1st Edition
Media and Social Space in Russia and Sweden A Comparative Approach
This book explores the structure of mediated social space in Russian and Swedish metropolises, focusing on the representations of material and ethnic divides, social classes, ordinary persons and elites in mainstream news and popular media. Based on several sets of data gathered over a decade – including surveys, interviews, qualitative and quantitative content analyses – as well as analyses of large scale international surveys, the authors offer a comparison of urban spaces in two neighbouring countries, in order to shed light upon the role of media in society, where mediated space is increasingly characterised by global flows and actors. Challenging the prevailing conceptions in the West of today’s Russia – the political rule of which is often described as authoritarian and marked by ever more censorship – and of the West, which is judged by contrast to be a stronghold of democracy and tolerance, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology and media studies.
Introduction, (Cecilia von Feilitzen and Peter Petrov)
1. Poverty and Material Divides in the News, (Cecilia von Feilitzen and Peter Petrov)
2. Empirical Data, Methodology, and Connecting Ideas, (Peter Petrov and Cecilia von Feilitzen)
3. The Ordinary Person in News Media of St. Petersburg, (Sergey Korkonosenko and Marina Berezhnaya)
4. News Media and Social Class (St. Petersburg and Stockholm), (Cecilia von Feilitzen and Peter Petrov)
5. Ethnicity, Identity and Media Discourse (Russia and Sweden), (Peter Petrov)
6. The Diversity of Political Views on Russian Television and its Projection in Western Media, (Peter Petrov)
7. Social Divides in Popular Media (Russia and Sweden), (Peter Petrov and Cecilia von Feilitzen)
8. Celebrities’ Perception of Success in Russian and Swedish Entertainment Discourses, (Anna Osipova)
9. Conclusions in Brief (Cecilia von Feilitzen and Peter Petrov)
Appendix
Description of Methods
Biography
Cecilia von Feilitzen is Professor Emerita of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden and co-editor of Use and Views of Media in Russia and Sweden: A comparative study in St. Petersburg and Stockholm.
Peter Petrov is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Gävle, Sweden and co-editor of Use and Views of Media in Russia and Sweden: A comparative study in St. Petersburg and Stockholm.
Sergey Korkonosenko is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Theory of Journalism and Mass Communications at St. Petersburg State University, Russia.
Marina Berezhnaya is Professor and Chair of the Department of TV and Radio Journalism at St. Petersburg State University, Russia.
Anna Osipova is Assistant Professor of Russian at Lund University, Sweden.
