kiev, Syria and
war, in the Russian language. Ch1 used varied visual sources when covering the crisis
in Ukraine, which were divided into three similarly sized groups: visuals produced by
Ch1’s journalists (36.4%), visuals sourced from YouTube (34.1%) and visuals labelled
as belonging to other official media resources (24.5%) (Table A3). While covering the
civil war in Syria, however, Ch1 almost never used visuals from YouTube, Facebook
or other social media platforms (2.2%, Table A6). Instead, it mostly used its own
8 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

visuals (64.0%), including ones accessed by Ch1 journalists through the press represen-
tative of the Russian Ministry of Defence and its surveillance systems. In 33.8% of its
stories about the Syrian civil war, Ch1 used visuals marked as belonging to other
media resources.

Analysis
We coded the visuals into four categories, which were identified after a pilot-test: key
actors, visual display of suffering (or lack thereof), visual display of the conflict/war (or
battle aftermath), main theme (interpretation of visuals through verbal comments) and
source. We used these coding categories for the quantitative and qualitative analyses.
We quantitatively compared the patterns employed in reporting on the conflicts (focusing
on particular actors or themes) using simple percentages to measure the frequency and
relationship between the coding categories. Using percentage agreement and Krippen-
dorff’s alpha (α), a second coder coded 20% of the sample (706 units) to test the
coding reliability. The results of the reliability testing indicated a high level of agreement
between the coders on all four variables (a = 0.79). We qualitatively identified the pres-
ence of identity, issue and system narratives (Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017; Roselle
et al., 2014) and explored the frames that activated or neutralised emotions to help legit-
imise political decisions about involvement in international conflicts. Framing categories
were identified inductively.

Findings
The Ukrainian crisis
The representation of the Ukrainian crisis on Ch1 was largely based on Russia’s victory in
WWII (known as the Great Patriotic War), which is the foundation of the Russian national
identity (Shelest, 2015; Weiner, 1996). Below, we discuss how references to collective
memory were exploited in the news coverage of the Ukrainian crisis, and how the
frames and visual images attached to them contributed to the communication of the
desired Russian identity.

Identity narrative: Good versus evil

Conflicts and wars expose existing beliefs related to national identity affiliations. Identi-
ties, which are aimed to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’, are especially important as they
can create moral justifications for violence against ‘them’ (De Graaf et al., 2015; Freedman,
2006) and embody nationalistic feelings, such as pride and patriotism (Cottle, 2006, p. 77).
Nygren et al. (2018) in their comparative study on the coverage of the conflict in eastern
Ukraine in the Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Swedish mainstream media, discovered that
the us versus them dichotomy was clearly articulated in the Ukrainian and Russian media.
While Ukrainian and Western media tended to interpret the conflict as a result of Russian
aggression (Ojala et al., 2017), the Russian mainstream media predominantly framed the
conflict as a struggle of ethnic Russians against fascism (Boyd-Barrett, 2017; Fengler et al.,
2020).
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 9

The us versus them paradigm on Ch1 was strongly based on the representation of
Ukrainian war victims and Russia’s response to their plight. In general, 1,957 reports
(86% of the coverage) highlighted actors who were suffering due to the war (Table A2),
most of whom were civilians (61.4%). The footage focused on Russian-speaking eastern
Ukrainians who were either fleeing to other countries – especially Russia (29.1% of the
sample) – or struggling to survive in their destroyed homes and communities (32.3%)
(Table A2). Roman et al. (2017) also revealed this humanitarian framing in the coverage
of the Ukrainian conflict in Russian television.
Ch1’s visual reporting emphasised women, children, and elderly people. This is not a
new tactic in war reporting, as news media commonly focus on those who are the
most innocent and helpless to evoke empathy for victims or demonise the aggressor
(Christie, 1996; Höijer, 2004; Moeller, 1999). Ch1’s visual reporting repeatedly appro-
priated the trope of the refugee mother and child (Image 1) as a moral and emotional

Image 1. Typical visual theme used to demonise the Ukrainian government: Refugee women and
children
10 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

intensifier. Footage of mothers fleeing from the war zones worked to stir up anger at
those who inflicted suffering on the families. The women were usually depicted crying,
holding their children tight and telling their heart-breaking stories. For example, one
woman said, ‘We could not even think that in the twenty-first century anybody would
bomb a peaceful town, hospitals or kindergartens’ (Ch1, 04.06.20141). Ch1 used also
fake images to stir up hatred and anger towards the perceived enemy, such as in the scan-
dalous reportage depicting a mother of four children relaying a fake story about a crucifix-
ion of a little boy, which she purportedly had witnessed in the Ukrainian town of
Slavyansk (Ch1, 12.07.20142). Fake news, in this case, is exploited to advance the strategic
narratives through supporting previously constructed identity claims and evoking power-
ful emotions in the target audience (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016).
The image of babushkas, or grandmothers, was another visual trope frequently appro-
priated in Ch1’s reporting. For example, a video clip of an old woman dressed traditionally
in a long dress with a headscarf tied under her chin was incorporated into news stories
several times (Image 2). The image of a mourning babushka crying in front of her
destroyed house in a Ukrainian village epitomised the inhumanity of the enemy and
the horror of war. Accompanying commentary by a Ch1 journalist declared, ‘Her daughter
and grandson did not have time to hide away. The very first missile got to their house’
(Ch1, 29.6.20143).
We argue that representations of human suffering through the depiction of the most
vulnerable groups of society create an imaginary ‘we’, connecting the audience to the
suffering victims through emotional appeals. Thus, the Ch1 coverage created a perspec-
tive in which suffering was perceived as unjust, and compassion for victims blended with
anger aimed at the perpetrator (Höijer, 2004, p. 522). Therefore, whereas Fengler et al.
(2020, p. 415) argue that the focus in Russian media on civilian suffering represents a ten-
dency to ‘humanise’ conflict coverage, we, like Roman et al. (2017), consider it an effort to
amplify the negative representation of the Ukrainian authorities, thereby manipulating
public opinion.

Issue narrative: compatriots in distress

Strategic narratives can be used to legitimise political or military involvement in conflicts
(De Graaf et al., 2015). When Russian-speaking people abroad, e.g. in eastern Ukraine, are

Image 2. Typical visual theme used to demonise the Ukrainian government: Suffering Russian-speak-
ing civilians and destroyed houses.
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 11

visualised as a target of military aggression and violence, it contributes emotionally to the

expectation that Russia must take on the role of saviour and protector of ethnic Russians
in foreign countries (Teper, 2018). Russia used a similar issue narrative in the Russian-
Georgian military conflict of 2008, justifying its invasion of Georgia as a need to protect
compatriots under attack (Gaufman, 2015). However, in the context of the Ukrainian
conflict, Ch1 exploited references to WWII to fuel emotions and mobilise the public
against a perceived enemy. Like Hutchings and Szostek (2015), we found consistent
emotive references to fascism and accusations that the new Ukrainian government was
Russophobic and promoted fascist-minded politics (70.6% of the sample, Table A1),
causing the suffering of civilians.
Military aggression aimed at ethnic Russians was visually constructed by focusing on
the aftermath of battles and showing injured and suffering civilians as well as destroyed
buildings and infrastructure in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine (Image 2). Visual
reporting frequently included documentary footage with easily recognised symbols
and historical records of WWII to strengthen the narrative of fascism in Ukraine (Edele,
2017; Gaufman, 2015). Such visuals were alternated with images of radical Ukrainian
Right Sector representatives (identified by flags or special symbols on their clothes).
The visual montage worked to form an association between WWII fascists and the Ukrai-
nian army (even though the Right Sector was not a part of the Ukrainian army). Thus, the
alternation of battle aftermath images with historical images and visual references to
nationalist groups in Ukraine constructed stable parallels between the events in
Ukraine and WWII and laid the groundwork for the narrative of Russian rescue.
After 75 years of cultivating the memory and cult of WWII, the Russian people place
their victory and their personal and collective experiences related to the war at the
centre of their national identity (Fedor et al., 2017; Kucherenko, 2011). As such, the refer-
ences to fascism being spread in Ukraine simultaneously appealed to Russians’ fears
related to Nazi atrocities (Boyd-Barrett, 2017) and their preferred self-image as a moral
power that had once globally defeated fascism (Zhurzhenko, 2015). Thus, framing the
conflict in Ukraine as a fascist threat aimed at ethnic Russians was an effective instrument
to mobilise public support in the pro-Russian regions of Ukraine and, of course, in Russia
itself (Kuzio, 2015; Siddi, 2017).
The extensive use of WWII tropes was observed not only in Ch1’s coverage of the Ukrai-
nian conflict but also on social media networks, such as VKontakte and Twitter, providing
further evidence of the pervasiveness of the hegemonic discourse in Russia (Makhortykh
& Lyebyedyev, 2015; Makhortykh & Sydorova, 2017). In fact, the predominance of the stra-
tegic narratives originating from the mainstream media left almost no space to frame the
conflict in terms other than those of the official discourse. The official discourse, mean-
while, created a strong sense of insecurity (in the face of fascism) among the Russian
population, which justified the issue narrative, i.e. protecting the Russian ethnic popu-
lation in Ukraine from the existential threat of fascism (Makhortykh, 2020).

War in Syria
In total, 85% of Ch1’s reports on the Syrian civil war focused on advancing the claims of
Russia as a great power. Specifically, the reports highlighted the political (34%) and mili-
tary (30%) power of Russia. In the following section, we outline how these claims and anti-
12 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

Western sentiments contributed to the construction of the strategic narratives projected

by Ch1 about the civil war in Syria.

Identity narrative: global superpower

The mobilisation effect achieved after the annexation of Crimea was winding down when
Russia decided to intervene in Syria (Teper, 2018, p. 82). To readjust the identity narrative
to the changing political context, Russia focused on its global prestige and authority as a
great power (Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017). The idea of greatpowerness has been
central to Russia’s state identity for centuries (Forsberg, 2014; Omelicheva, 2013). Refer-
ences to greatpowerness have often been exploited to mobilise Russians for war or
explain Russia’s difficult relationship with Western countries (Tsygankov, 2012). In the
case of Syria, past wars were instrumentalised in Ch1’s reports to emphasise Russia’s
glory, and episodes of Syrian distraction, casualties and military deployment expenses
were glossed over with the references to historical heroism, greatness and superiority
over the ideological ‘other’ (Makhortykh, 2020; Paez & Hou-fu Liu, 2011, p. 114).
The notion of Russia’s enduring greatness and a sense of patriotism were advanced
through historic narratives glorifying not only the victory in WWII but also the Soviet
period in general (Nikolayenko, 2008). The majority of Russians surveyed by Nikolayenko
(2008, pp. 251–252) emphasised that military might and worldwide respect made the
Soviet Union a great power. Still, when it comes to Russia’s self-perception as a great
power, military capabilities and international recognition are fundamental assets (Fors-
berg, 2014). Our findings revealed that Ch1 represented the Russian intervention in
Syria as a (successful) campaign to defend its borders and the global community from
the terrorism threat, thereby confirming the status of Russia as an internationally recog-
nised superpower.

Image 3. Typical visual theme of the coverage of the Syrian civil war: Russia’s military arsenal.
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 13

Thus, in the visual framings of the Syrian civil war, Ch1 focused on Russia’s signifi-
cance as an international political actor (34% of reports) and a military and technologi-
cal power (30%) (Table A4). Visual themes were dominated by images of Russian
weaponry and showcases of the Russian military arsenal (Image 3). Reports were
accompanied by journalist commentary underlining Russia’s significantly advanced mili-
tary capabilities and increasingly prominent status as a world military power. In one of
the reports (Ch1, 22.10.2015) followed international journalists visiting a Russian military
base in Syria, the words of a Serbian journalist and military analyst were especially
emphasised,
I happen to visit different military bases, [including] American, German, English, [and] NATO
[bases]. What I can say about the Russian base is that it is excellently equipped. The jets that I
have seen here are simply perfect in technical terms.4

Russia’s advanced military capabilities were also visualised through demonstrations of

Russian combat surveillance and investigation systems. The visual reporting consisted of
black-and-white videos and satellite images of areas where Russian aircraft had reportedly
destroyed or were destroying ISIS objects or where terror-related crimes had been com-
mitted (Image 4). In war reporting, this kind of visuals is commonly used to reinforce a
sense of distance and reduce the audience’s level of emotion associated with the
human and economic costs of military operations abroad (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008). Thus,
while boosting Russia’s preferred self-image as a strong military and political actor, Ch1
tried to avoid evoking any unfavourable emotions related to Russian military forces’ par-
ticipation in the Syrian civil war.
Furthermore, Russia’s greatpowerness claims were enhanced by Ch1’s framing of the
activities of the US and its allies. In 12% of all sampled reports, Ch1 framed Turkey as
an accessory to terrorism whose actions were only possible with the political support
of the US. In 10% of the reports, Ch1 focused on Russian achievements in fighting ISIS,
contrasting them with US military failures and the incompetence of US officials. The
anti-Western sentiment was visually constructed through public speeches by Russian
and US government representatives. US and EU officials were presented as engaging in
politically motivated accusations against Russia without evidence. In comparison, Ch1
showed Russian officials and allies speaking as a counter-narrative. For example, one

Image 4. Images of Russian combat surveillance and investigation systems used to visualise the war
against terrorism.
14 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

report contained a video of an interview given by Syria’s President al-Assad to the Spanish
newspaper El País in which al-Assad argued that the US, while supporting the so-called
moderate opposition in Syria, also funded terrorists.5
Within this frame, the US coalition forces were seen as unable to tackle the ISIS threat;
in comparison, the Russian operation in Syria was represented as a noble mission to fight
Islamic terrorism and US global hegemony (Teper, 2018, p. 82). Russia’s invasion of Syria
was justified in the Cold War manner by constant pointing to the failures and shortcom-
ings of the US-led coalition’s military operations and diplomatic solutions while simul-
taneously bolstering Russian political approaches and military achievements
(Makhortykh, 2020). These binary identity narratives, along with the demonstration of
Russia’s military capabilities, created a trope of the superior nature of Russians as a
nation and the superpowerness of Russia as a state.

Issue narrative: Stop the refugee crisis

To legitimise Russia’s invasion in Syria, Ch1 framed the Russian military campaign as a
counterterrorist operation that would reduce the number of refugees leaving Syria for
Europe (Stent, 2016, p. 110). In line with studies exploring the coverage of the Syrian
civil war in Russian newspapers (Brown, 2015) and on RT Arabic (Dajani et al., 2019), we
found that, instead of reporting on Syrian civilian suffering caused by military actions,
Ch1 focused on the refugee crisis in Europe. Some scholars argued that portraying refu-
gees in Europe as a security threat contributed to the binary contradiction between Russia
and Europe, in which Russia was a safe place with an insightful government, while Europe
was insecure and moving closer to economic and cultural collapse (Forsberg, 2014;
Neumann & Pouliot, 2011). Moreover, Braghiroli and Makarychev (2018) suggested that
the strategy of framing Europe as being ruined by refugees was designed to help
Russia re-enter the European (geo)political scene as the force that not only significantly
reduced the threat of terrorism in Syria but also salvaged Europe from cultural fragmen-
tation and economic collapse.
The refugee crisis was visually framed as a mass disorder in European cities. European
authorities were reported as being overwhelmed by refugees and expecting economic
collapse, while European citizens were depicted as being afraid of or harmed by refugees.
The refugees themselves were visually presented as being culturally different (through
their way of dressing or practicing cultural rituals), idle (not working) and aggressive.
For example, a Ch1 report entitled ‘Europe is overwhelmed by crimes committed by refu-
gees’, referred to a story in Sweden in which a teenager from Syria killed his classmate of
Lithuanian descent because the Lithuanian boy was trying to protect a school girl from
harassment. The story presented a portrait of the boy who was killed and images of
the police patrolling a school.6 Similar instruments of visualisation, e.g. a portrait of a
victim who suffered at the hands of refugees and the police in the streets, were used
in other reports.
Russian newspapers represented refugees from the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) in a similar way. While the television news focused on the security threat
posed by Syrian refugees to Europe, the newspapers produced a view of refugees
from MENA as a threat to Russia (Moen-Larsen, 2020). This representation significantly
differed from how the newspapers framed Ukrainian refugees. While Ukrainian
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 15

refugees were framed as culturally and ethnically similar to Russians, thereby legiti-
mising their presence in Russia, MENA refugees were positioned as threats, thereby
supporting the narrative of the EU as weak and threatened and of Russia as superior
to the EU (Moen-Larsen, 2020, p. 236). We believe that the trope of the Syrian refugee
bringing along destruction and chaos merged with the historical dichotomy between
Russia and the West (EU) to feed the issue narrative and justify the Russian invasion
of Syria.

Discussion and Conclusions

Through television news, Russia narrates its position and concerns within European and
international systems. This article has shown how Ch1 used visual images as affective
anchors to connect two major global conflicts to collective memory and identity in
order to strategically promote a particular interpretation of the events. Our analysis
revealed that Ch1 coverage anchored the conflict in Ukraine and the civil war in Syria
in different emotions and used different visual materials to construct meanings on the
strategical level. While the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict was anchored in compassion
for the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine and anger towards the Ukrainian
government, the Syrian civil war was framed to fuel a feeling of national pride by focusing
on Russian greatness as a political, military and moral superpower.
We can begin to explain these differences in visual framings through the routine prac-
tices used by journalists to assess the appeal of news stories for their audiences. Journal-
ism scholars have repeatedly shown that cultural and geographical proximity shapes how
stories about war and disaster are told (e.g. Hanusch, 2008). In culturally proximate stories,
journalists employ various narrative tools, such as references to a historically shared iden-
tity, memory and enemy, to construct a sense of closeness between the viewers and the
event and to appeal to their emotions. Thus, the humanitarian framing of the Ukrainian
conflict and the deeply emotional discourse in the coverage reflected the cultural proxi-
mity of the event. The emotional appeals were condensed into a small range of visual
materials repeated across the coverage, which was strongly focused on making the
suffering of the victims poignant and demonising the claimed aggressor and included
excessive references to the historical memory regarding fascism. In terms of strategic nar-
ratives, the emotional discourse on shared history and identity can be understood as jus-
tifying Russia’s actions and interest in Ukraine, which, together with other post-Soviet
countries, is Russia’s most important area of influence. The visual and textual framing
legitimised Russia’s foreign policy aimed at safeguarding Russian compatriots and identity
abroad (Casula, 2017; Teper, 2018).
While, in the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict, Ch1 attempted to enhance a narra-
tive of the need to protect civilians, the fraternal Ukrainian people, Ch’s silence regard-
ing the suffering of the Syrian people in its coverage of the Syrian civil war was striking.
Visually, the Syrian coverage was characterised by what Griffin (2004, p. 385) defined as
‘backstage images’ of weaponry and Russian politicians’ statements. It was constructed
as a clean high-tech war to boost Russia’s international status. While the idea of great-
powerness has long been at the core of Russia’s state identity (Forsberg, 2014, p. 321),
recognition of Russia as a powerful actor in international politics became especially
important after the annexation of Crimea, which damaged Russia’s reputation and
16 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

led to international sanctions (Teper, 2016, p. 378). Thus, the great power narrative was
not only aimed at improving Russia’s image abroad as a central player in the global
order and international conflict regulation for the international audience but also
served to boost national feelings and justify military involvement to Russians who
were experiencing the economic consequences of the sanctions. Similarly, the intensive
reporting of the European refugee situation aimed to enhance a sense of national
superiority vis-à-vis the political impotence of the EU and individual European countries.
At the same time, this narrative reflected the increased tensions between Russia and the
EU and served to justify Russia’s widely condemned bombardments as a means of
bringing stability to the Middle East.
In conclusion, our research contributes to an understanding of how strategic narratives
exploit visual materials in an effort to influence people’s perceptions of global conflicts
(Colley, 2019; De Graaf et al., 2015). Our focus has been on how Ch1, as the Russian
state’s voice, uses visual images to communicate and justify the country’s involvement
in international crises to its domestic audience. Visual images function as emotional
anchors by building connections to past ideas, images and experiences (Gaufman,
2015); in doing so, they intensify the emotional impact of the strategic narratives that
imagine Russia’s role in the world.

Notes
1. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-06-04/43274-detey_chi_roditeli_ostalis_v_zone_boevyh_
deystviy_razmestili_v_sanatorii_v_rostovskoy_oblasti.
2. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-07-12/37175-bezhenka_iz_slavyanska_vspominaet_kak_pri_
ney_kaznili_malenkogo_syna_i_zhenu_opolchentsa.
3. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-06-29/44874-kiev_i_opolchentsy_ob_yavili_o_peremirii_no_
dialog_shel_pod_grohot_kanonady.
4. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2015-10-22/8834-v_sirii_rossiyskie_voennye_priglasili_na_
aviabazu_zhurnalistov_iz_raznyh_stran.
5. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2016-02-21/946-moschnye_bomby_byli_vzorvany_v_damaske_i_
homse.
6. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2016-01-18/3236-evropu_nakryvaet_volna_prestupleniy_s_
uchastiem_bezhentsev.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Dr. Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) completed her PhD in Media and Communication Studies (University
of Helsinki) in 2020. Her doctoral research focused on the visuals employed in the Russian television
news to mediate the international conflicts and advance the state’s interpretation of the events for
domestic and global audiences. Her research interests center around strategic narratives and, more
broadly, the role played by news media in shaping public opinion and political behaviour.
Dr. Mervi Pantti is Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Helsinki. Her research is concerned with the emotional dimension of mediated com-
munication, crisis and disaster reporting and media accountability. She is co-author of Disasters
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 17

and the media (with Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Simon Cottle, Peter Lang, 2012) and editor of Media
and the Ukraine crisis: Hybrid media practices and narratives of conflict (Peter Lang, 2016).

ORCID
Mervi Pantti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9332-1556

References
Amnesty International. (2018, February 20). Syria: Relentless bombing of civilians in Eastern Ghouta
amounts to war crimes. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/syria-relentless-
bombing-of-civilians-in-eastern-ghouta-amounts-to-war-crimes/
Anzalone, C. (2016). The multiple faces of Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fath al-Sham in Syria’s civil war.
Insight Turkey, 18(2), https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/multiple-faces-jabhat-al-nusraj
abhat-fath-al-sham-syrias-civil-war
Baysha, O. (2016). European integration as imagined by Ukrainian Pravda bloggers. In M. Pantti (Ed.),
Media and the Ukraine crisis: Hybrid media practices and narratives of conflict (pp. 71–88). Peter
Lang.
BBC. (2014, September 30). Donetsk airport shelling violates east Ukraine truce. https://www.bbc.
com/news/world-europe-29424766
BBC. (2015, September). Russia launches Syria air strikes. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-
34406364
Boyd-Barrett, O. (2017). Ukraine, mainstream media and conflict propaganda. Journalism Studies, 18
(8), 1016–1034. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1099461
Braghiroli, S., & Makarychev, A. (2018). Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015 refugee crisis.
Geopolitics, 23(4), 823–848. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1389721
Brown, J. D. J. (2015). “A nightmare painted by Goya”: Russian media coverage of the Syrian chemical
weapons attacks in comparative perspective. Problems of Post-Communism, 62(4), 236–246.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2015.1026212
Casula, P. (2015). The Syrian conflict through Russian eyes revisited. Russian Analytical Digest, 175, 6–
10. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-121256
Casula, P. (2017). Russia’s foreign policy from the Crimean crisis to the Middle East: Great power
gamble or biopolitics? Rising Powers Quarterly, Russia’s Dual Roles in Global Politics as a
Traditional Great Power and a Rising Power, 2(1), 27–51. https://risingpowersproject.com/
quarterly/russias-foreign-policy-crimean-crisis-middle-east-great-power-gamble-biopolitics/
Chaban, N., Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2017). The EU’s peace and security narrative: Views
from EU strategic partners in Asia. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(6), 1273–1289.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12569
Charap, S., & Shapiro, J. (2015). Consequences of a new Cold War. Survival, 57(2), 37–46. https://doi.
org/10.1080/00396338.2015.1026058
Christie, N. (1996). The ideal victim. In E. A. Fattah (Ed.), From crime policy to victim policy (pp. 17–30).
Macmillan.
Colley, T. P. (2019). Strategic narratives and war propaganda. In P. Baines, N. O’Shaughnessy, & N.
Snow (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of propaganda (pp. 38–54). SAGE.
Cottle, S. (2006). Mediatized conflict: Understanding media and conflicts in the contemporary world.
McGraw-Hill Education.
Cottle, S., & Nolan, D. (2007). Global humanitarianism and the changing aid-media field: ‘Everyone
was dying for footage’. Journalism Studies, 8(6), 862–878. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700701
556104
Crilley, R., & Chatterje-Doody, P. N. (2020). Emotions and war on YouTube: Affective investments in
RT’s visual narratives of the conflict in Syria. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 33(5), 713–
733. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2020.1719038
CrisisWatch. (2014, April). Global overview. https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch/april-2014
18 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

Dajani, D., Gillespie, M., & Crilley, R. (2019). Differentiated visibilities: RT Arabic’s narration of Russia’s
role in the Syrian war. Media, War & Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635219889075
Dal, E. P. (2016). Impact of the transnationalization of the Syrian civil war on Turkey: Conflict spillover
cases of ISIS and PYD-YPG/PKK. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 29(4), 1396–1420.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2016.1256948
De Graaf, B., Dimitriu, G., & Ringsmose, J. (2015). Strategic narratives, public opinion and war: Winning
domestic support for the Afghan War. Routledge.
Domke, D., Perlmutter, D., & Spratt, M. (2002). The primes of our times? Journalism: Theory, Practice
& Criticism, 3(2), 131–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488490200300211
Dunleavy, D. J. (2015). A search for meaning in iconic news images of the Iraq War. Visual
Communication Quarterly, 22(4), 197–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2015.1115356
Edele, M. (2017). Fighting Russia’s history wars: Vladimir Putin and the codification of World War II.
History and Memory, 29(2), 90–124. https://doi.org/10.2979/histmemo.29.2.05
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of
Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x
Fattah, K., & Fierke, K. M. (2009). A clash of emotions: The politics of humiliation and political vio-
lence in the Middle East. European Journal of International Relations, 15(1), 67–93. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1354066108100053
Fedor, J., Lewis, S., & Zhurzhenko, T. (2017). Introduction: War and memory in Russia, Ukraine, and
Belarus. In J. Fedor, M. Kangaspuro, J. Lassila, & T. Zhurzhenko (Eds.), War and memory in Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus. Palgrave Macmillan memory studies (pp. 1–40). Palgrave Macmillan. https://
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66523-8
Fengler, S., Kreutler, M., Alku, M., Barlovac, B., Bastian, M., Bodrunova, S. S., Brinkmann, J., Dingerkus,
F., Hájek, R., Knopper, S., Kus, M., Láb, F., Lees, C., Litvinenko, A., Medeiros, D., Orlova, D., Ozolina,
L., Paluch, A., Radu, R. N., … Zguri, R. (2020). The Ukraine conflict and the European media: A com-
parative study of newspapers in 13 European countries. Journalism, 21(3), 399–422. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1464884918774311
Flikke, G. (2015). A timeline for conflict and war in Ukraine. Security Policy Library. https://www.
atlanterhavskomiteen.no/files/dnak/Documents/Publikasjoner/2015/Sikkerhetspolitisk%
20Bibliotek/NR%204-15%2014.%20august.pdf
Forsberg, T. (2014). Status conflicts between Russia and the West: Perceptions and emotional biases.
Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 47(3-4), 323–331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.
2014.09.006
Freedman, L. (2006). The transformation of strategic Affairs, Numero 379. Routledge.
Freedman, L. (2019). Ukraine and the art of strategy. Oxford University Press.
Frolovskiy, D. (2019). Are the Kremlin’s gains in the Middle East sustainable? Middle East Institute.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/are-kremlins-gains-middle-east-sustainable
Gaufman, E. (2015). World War II 2.0: Digital memory of fascism in Russia in the aftermath of
Euromaidan in Ukraine. Journal of Regional Security, 10(1), 17–36. https://doi.org/10.11643/issn.
2217-995X151SPG48
Gaufman, E. (2019). Come all ye faithful to the Russian world: Governmental and grass-roots spiritual
discourse in the battle over Ukraine. In E. A. Clark & D. Vovk (Eds.), Religion during the Russian
Ukrainian conflict (1 ed., pp. 54–68). Routledge.
Gill, T. D. (2016). Classifying the conflict in Syria. International Law Studies, 92. https://digital-
commons.usnwc.edu/ils/vol92/iss1/11/
Government of the Netherlands. The criminal investigation. https://www.government.nl/topics/
mh17-incident/achieving-justice/the-criminal-investigation
Griffin, M. (2004). Picturing America’s “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Journalism: Theory,
Practice & Criticism, 5(4), 381–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884904044201
Hanusch, F. (2008). Valuing those close to us: A study of German and Australian quality newspapers.
Journalism Studies, 9(3), 341–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700801997281
Hariman, R., & Lucaites, J. (2007). No caption needed: Iconic photographs, public culture, and liberal
democracy. The University of Chicago Press.
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 19

Hassan, H. (2018). Two houses divided: How conflict in Syria shaped the future of Jihadism.
CTCSENTINEL. Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 11(9), https://ctc.usma.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/CTC-SENTINEL-102018.pdf
Haukkala, H. (2015). From cooperative to contested Europe? The conflict in Ukraine as a culmination
of a long-term crisis in EU-Russia relations. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(1), 25–
40. https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2014.1001822
Hellman, M., & Wagnsson, C. (2015). New media and the war in Afghanistan: The significance of
blogging for the Swedish strategic narrative. New Media & Society, 17(1), 6–23. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1461444813504268
Höijer, B. (2004). The discourse of global compassion: The audience and media reporting of human
suffering. Media, Culture & Society, 26(4), 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443704044215
Höijer, B. (2010). Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting on climate change.
Public Understanding of Science, 19(6), 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662509348863
Hoskins, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2010). War and media: The emergence of Diffused War. Polity.
Hoskins, A., & Shchelin, P. (2018). Information war in the Russian media ecology: The case of the
panama papers. Continuum, 32(2), 250–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1418295
Human Rights Watch. (2018, February 22). Syria/Russia: International inaction as civilians die. https://
www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/22/syria/russia-international-inaction-civilians-die
Hutchings, S., & Szostek, J. (2015). Dominant narratives in Russian political and media discourse
during the Ukraine crisis. In A. Pikulicka-Wilczewska, & R. Sakwa (Eds.), Ukraine and Russia:
People, politics, propaganda and Perspectives (pp. 183–196). E-international Relations.
Interfax. (2015, October 11). Putin defined main goal of Russia in Syria. https://www.interfax.ru/
russia/472593
Jensen, D. N. (2018). Russia in the Middle East: A new front in the information war? In T. Karasik, & S.
Blank (Eds.), Russia in the Middle East (pp. 265–289). The Jamestown Foundation.
Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news: The narrative battle over the Ukrainian conflict.
Journalism Practice, 10(7), 891–901. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2016.1163237
Köstem, S. (2018). The political economy of Turkish-Russian relations: Dynamics of asymmetric inter-
dependence. Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, 23(2), 10–32. http://sam.gov.tr/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/sf10-32.pdf
Köstem, S. (2020). Russian-Turkish cooperation in Syria: Geopolitical alignment with limits.
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2020.
1719040
Kotilainen, N. K. (2011). Humanitarian soldiers, colonialised others and invisible enemies: Visual stra-
tegic communication narratives of the Afghan War. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Working Paper, 72.
Kucherenko, O. (2011). That’ll teach’em to love their motherland!: Russian youth revisit the battles of
World War II. The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, 12. https://doi.org/10.4000/
pipss.3866
Kuzio, T. (2015). Competing nationalisms, Euromaidan, and the Russian–Ukrainian conflict. Studies in
Ethnicity and Nationalism, 15(1), 157–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12137
Levada Center. (2014). Russian media landscape: television, press, Internet and social media. https://
www.levada.ru/old/sites/default/files/levada_report_media_0_0.pdf
Levada Center. (2016). Television continues to be the main news source. https://www.levada.ru/
2016/08/12/televidenie-ostaetsya-tem-istochnikom-novostej/
Levada Center. (2019). Russian media landscape: television, press, Internet and social media. https://
www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/LevadaMedia2019-1.pdf
Levada Center. (2020). Russian media landscape 2020. https://www.levada.ru/2020/04/28/rossijskij-
medialandshaft-2020/
Loken, M. (2020). “Both needed and threatened”: Armed mothers in militant visuals. Security
Dialogue, 52(1), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010620903237
Makhortykh, M. (2020). Historical memory and securitisation of the Russian intervention in Syria.
International Politics, 57(6), 1063–1081. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-020-00232-w
20 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

Makhortykh, M., & Lyebyedyev, Y. (2015). #Savedonbasspeople: Twitter, propaganda, and conflict in
eastern Ukraine. The Communication Review, 18(4), 239–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.
2015.1085776
Makhortykh, M., & Sydorova, M. (2017). Social media and visual framing of the conflict in Eastern
Ukraine. Media, War & Conflict, 10(3), 359–381. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635217702539
Malinova, O. (2014). “Spiritual bonds” as state ideology. Russia in Global Affairs. http://eng.
globalaffairs.ru/number/Spiritual-Bonds-as-State-Ideology-17223
Mercer, J. (2014). Feeling like a state: Social emotion and identity. International Theory, 6(3), 515–535.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971914000244
Mickiewicz, E. (1999). Changing channels: Television and the struggle for power in Russia. Duke
University Press.
Miller, C. (2019). Death Toll Up To 13,000 In Ukraine Conflict, Says UN Rights Office. Radio Free
Europe / Radio Liberty. https://www.rferl.org/a/death-toll-up-to-13-000-in-ukraine-conflict-says-
un-rights-office/29791647.html
Mirzoeff, N. (2005). Watching Babylon: The war in Iraq and global visual culture. Routledge.
Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2017). Russia’s narratives of global order: Great power legacies in a
polycentric world. Politics and Governance, 5(3), 111–120. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v5i3.1017
Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2019). Narratives of the EU in Israel/Palestine: Narrative “stickiness”
and the formation of expectations. European Security, 28(3), 268–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/
09662839.2019.1648258
Miskimmon, A., O’loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2012). Forging the world: Strategic narratives and inter-
national relations. Centre for European Politics/New Political Communications Unit.
Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2013). Strategic narratives: Communication power and
The New world order. Routledge.
Moeller, S. D. (1999). Compassion fatigue: How the media sell disease, famine, war and death.
Routledge.
Moen-Larsen, N. (2020). Brothers and barbarians: Discursive constructions of ‘refugees’ in Russian
media. Acta Sociologica, 63(2), 226–241. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699318817597
Neumann, I., & Pouliot, V. (2011). Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western relations over the
past millennium. Security Studies, 20(1), 105–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2011.549021
Nikolayenko, O. (2008). Contextual effects on historical memory: Soviet nostalgia among post-Soviet
adolescents. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 41(2), 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
postcomstud.2008.03.001
Nussbaum, M. (1996). Compassion: The basic social emotion. Social Philosophy and Policy, 13(1), 27–
58. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500001515
Nygren, G., Glowacki, M., Hök, J., Kiria, I., Orlova, D., & Taradai, D. (2018). Journalism in the crossfire.
Journalism Studies, 19(7), 1059–1078. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1251332
Oates, S. (2013). Revolution stalled: The political limits of the Internet in the post-Soviet sphere. Oxford
University Press.
Oates, S., & Steiner, S. (2018). Projecting power: Understanding Russian strategic narrative. Russian
Analytical Digest, 229. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000311091
Ojala, M., Pantti, M., & Kangas, J. (2017). Whose war, whose fault? Visual framing of the Ukraine
conflict in Western European newspapers. International Journal of Communication, 11(25), 474–
498. ISSN 1932-8036. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5917
O’Loughlin, B. (2011). Images as weapons of war: Representation, mediation and interpretation.
Review of International Studies, 37(1), 71–91. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210510000811
Omelicheva, M. (2013). Russian foreign policy: A quest for great power status in a multipolar world.
In R. Beasley, J. Kaarbo, J. S. Lantis, & M. T. Snarr (Eds.), Foreign policy in comparative perspective.
Domestic and international Influences on state Behavior (pp. 94–116). Sage.
Paez, D. R., & Hou-fu Liu, J. (2011). Collective memory of conflicts. In D. Bar-Tal (Ed.), Intergroup
conflicts and their resolution: A social psychological perspective (pp. 105–124). Psychology Press.
Powell, T. E., Boomgaarden, H. G., De Swert, K., & de Vreese, C. H. (2015). A clearer picture: The con-
tribution of visuals and text to framing effects. Journal of Communication, 65(6), 997–1017.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12184
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 21

Price, M. E. (2014). Free expression, globalism, and the new strategic communication. Cambridge
University Press.
Roman, N., Wanta, W., & Buniak, I. (2017). Information wars: Eastern Ukraine military conflict cover-
age in the Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. Newscasts. International Communication Gazette, 79(4),
357–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048516682138
Roselle, L., Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2014). Strategic narrative: A new means to understand
soft power. Media, War & Conflict, 7(1), 70–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635213516696
Roudakova, N. (2017). Losing pravda: Ethics and the press in post-truth Russia. Cambridge University
Press.
Schlag, G. (2018). Moving images and the politics of pity: A multilevel approach to the interpretation
of images and emotions. In M. Clément & E. Sangar (Eds.), Researching emotions in international
relations. Palgrave studies in international relations (pp. 209–230). Palgrave Macmillan.
Shapovalova, N. (2019). From the square to politics after Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests. In R. Youngs
(Ed.), After protest: Pathways beyond mass mobilization (pp. 25–30). Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
Shelest, H. (2015). After the Ukrainian crisis: Is there a place for Russia? Southeast European and Black
Sea Studies, 15(2), 191–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2015.1060019
Shepherd, L. J. (2017). Aesthetics, ethics, and visual research in the digital age: “Undone in the face
of the otter”. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 45(2), 214–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0305829816684255
Siddi, M. (2017). The Ukraine crisis and European memory politics of the Second World War.
European Politics and Society, 18(4), 465–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2016.1261435
Souch, I. (2017). Popular tropes of identity in contemporary Russian television and film. Bloomsbury
Academic.
Spiessens, A. (2019). Deep memory during the Crimean crisis: References to the great Patriotic War
in Russian news translation. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 31(3), 398–419.
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18113.spi
Stent, A. (2016). Putin’s power play in Syria: How to respond to Russia’s intervention. Foreign Affairs,
95(1), 106–113. www.jstor.org/stable/43946630
Sturken, M. (1997). Tangled memories The Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of remem-
bering. University of California Press.
Szostek, J. (2018). News media repertoires and strategic narrative reception: A paradox of dis/belief
in authoritarian Russia. New Media & Society, 20(1), 68–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1461444816656638
Teper, Y. (2016). Official Russian identity discourse in light of the annexation of Crimea: National or
imperial? Post-Soviet Affairs, 32(4), 378–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2015.1076959
Teper, Y. (2018). Kremlin’s post-2012 national policies: Encountering the merits and perils of iden-
tity-based social contract. In P. Kolstø, & H. Blakkisrud (Eds.), Russia before and after Crimea:
Nationalism and identity (pp. 2010–2017). Edinburgh University Press.
Tolz, V., & Teper, Y. (2018). Broadcasting agitainment: A new media strategy of Putin’s third presi-
dency. Post-Soviet Affairs, 34(4), 213–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1459023
Tsygankov, A. (2012). Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in international relations.
Cambridge University Press.
Tumber, H., & Palmer, J. (2004). Media at war: The Iraq crisis London. SAGE Publications Ltd.
doi:10.4135/9781446211663.
van Noort, C. (2020). Strategic narratives of the past: An analysis of China’s new Silk Road communi-
cation. Global Society, 34(2), 186–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2019.1674251
Weiner, A. (1996). The making of a dominant myth: The Second World War and the construction of
political identities within the Soviet polity. Russian Review, 55(4), 638–660. www.jstor.org/stable/
131868 https://doi.org/10.2307/131868
Williams, M. C. (2018). International relations in the age of the image. International Studies Quarterly,
62(4), 880–891. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqy030
Winter, J. (2014). Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The great war in European cultural history.
Cambridge University Press.
22 I. GRIGOR (KHALDAROVA) AND M. PANTTI

Wolfsfeld, G., Frosh, P., & Awabdy, M. T. (2008). Covering death in conflicts: Coverage of the second
Intifada on Israeli and Palestinian television. Journal of Peace Research, 45(3), 401–417. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0022343308088818
Zarzycka, M. (2017). Gendered tropes in war photography: Mothers, MOURNERS, soldiers. Routledge,
Taylor & Francis.
Zelinska, O. (2017). Ukrainian Euromaidan protest: Dynamics, causes, and aftermath. Sociology
Compass, 11(9), e12502. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12502
Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget: Holocaust memory through the camera’s eye. University of
Chicago Press.
Zelizer, B. (2010). Journalism, memory, and the voice of the visual. In B. Zelizer (Ed.), About to die:
How news images move the public (pp. 1–27). Oxford University Press.
Zhabotynska, S., & Velivchenko, V. (2019). New media and strategic narratives: The Dutch referen-
dum on Ukraine-EU association agreement in Ukrainian and Russian Internet blogs. European
Security, 28(3), 360–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2019.1648253
Zhurzhenko, T. (2015). Russia’s never-ending war against “fascism”: memory politics in the Russian-
Ukrainian conflict. Institute for Human Sciences. https://www.iwm.at/uncategorized/russias-
never-ending-war-fascism-memory-politics-russian-ukrainian-conflict/

Appendix A. Sources and Representation of Main Narrative Themes and

Actors in Numbers

Table A1. Main narrative themes presented in Ch1’s reporting on Ukraine.

Narrative theme Number of reports %
Fascist regime of the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian government: 1623 70.6
- Use of army against the population of the eastern regions of Ukraine 755 32.9
- Pro-fascist political decisions and speeches 356 15.5
- Resistance of the eastern population and self-defence forces to government’s army 349 15.2
- Casualties among journalists 79 3.4
- Provoking Russia into conflict 63 2.7
- Responsibility for shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 21 0.9
Other topics:
Russia as a big brother 616 26.8
US/EU support fascism and the civil war in Ukraine 43 1.9
Miscellaneous 15 0.7
TOTAL 2297 100.0

Table A2. Main actors presented in Ch1’s reporting on Ukraine.

Main actor Number of reports %
Civilians who stayed and are suffering from the conflict 743 32.3
Displaced civilians (refugees) 668 29.1
Self-defence combatants 564 24.6
Right Sector 161 7.0
US/EU 107 4.7
Other 54 2.3
TOTAL 2297 100.0

Table A3. Sources of visuals used by Ch1 in its reporting on Ukraine.

Sources Number of reports %
Ch1’s own sources 835 36.4
YouTube 784 34.1
Other official media resources 563 24.5
Facebook/vk.com/Twitter 115 5.0
TOTAL 2297 100.0
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 23

Table A4. Main narrative themes presented in Ch1’s reporting on Syria.

Number of
Narrative theme reports %
Russia as a global superpower: 778 63.1
- Russia is the strongest international political actor and peace builder 414 33.6
- Russia is the strongest military power 364 29.5
Russian versus other countries: 271 22.1
- Turkey is a supporter of terrorism and a violator of human rights 150 12.2
- The coalition’s operation is ineffective. Political and media accusations against Russia are 93 7.6
not supported by evidence.
- Syrian refugees destabilising EU 28 2.3
ISIS: 106 8.6
ISIS Crimes 78 6.3
ISIS is a threat to Russia 28 2.3
Syrian government as an ally 70 5.7
Other 7 0.5
TOTAL 1232 100.0

Table A5. Main actors presented in Ch1’s reporting on Syria

Main actor Number of reports %
Russia as superpower 1046 84.9
Civilians who stayed and are suffering from the conflict 73 5.9
Displaced civilians (refugees) 70 5.7
Other 43 3.5
TOTAL 1232 100.0

Table A6. Sources of visuals used by Ch1 in its reporting on Syria

Sources Number of reports %
Ch1’s own sources 788 64.0
Other official media resources 416 33.8
YouTube 26 2.1
Facebook/vk.com/Twitter 2 0.1
TOTAL 1232 100.0