Russian Journal of Communication

ISSN: 1940-9419 (Print) 1940-9427 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrjc20

New and old institutions within the Russian media

system

Ilya Kiriya

To cite this article: Ilya Kiriya (2019): New and old institutions within the Russian media system,
Russian Journal of Communication, DOI: 10.1080/19409419.2019.1569551

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19409419.2019.1569551

Published online: 28 Jan 2019.

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RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/19409419.2019.1569551

New and old institutions within the Russian media system

Ilya Kiriya
School of media, National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’, Moscow, Russia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to analysing the Received 3 May 2018
current duality of the Russian media system, which for a long time Accepted 22 December 2018
was regarded as transitional. We propose to interpret the current
KEYWORDS
Russian media system in terms of institutional conflict between Russian media system;
norms, which were artificially implemented and the grounded institutions; public sphere;
informal rules embodied in everyday practices both from market transition; media tradition
agents and audiences. Mainly implemented after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the norms were based on a neo-liberal
representation of the media system, involving financial
independence of the media from the state, a ‘news culture’
instead of a ‘propaganda culture’ and so on. At the same time, the
informal rules were based on the paternalistic role of the state,
the accessibility tradition and the fragmentation of the public
sphere. The interaction of such elements forms the dualist or
‘uncertain’ character of the media system.

Introduction
The current media model of Russian society could be described as the ‘merging of two
matrices’, as for the last 20 years, the Russian media is considered as a ‘transitional
media’ where a ‘modernised matrix’ and ‘freedom of speech’ have not completely
removed the ‘Soviet matrix’ where the media is dominated by the state. The whole of
Russian society was described as a ‘transitional one’ even in quite recent times (see for
example Hahn, 2012). Consequently, the so-called ‘dualism’ of the media system is
explained by the co-presence of two sets of factors within the Russian media system.
On the one hand, we can observe some market-oriented trends which are accompanied
by the neo-liberal discourse of regulatory authorities. On the other hand, we can see the
paternalistic role of the state, with state capitalism enforced by very conservative political
discourse (Vartanova, 2011). Such duality (or even ‘plurality’) of factors was described as
‘conflicting signals’ by Beumers, Hutchings, and Rulyova (2009).
We propose an alternative vision of such duality. We argue that it does not necessarily
need the dynamics of change (or progressive replacement of ‘old factors’ by newer ones)
but could just be a sign of the stable coexistence of two sets of factors: those which are
grounded over the centuries and rooted in human practices with newer ones. It means
that, in reality, there is no transition to the ‘libertarian media model’ but the assimilation

CONTACT Ilya Kiriya ikiria@hse.ru School of media, National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’,
Myasnitskaya, 20, Moscow 101000, Russia
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 I. KIRIYA

of ‘Western media values’ to use for ensuring traditional communication control and state
domination. Actually, we can see more and more researchers preferring to speak of post-
transition (Sparks, 2008).
This paper will be structured as follows: in the first part, we will provide an explanation
of the current duality of the Russian media system through the concept of institutional
conflict. In the next part, we will describe the set of rooted elements of the Russian
media system which contradict formal rules and imported principles. In the third
section, we will focus on how such rooted elements contradict the formal implemented
rules of the current media landscape. In the final section, we will interpret obtained
data, summarise it and propose ideas for further research.

Institutional conflict as a methodological concept to understanding

Russian media duality
According to Douglas North, institutions are defined as ‘humanly devised constraints that
shape human interaction’ (North, 1990). Consequently, effective institutions should be
deeply grounded in social life, meaning that such institutions are based on collective
shared everyday practices, rites or conventions. From this point of view, ‘rules’ not only
mean formal rules (such as laws, regulations etc.) but also informal ones which make
the formal rules suitable and connected to the cultural reality of a particular society.
Once the state has dealt with every reform where some new formal rules are
implemented, it was uncertain about the result of their implementation because they
lead to confusion with grounded informal ones. In this case either informal institutions
could reinforce formal institutions or smooth over their imperfections (Tamasz, 2002).
However, such an approach tends to invalidate any normativity and universality in poss-
ible implementation of reforms. Reforms could not entirely be done by using the universal
implemented regulatory basis.
The peculiarity of the Russian media model is often represented in the state paternalism
and state control over the media. Vartanova generally forwards this argument and points
out that such a factor is caused by some geopolitical and cultural commonalities and tra-
ditions without explaining the whole mechanism of coexistence of such factors and their
historical and social roots (Vartanova, 2011, p. 140). In this paper we are advancing this
argument and trying to present a complex vision of such factors as: the character of
public sphere (PS) formation; the other role of the state in communicating social
reforms; other rooted practices of accessibility in cultural production. The most important
variable among them is the general belief of the different actors (including audiences, dis-
persed administrative and regulatory bodies, authorities and so on) that the media is the
State institution, oriented, among other institutions, toward the State modernization. This
factor as we suppose influenced, in a great extent, the split of the public sphere and other
peculiarities of the Russian media system.
We propose to interpret the current Russian media system in terms of such institutional
conflict between norms, which were artificially implemented mainly after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, and the grounded informal rules. The interaction of such elements forms
the dualist or ‘uncertain’ character of the media system (as well as the whole social system)
but does not necessarily mean the dynamic process of replacement of the ‘Soviet pater-
nalistic media system’ by a democratic commercial one.
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 3

Another problem with the interpretation of the Russian media peculiarity resides in a
very monolithic description of state power in Russia and, as a result, putting forwards
state paternalism as the key peculiarity. Our approach relies more on rooted practices
(in forming the public sphere, in implementing communication support of state
reforms, in consuming cultural products etc.) than on top–down hegemonic ‘state
control’ based on orders, directives and so on. We try to argue that the paternalism in
the field of the media resides not in strategies of the centralised power but in soft
tactics of different actors including audiences. Thus, at the centre of the media system
we can see the routinised practices shaping the informal institutions. We propose a
new conceptual framework which tries to reconcile structuralist and constructivist
approaches in this field of study. To do so, we divided all practices into ‘top–down prac-
tices’ (practices of empowered agents and institutions: such as state agents, corporations,
policies) and ‘bottom–up practices’ (practices of ordinary people, simple journalists, audi-
ences, users).
We propose the following research questions:
RQ1: What kind of practices in field of media lead to the institutional conflict with
implemented rules?
RQ 2: How were such practices formed historically?
RQ3: How are such practices implemented at the bottom–up level (level of autonomous
agents) and how are they confronted with top–down level practices (level of institutions,
structures, state etc.)?

Rooted practices influencing informal rules

Under the idea of media transition (McNair, 1991; Obydenkova, 2008; Paasilinna, 1995;
Semetko & Krasnoboka, 2003; Vartanova, 2011) we can see another collective mythology.
Soviet society is often represented in such works as the main source of the peculiarities of
Russian contemporary society. From this point of view, the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik
revolution distorted the natural development of Russian society and, consequently, the
media system which was previously developing according to the general matrix of
Western media. Such mythology formed a belief that destruction of these ‘Soviet
factors’ will modernise the media by returning to a pre-Soviet communication model
and at the same time an occidental model of communication that should follow democra-
tisation (Rantanen, 2002).
In our opinion, the communication model was formed long before the Soviet period
and the Soviet period has been a logical continuation of this pre-Soviet society. Such
factors as the absence of market relations in some fields, the paternalistic role of the
state, the propagandistic function of the media, which are rooted in the traditional
Russian media for centuries long before the Soviet period, formed the everyday practices
of different actors in this field. That is why Russia cannot destroy these ‘Soviet factors’,
because they are grounded in social reality for centuries.
In this part, we will distinguish a few sets of practices grounded in social reality and
trace their historical development. Among factors crucially influencing informal rules in
the media sector we can distinguish aspects such as: (a) the big intrusion of the state
into social life which forms particular practices of commercial and state-dependent
4 I. KIRIYA

agents in the field of pressure on the media by means of control over content and news
(Koltsova, 2006; Mickiewicz, 1999; Oates, 2006) or industrial structure (Kachkaeva, Kiriya, &
Libergal, 2006; Kiriya, 2017); (b) practices of particular segmentation and communicational
isolation of different social groups which influences the narrow character of the public
sphere and its huge fragmentation (Degtereva & Kiriya, 2010; Mattelart, 1995); and
finally (c) practices of the accessibility culture which is oriented towards making cultural
or symbolic products accessible to people for free (Kiriya, 2012).
Firstly, we have to stress that the modernising role of the state within social life is rather
typical of Russian authorities. It clearly appeared in different periods of Russian history.
According to research on the Russian economic mentality, no reform in Russia (starting
from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great) has ever been a result of natural institutional
development. On the contrary, every reform was imposed by the state, bearing a violent
character towards the people. The state at the same time assumed its major role in mod-
ernising society (Balabanova, 2001; Krasin, 2017).
That is because all initiatives of westernising Russia belonged to the state power and in
this context, we should re-examine the modernisation and westernisation of the Russian
media system after the Soviet period.
If we look at this phenomenon we can mention this logic in the case of the printing
revolution (it was initiated by the state to increase the orthodoxy in newly attached
regions – and in ten years the state banished previously invited first printers from the
country for diffusion of heresy). Before XVIII, annual production was at a level of about
one to two titles per year (in Europe about 2000) (Tarakanova, 2000). The same logic of
invitation of printers by the tsar and then their punishment was demonstrated by the
father of Peter the Great, Alexey Romanov (Jirkov, 2001). Therefore, it was a crucial differ-
ence from Europe where the initiative in printing was private and the state played a sup-
porting role in the distribution privileges (Eizenstein, 1983).
Desacralisation of books was a state policy launched by Peter the Great who was the
first tsar to separate religion and state power. Furthermore, we can see the increase of
printing from 11 titles per year to 600. In the same way, the launch of the first newspaper
‘Vedomosti’ was a direct initiative of Tsar Peter (not the same logic with ‘La Gazette’ where
the initiative belonged to a private person who arrived to Richelieu to obtain a privilege).
Absolutely the same logic can be observed in the case of railway building and with tele-
phones, even in the Soviet period. Administration modernised the Russian media and
communications by inviting foreign specialists. We can see that the state acted and not
only in a supporting role. All that influenced entrepreneurial logic in communications
was not based on market demand but oriented towards requesting funding from state
bodies. Such ‘entrepreneurial logic’ formed the practice of recourse to different forms of
state finance, even when private actors were much more oriented to state subsidies
and public funds or dependence on state-owned companies than on making profit
from the open market.
Transformation of social attitudes and social representations of the state’s civilised
(enlightening) activity is a direct outcome of the active role of the state. It further trans-
forms the in which way society perceives itself in this system. The passivity of the
masses facing this state predominance becomes a common response. Very marginal
and not so popular social groups show their political and social activity (e.g. through par-
ticipation in restricted political clubs) but the people, as a majority, have never been
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 5

involved in social debates (even when this debate would be allowed) (Stepin, 2015). It
forms particular practices of social passivity and a very rudimentary level of self-organis-
ation at grassroots (Alexander, 2000, p. 232). Russians are less able to create particular
societies, communities and broker any common interests via such organisations including
the media by themselves.
Such passivity considerably influenced the second factor shaping the long-term rooted
peculiarity of the Russian media system – the narrow and fragmented character of the
Russian public sphere. Practices of social passivity turn into an inability to negotiate,
find consensus and make concessions which finally leads to the isolation of particular
micro-groups from others and their communicational autonomy. The public sphere in
Russia, in classic Habermas’ understanding, has never existed. In the nineteenth century
(when the English public sphere flourished, according to Habermas) 90% of the Russian
population (dominated by serfs) had neither political rights nor special needs for infor-
mation. In addition, 62% of the population in 1914 was illiterate (Mironov, 2000). Accord-
ingly, the Russian public sphere in the nineteenth century was very narrow. Russian
intellectuals discussed actual political problems and possible paths of social development
in the printed media, but these discussions were understood and read by a limited audi-
ence range, mainly presented by big Russian writers who became classics of Russian litera-
ture. This is explained by the fact that the Russian writers of this period were, at the same
time, journalists and editors for the press.
In the first half of the Soviet period we can observe that this public sphere was based
mainly on physical violence. In later Soviet times (starting from Khrushchev) we can trace
two parallel public spheres emerging. This concept of two parallel public spheres was first
introduced by Mattelart. He distinguished the official public sphere from the non-official or
parallel public sphere. The first one is the monopoly of state propaganda. Society is
excluded from this field. The second one is the area where certain anti-Soviet groups of
the nation constructed their own press, their own mechanisms of self-expression, their
parallel power. That contributed to the transformation of the ‘official public sphere’ into
a ‘ritual public sphere’ where ideology was not really shared but became a simple habi-
tude. Mattelart considers ‘samizdat’ (auto publication), international radio broadcasting
and illegal video-traffic from abroad and so on as crucial elements of this parallel
sphere’s constitution (Mattelart, 1995).
In the Soviet period, the minority of people living in the parallel public sphere were
shaped from the so-called dissidents and those sympathising with them. As opposed to
a Central European dissident who would be supported by the majority of the socially
active population, in the USSR this stratum was really powerful. That is why perestroika
did not become a real revolution provoked by social action but a simple reform
imposed by the state. The so-called liberalisation of TV and the press (glasnost) has con-
sequently been a state-promoted policy, which changed considerably the television and
media landscape in Russia and imported a new westernised content (Paasilinna, 1995).
However, it has never considerably changed the social landscape and the social attitude
towards television.
Another grounded peculiarity in the Russian media is an accessibility tradition embo-
died in a set of different practices of pirating content (from the side of the audience) or
making content free of charge for the audience by subsidising it (from the side of the auth-
orities). We can see that the whole Soviet system was based on the accessibility of cultural
6 I. KIRIYA

and information products and for the majority of the population such a system became
normal and unique, a possible institution for diffusion of information and culture. The
nationalisation of all private collections and cultural industries, which occurred immedi-
ately after the revolution, also facilitated easy access to cultural goods (Elst, 2005). There-
fore, the Soviet Union never ratified the main international document on copyright, the
Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which guarantees that
authors have the exclusive right to alter their works. The USSR used domestic legislation
when collaborating with foreign authors and respected the intellectual rights of authors
who fully conformed to Soviet ideology. The cultural administration was free to decide
whether a foreign author deserved such respect in the Soviet Union (Kiriya & Shersto-
boeva, 2015).
On the other hand, we can observe the existence of a parallel hidden communication
system which recompenses ‘bottlenecks’ of the official communication system. In other
words, the accessibility tradition also formed the practice of parallel alternative media
usage because such alternative media and cultural products (such as illegal Western
videos or music) represented a counter-public sphere. Structurally, this official communi-
cation system should react to the existence of such ‘parallel demand’. Both traditions
should influence the development of a piracy culture in contemporary Russia.
In this section, we identified key practices which supposedly enter into institutional
conflict with new implemented rules and thus, addressed the RQ 1. Such practices are
based on particular entrepreneurial logics of the actors in media field oriented toward
the state support, on the imposing character of the state innovations, on fragmentation
of the public sphere, and on the accessibility tradition. We showed that behind such prac-
tices there are some historical cultural and other peculiarities of the Russian society such as
passivity of the population, modernization role of the state, fragmentation of the political
forces. All such peculiarities formed long time ago and are historically grounded which
permits to us to address the RQ 2.

How everyday practices contradict imported rules in contemporary media

All aforementioned rooted elements considerably influenced the current media system
and the practices within it. We are particularly interested in the analysis of the formal
rules and regulations which were imported into Russia just after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, creating many strange mixes between feudal–democratic, archaic–moder-
nist, statist–neo-liberal discourses and policies.
During the post-Soviet period the state acted in many ways to maintain the modernis-
ation role. First of all, it used soft non-directive pressure on content makers, distributors
and so on. Secondly, it influenced the structure of the market and ownership, which
hugely biased the media. Finally, it granted subsidies to some media in order to resolve
conflict between commercial and state interests. However, and this is our central argu-
ment, all such activities of the state represent a set of practices of different actors (includ-
ing practices of journalists to make the content loyal to the owners of their media) rather
than a centralised strategy. That is why there is an impression that some measures in the
field of media policy contradict others.
At the level of top–down practices, the ideological function of the state TV implements
specific restrictions on news broadcasting. Since the second period of V. Putin’s
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 7

presidency, the strong system of news regulation, limitation of covering certain events,
blacklisting of ‘non-grata’ persons were introduced in the state (and even in the non-
state) TV channels (Koltsova, 2006; Pribylovskij, 2006). One of the striking confirmations
of the fact was the almost mild coverage of the economic problems and financial crisis
in Russia in the autumn of 2008 and in 2014 by information services of the state machine.
However, at the level of ‘bottom–up practices’, we should stress that the mechanism of
news filtering is based to a great extent on self-censorship and related mechanisms of par-
ticular agents, such as personal beliefs of news anchors rather than on directive control
from the Kremlin (Schimpfossl & Yablokov, 2014). Seemingly, we have to deal with a set
of practices at the middle decision level and journalists who artificially, without particular
directives, understand boarders and interests of actors and try not to cross them.
During the last ten years we can observe how, mainly in field of culture, another form of
pressure over content proliferated: the appeal of particular social groups. Thus, some
orthodox activists influenced the decision of the Ministry of Culture to change the director
of the Novosibirsk Theatre for directing the opera ‘Tannhauser’, which was considered
obscene. The same scandal recently (2017) occurred with the new film ‘Matilda’ when
some orthodox organisations, with the tacit compliance of the Orthodox Church Office,
pressed big theatrical networks to pull the release. Here, we can observe how top–
down and bottom–up practices interact.
Ownership bias consists in creating such configurations of ownership which produces
fake pluralism and ensures the leading state role. Such production at the top–down level
of practices consists in limiting access of foreign capital in the field of the media (mainly in
television) and in distributing the most influential parts of the media to loyal elite groups.
The big share of Russian media property has been based on a non-market distribution
mechanism (so-called mortgage public sales) (Gaydar, 1998), representing the privilege
distributed by the state. Civil liberties were given by power as well as media property
but did not become the result of the struggle for them. The estate sphere followed in
the same way. The properties, which were acquired not according to market mechanisms,
but also as gifts, were required back and society also became passive. So, this is an expla-
nation of all Putin’s period transformation of media property distributed between more
loyal players, demonstrating a persistence of state initiative.
Eventually, the state chose a dualistic strategy: on the one hand, it has not allowed
state-owned and state-dependent media to die, introducing alternative methods of
state support and financing; on the other hand, due to a lack of resources, the state has
shared the financing of the media with big financial and industrial groups which were
loyal to the Kremlin. Many of them were permitted to acquire media without any antitrust
limitations. At the same time, the state has never curtailed free market forces and tolerated
commercial ways of making money with the media.
In the 1990s, the lack of state resources and inability to finance the media on the one
hand and the non-existence of the advertising market on the other, pushed the media into
the hands of big oligarchs. Such oligarchs as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Potanin and Vla-
dimir Gussinsky became the main owners of the biggest media conglomerates. In 1996,
they rallied around president Yeltsin in order to ensure his victory against the communist
candidate (Mickiewicz, 1999, p. 171). After Yeltsin’s retirement the elite groups began
going through big changes. After the victory of Vladimir Putin’s party, Unity, in the 1999
parliamentary elections, non-loyal media owners such as Vladimir Gussinsky, Boris
8 I. KIRIYA

Berezovsky and so on were forced to leave Russia and divest their media assets (Fossato,
2001, p. 347; Gessen, 2012).
During the first years of Putin’s presidency new media owners appeared and increased
their media ownership. At the same time between 2000 and 2008, the state budget grew
considerably thanks to high oil prices and the state-owned media benefitted from colossal
annual state subsidies. For example, in 2013, the advertising revenues of the state-owned
television group VGTRK were estimated at 17,587 million roubles (about $552 million),
while for the same period, according to the Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communi-
cation, state subsidies amounted to 22,870 million roubles (about $718 millions) (FAPMC,
2013).
Since 2005, there has been a clear increase in the share of state-owned television (Deg-
tereva & Kiriya, 2010, p. 41; Kachkaeva et al., 2006), as well as a quasi-takeover of all political
media outlets by oligarchic groups close to the Kremlin. These oligarchs preferred televi-
sion assets over other media because of their high impact on public opinion (Mickiewicz,
2008) and widespread consumption. The old elite of the 1990s (Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir
Gussinsky, Vladimir Potanin) were completely replaced by two oligarchs (Yuri Kovalchuk,
the head of the bank Rossiya, and Alisher Usmanov, the steel magnate) (Kiriya, 2017),
who have since taken control of the most important television channels.
At the level of ‘bottom–up practices’ such hyper concentration of the media market
under big behemoths of state capitalism formed a particular conviction among start-
ups and newly established projects in the field of new media that the direct subordination
of any media business to oligarchic groups is better than independence and serves as a
guarantee from any pressure. As a result, a lot of relatively independent TV production
businesses, Internet projects and so on have been sold out to oligarchs. This was the
case of the VK social media network, Odnoklassniki and Comedy Club Production.
The state also created a whole system of state financial support for creating propagan-
distic fiction content to resolve conflict between commercial financing of TV channels and
state-oriented tasks. We can distinguish three forms of these top–down practices which
have been called a ‘commodification of loyalty’: direct financing through a budget line;
financing based on a contract model; and financing through a grant system. The first
form of financing media is a characteristic feature of state-owned media especially on a
federal level. The policy of direct financing is reproduced also at regional level where
local administrations are owners of media and finance them. Sometimes regional admin-
istration co-finance media without being their principal owners (but maintaining informal
ties with their principal stakeholder).
The second form of ‘commodification of loyalty’ involves the so-called ‘contracts for
informational coverage’. Subject of such agreements specify volume, number, character
and themes of information coverage. Among them are specified the ‘coverage of gover-
nor’s policy’, information items about local authority initiatives and so on. The expectation
of future agreements for information coverage could provoke self-censorship both in
‘financed topics’ and not specified by such contracts. In many regions there is the
system of non-equal distribution where 80% of the total of contracts are concentrated
among three of four main players (Ademukova, Dovbysh, Chumakova, & Kiriya, 2017).
The third form of commodification of loyalty is a grant system. Its peculiarity is the
openness of the grant procedure for the media (often even grant’s distributors describe
good conditions for grant distribution) and relatively narrow volume of financing, but in
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 9

general this form is very similar to the previous one. Grants became a most popular way to
propagate different kinds of social initiatives. The most popular are grants from the traffic
police (for example, for creation of television programmes about road security), from the
Ministry of Junctures (for preparing materials about rescuers), from the interior ministry
(for preparing news items about police activities) and from the state anti-drug authority.
At the regional level, it could be grants for popularising local products, regional tourism
and so on.
All such sophisticated mechanisms create a parallel market which causes the aforemen-
tioned bottom–up practices of recourse to different forms of state finance even for
content which could be produced without it. It is simpler for private agents to produce
something and obtain state support for that than to produce the content and sell it on
the open market.
Concerning the public sphere, we should stress that the fragmented configuration of it
still persists in post-Soviet Russia and especially in post-2000 Russia where the pressure on
official institutional media became higher. It means that the parallel public sphere exists due
to the quite restrictive character of the official public sphere, where the large, widespread
media (mostly government or state-owned companies) are subordinate to censorship
and filtering of their content (Koltsova, 2006). Additionally, this is a top–down (or structural)
practice based on general control over the media and especially centralised control over the
main financial means of the media (described before). It pushes some political parties and
forces them outside the approved mainstream to create parallel communication means,
initially underfinanced and aiming for very narrow groups of audiences.
The duality of the public sphere correlates well with two major attitudes of the popu-
lation towards the media. The majority of the Russian population relies more on the media
and expects some kind of support from it (Klimov, 2007). Research on television audiences’
attitudes (Kachkaeva & Kiriya, 2007) shows that for the majority of Russians, the media is a
state institute that explains all external realities for them. The remaining Russian popu-
lation is more pragmatic regarding media functions and uses it to be more informed
and to make their own decisions and their own interpretations of reality. Such people
rely on themselves (Klimov, 2007).
The large, widespread media and official public sphere serve the needs of the greater
part of the population, providing them with enlightening content that maintains social
stability and ensures the reproduction of the power elite. Such media have the largest
share of the audience (Channel One, Rossia, and NTV account for approximately 50% of
daily audience shares on television, which is the main consumed media in Russia) and
the advertising market (state-owned Channel One and Rossia account for 40% of the
entire television advertising market) (Degtereva & Kiriya, 2010). These media are primarily
owned by the state or close to the state power elite groups.
Meanwhile, some niche media outlets may be more critical as they have a news agenda
that differs from the official media. Such media serve the information needs of a very
narrow group of socially active people that are also represented by Internet users.
These media are the Echo Moskvy radio broadcast, Dozhd television channel and
Novaya Gazeta print media. Online media also play a role in this field (Etling et al.,
2010). A large part of such media outlets are institutionalised within the system of
state-related ownership: Echo Moskvy belongs to Gazprom, Novaya Gazeta is under the
control of the businessman Lebedev. Such media do not play the role of mediators (the
10 I. KIRIYA

basic function of the public sphere according to Habermas), but rather ensure the isolation
and marginalisation of the opposition and critically thinking people. Consequently, such
media can be called ‘information ghettos’ (Degtereva & Kiriya, 2010; Kiriya, 2014). Such
ghettos reproduce the old Russian culture of a narrow public sphere from the nineteenth
century and the late Soviet period. The use of a parallel public sphere represents the sub-
version of the traditional public sphere, but does not play an important role in the subver-
sion of the entire social order.
Such ghettoisation at the level of bottom–up practices leads to the huge fragmentation
of the so-called ‘alternative media’, their inability to find a common platform and some-
times professional competition between them. For example, the editor in chief of Republic
(online media financed by the same investor as the opposition channel ‘Dozhd’), Maxim
Kashulinskyj, could debate with Galina Timchenko (editor of ‘Meduza’), while the opposi-
tion leader, Alexey Navalny, animating the anti-corruption portal fbk.ru, could criticise
Vedomosti newspaper journalists for censorship and so on. In other words, instead of max-
imising audiences of the opposition media and probably combining resources as well as
strategies, oppositional media gather their little audiences around them, each time pro-
posing conflicting views on the situation in the country. This means that any independent
political and social force prefers to create a little ‘parallel media’ instead of finding consen-
sus and joining political programmes or claims of others. From this point of view the oppo-
sition is much more effective in connective actions (inciting large numbers of people to
protest on the streets) than in collective ones (Gel’man, 2015, p. 182).
In parallel to such an institutionalised parallel public sphere, another PS has appeared
within social networks on the Internet. According to Etling et al. (2010), public discourse
within social networks in Russia has its own peculiarities – namely, a quasi-exclusive
field for public discourse for such isolated clusters, such as democratic opposition and
nationalists. As such, the parallel public sphere is represented in its institutionalised
form as well as in a non-institutionalised form. Sometimes public discourse from blogs
(i.e. the non-institutionalised sphere) can migrate into the institutionalised parallel
public sphere (to Internet media or some another ‘ghetto’), but rarely appear in the
official PS. Such three spaces, in other words, are constantly intersecting between them
and messages could migrate from one to the other, but such migration is regulated
more or less by different mechanisms of gatekeeping (Figure 1).
Now let us turn to the accessibility tradition within the Russian media field. In our
opinion, such an accessibility tradition represents a kind of contemporary social contract
inherited from Soviet times but rooted to a great extent in previous paternalistic tradition.
In particular, in the contemporary media system, accessibility is mostly ensured by the
state to distribute some kind of cultural and informational goods under non-market con-
ditions (as gifts or donations). For example, in field of sport broadcasting, rights do not rep-
resent a real market: state companies (like Gazprom, for example) are the main owners and
sponsors of soccer teams and sometimes they are forced to sell broadcasting rights to
state-owned television channels for the lowest prices. That is why the majority of big
sport teams in different kinds of sports (biathlon, soccer, hockey etc.) are owned either
by the state or by big oligarchic oligopolies (Kiriya, 2016). In other words, at top–down
level practices, different agents associated with state institutions are oriented to
financial support of various forms of content in order to make them accessible to
people (and as a result, to be more visible and better promote state initiatives).
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 11

Figure 1. Main and parallel public spheres in Russia.

During the transition period, the state imported global market economic institutions
(such as market-driven prices, private property) yet also maintained the old social con-
tracts under the pressure of the population. It structured the industry to be more accessi-
ble for people by subverting some commercial mechanisms. Thus, the state television
chose only two main possible models of financing: commercial advertising or direct sub-
sidies. This was the only possible alternative given the shortage of state funding as well as
the non-readiness of the population to pay for it. Thus, classic paid public TV and paid-for
TV are very weakly developed. This leads to the structural dualism of Russian state televi-
sion – the biggest players in the advertising market (state television channel Rossia and
the 51% state-owned Channel One with a total daily share of about 40%) accounted for
about 50% of television advertising revenues in the market (Kiriya, 2017).
With the development of television (free for customers) and the crucial drop-off of
people’s revenues for print media, paid media (very developed during Soviet times)
became less popular, which led to a drop-off of paid circulations and the practical disap-
pearance of subscriptions. This situation provoked a very tough reaction from the state to
ensure accessibility to newspapers. First, Gaidar’s liberal government, in parallel to shock
therapy and significant inflation, distributed unprecedented support for the biggest news-
papers (fixed prices for paper, some subventions from the state, exemptions from VAT pay-
ments, etc.) (Zassursky, 2001). The entire system of financial state support for the press was
implemented which made the press financially and politically subordinate to local and
federal authorities. Among the supporting mechanisms, the state uses the subvention
of subscription, which means that the state pays the subscription for some kinds of news-
papers (primarily state-run ones). The difficult economic situation has led to the majority of
print outlets being sold and financed either by the state (local authorities, city authorities,
federal authorities, regional governors, etc.) or large industrial groups that also
12 I. KIRIYA

represented one of the means for making such outlets accessible to the people (even if
their objectives were purely propagandist).
One of the structural mechanisms that made the press more independent from readers’
payment was the tolerance of a parallel form of media financing. A more developed mech-
anism consists in using the aforementioned ‘information coverage contracts’.
Concerning the bottom–up strategies, the common response of the population to the
implementation of commercial rules in the field of the cultural industry (namely movie
sector and music) was piracy. During the first years of Gorbachev’s reforms and the
‘new Russia’, piracy was a quasi-legal practice tolerated by the state. However, after
joining the Bern convention in 1995 and installing a Business Software Alliance office in
1997, Russian authorities engaged in what could be characterised as a spectacular struggle
against piracy. Authorities tolerated home piracy, informal exchanges (Internet and home
Ethernet networks became the major instrument of such exchanges) and even the exist-
ence of some privileged sales points.
With the moving of cultural piracy online we could still observe such tolerance as pre-
viously. On one hand, the state adopts more and more anti-piracy measures (such as the
2014 anti-piracy law). On the other hand, it does not considerably change the public atti-
tudes towards copyright infringement. According to the Levada-Centre, the majority of
those who consume new films and music, download them from the Internet for free
while only a 2% minority claim they pay for downloading movies (Levada-centre, 2013).
The main argument here is that anti-piracy measures are used more to regulate content
and perform censorship and not really to curb online piracy (Kiriya & Sherstoboeva, 2015).

Discussion: between top–down and bottom–up practices

Contrary to common opinion that a paternalistic tradition in the media is a key peculiarity
of the Russian media system and is based on direct state intrusion into decision-making
processes in the mass media, we showed that such a paternalistic tradition is embodied
in a set of everyday routinised practices from the side of ordinary micro social actors
(we call bottom–up practices) as well as from the side of different state-associated struc-
turing actors. And that is probably the most important response to our RQ 3: each top-
down practice has its own reflection at the level of bottom-up practices. Each formal
rule or officially implemented and declared principle, which does not correspond to
such rooted practices, faces the double reaction from both sides of the practices. It is
then, in a double manner, perverted by the population at the micro-level and by govern-
ing actors at the macro-level, which creates such a strange duality in the Russian media
sphere (Table 1).
Thus, the principle of journalistic objectivity and news journalism culture, which has
been implemented, instead party subordinated ideologised journalism under the
Soviets has been perverted by different practices of manipulating content, making it
loyal to the elite group. The institution of the ‘free media market’ with competing
outlets has been perverted by practices of oligarchic control over the media from the
side of the ruling elite. The principle of financial self-sufficiency of the media (in other
words – relying on advertising as a key business model) has been perverted by a wide-
spread system of state support distorting free competition and the principle of commercial
self-sufficiency, which is also important for Western-based media and has been perverted
 RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 13

Table 1. Interaction of formal and informal institutions and their impact on the media system.
Informal rules Impact on the media
Formal rules Top–down practices Bottom–up practices system Evidence, consequences
Journalistic news Directive intrusion of Self-censorship Journalism as serving Superficial form of news
culture. the Administration Appealing to the modernisation but ideologically biased
into the content of particular orthodox social role of the
media and civic groups. power elite.
Open market Limiting access of Orientation toward Maintenance of the High level of ‘true
access and foreign capital obtaining financing control over media concentration’.
competition. Media under control from oligarchs ownership
of loyal elite groups
Advertising as the Parallel models of Orientation toward Dualism of the media Non-free competition on
model of non-commercial production for the system at the level market.
financing media. state financing state support and of financing
media not for audiences
Pluralism within Concentration of High level of Information ghettos Instead of pluralism –
the public resources at the atomisation of and isolated atomisation of
sphere as a key level of mainstream ‘alternative’ media. discourses within alternative political
for democratic media. the public sphere. forces and their
society. marginalisation.
Commercial media Huge system of state Tendencies to make The state ensuring Dual character of the
support and media free of accessibility by Russian media economy
oligarchic charge either by subventions and where the commercial
sponsoring of piracy practices or tolerance of piracy. means coexist with
different media appeal to the state non-commercial.
support

by practices of accessibility of content. Finally, the idea of competitive pluralism at the

level of the public sphere has been perverted by atomisation of subjects of the public
sphere and splitting them into a few parts.

Conclusion
Such results provide a more profound interpretation of the duality of media systems not
only in Russia but also in the so-called post-Soviet world. Some rooted elements, which we
discovered in the Russian media system, could persist in other post-Soviet countries. Some
of them will disappear, which will probably question the existence of the so-called post-
Soviet media system showing its heterogeneity and very diverse landscape. In some ex-
Soviet republics (in Central Asia) we have to also analyse the interaction of rooted cultural
religious-based institutions of the Muslim world interacting, at the same time with Soviet
implemented practices and rules and post-Soviet neo-liberal implemented institutions. In
some others (such as Poland or Baltic states), we will probably trace the influence of repub-
lican liberal political tradition (formed during the few dozen years after obtaining indepen-
dence from the Russian Empire) and Protestant tradition implemented during the Soviet
times’ rule. All such peculiarities provide us with a very large and diverse programme of
further research.
Our findings enlarge the possible optics to analyse post-transitional media systems and
propose the complex approach to regard such factors as ‘state paternalism’, ‘state domi-
nance’ and role of ‘power’. As we argued during the paper such complex entities are
embodied in a set of different practices not only from the side of the regulatory instances
but also from the side of audiences, firms etc. forming the particular consensus between
top-down and bottom-up levels (RQ 3). But to analyse such practices we need firstly
14 I. KIRIYA

identify them as crucial in the current duality of any ‘post-transitional’ media system
(which was made in this paper and addressed RQ 1), and make the deep historical contex-
tualisation in order to show they rooted character (which corresponds to our RQ 2).

Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to Sodertorn University and its Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) for
inviting me as guest researcher in October 2017. During this visit the present article was prepared
for publication.

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

Funding
This article is realised within the framework of the project ‘Mediatisation of social institutions, com-
munities and everyday life’ funded by the Scientific Fund of National Research University – Higher
School of Economics.

Notes on contributor
Ilya Kiriya holds a PhD in journalism from Moscow State University and PhD in communication
studies from Grenoble University (France). Was assistant professor in Moscow State University
(Faculty of journalism). Since 2007 is full professor in National research university ‘Higher School
of Economics’ where he is a chair of the School of Media. Ilya Kiriya’s main scientific interests are
in field of political economy of communication and media in post-soviet countries. His works are
published in International Journal of Communication, Russian Politics, Hermes communication
journal.

ORCID
Ilya Kiriya http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6305-0836

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