media analysis

In the first days of post-electoral protests in Belarus, state news were largely in denial: no mention of the protests or tiny segments suggesting not much was going on, with routine coverage of Lukashenko doing routine visits and such. After more than 10 days of protests, things have changed considerably. Panorama, an evening news programme supposed to last 50 minutes according to schedule, went on for two full hours. Most of it was dedicated to discussing in one way or the other the “complex political situation” in the country.

Recently, Scan Interfax revealed that in the month of January 2017, for the first time since 2011, Vladimir Putin has not been the most frequently mentioned individual on Russian media: Donald Trump was. The news quickly made the rounds on American media (e.g. on Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, and others). According to an article by Konstantin von Eggert published by Deutsche Welle, on 15 February Russian state-owned media of the VGTRK group were instructed to stop talking about Trump so much.

Just more than a month has passed since Russia started its military intervention in Syria. There has been a lot of talking about the motivations behind the Kremlin’s decision to take an active military role in the Middle East, and a number of competing explanations have been proposed. However, one element that has been frequently quoted is the Kremlin’s desire to shift attention in Russia’s media from Ukraine to something else, while maintaining the focus on foreign affairs rather than domestic issues.