Russian Mass Media and Changing Values

Birgit Beumers, Stephen Hutchings, Natalia Rulyova (eds.), The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals, Routledge, 2008 Price $ 160Comments: This book on the Russian TV is largely written from a perspective of cultural studies. This is very close to the approach some authors in our book have chosen, but the book edited by Beumers et al. is methodologically more unified, while our book has more different approaches. However, the juxtaposition of two perspectives of mass media, the quantitative one, as developed by traditional mass media and communication studies, and the one of cultural studies, is valuable since it represents collisions among researchers and lecturers characteristic for almost any journalism department. Stephen Hutchings, Natalia Rulyova, Television and Culture in Putin's Russia: Remote Control, Routledge, 2009 Price $ 160Comments: This is a very fine book based on a substantial field research that successfully demonstrates an extent to which politics and culture are intertwined in the present-day Russia. The fact that we've tried to cover not only TV but print media as well is, we think, our advantage.Nordenstreng, K., Vartanova, E., Zassoursky, Y. (eds.) Russian Media Challenge, Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2001 (2nd ed 2002) $37.00 on AmazonComments: This is one of the first monographs devoted to the post-Soviet mass media. The editors claim that it is only when collective of researchers deals with such complicated topic the chances are high that a result will be successful. The book is certainly successful. However, we think that it is written mostly from a perspective of an old school of mass media research while new perspectives, including the one of cultural studies, are left out. Elena Vartanova, Hannu Nieminen and Minna-Mari Salminen (eds), Perspectives to the Media in Russia: Western interests and Russian Developments, University of Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series 4, 2009 Price 20 EUR + VAT 8%.Comments: This book compares the approaches to the media in Russia developed by the Western and Russian researchers. The book claims that while the former is still significantly affected by the Cold War stereotype, the latter is able to provide a detail map of the Russian mass media industry which is drawn, mainly, on the basis of available statistics and sociological polls. Our perspective is different: we believe that there is no need any longer to oppose so drastically the Western and Russian intellectuals' understanding of mass media. Moreover, statistics and polls are not enough to make sense of complex and often subtle changes that media both create and reflect on.