Doctoral defence: Heidi Ann Erbsen “The making of ‘Imagined global communities’: the ‘orientation’ and ‘orientalization’ of Russian speaking audiences“

On 3 July at 14:00 Heidi Ann Erbsen  will defend her doctoral thesis “The making of ‘Imagined global communities’: the ‘orientation’ and ‘orientalization’ of Russian speaking audiences” for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Media and Communication).

Supervisor:
Professor Triin Vihalemm, University of Tartu

Opponent:
Associate Professor Tetyana Lokot, Dublin City University (Ireland)

Summary
The dissertation The making of ‘Imagined global communities’: the ‘orientation’ and ‘orientalization’ of Russian speaking audiences considers how international online media in English and Russian reports about and to Russian speaking audiences in different countries. The author shows how the city of Narva, Estonia (a city on the border with Russia) was reported on in international English news media from 2015-2018 (after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022). This reporting used fixed and stereotyped images of the city, such as pictures of Vladimir Putin, Russian nesting dolls, the statue of Lenin, etc., as a starting point to discuss larger international conflict between Russia and the West and demonstrate that Russia is an ominous and real threat. At the same time, from interviews with local Russian speakers in Narva in 2018, the author understood how residents worked to ‘slightly correct’ the way their city was represented: rather than being a historically Russian city, it is a city with a Swedish and Hanseatic past, and instead of a place for future conflict, Narva is a potential bridge between the East and West or a place for “a handshake or even a hug between Russia and Europe”.

In investigating how Russian news media generated by the Yandex News algorithm reports based on the country filters for Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and the USA the author also found several differences in reporting to confirm that the Russian information space, even that controlled by the Russian Federation, was, as of 2019 quite fractured. Interviews with local Russian speakers in different cities in Estonia further showed how Russian speaking audiences in Estonia connect mostly with local information (shared by peers or known sources), to a lesser extent with content generated for Estonia, and least of all with content from Russia which seemed rather ‘distant’ for respondents. Keeping in mind that this research took place before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this thesis sheds a great deal of light on how communication between international news media and increasingly diverse audiences, including Russian speaking minorities in Estonia, continues to operate in times leading up to larger international conflict.