Visual images as affective anchors: strategic narratives in Russia’s Channel One coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts

ABSTRACT

This article explores and compares the visual images used by Channel One (Ch1), Russia’s biggest state-aligned television broadcaster, to justify Russia’s intervention in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent history: the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and Syria’s civil war. The data reveal that while Ch1’s projection of Ukrainian conflict is anchored in compassion to the Eastern Ukraine population speaking the Russian language, the Syrian war is framed to fuel the feeling of national pride by focusing on the Russian greatness as a political and military superpower. This research, thus, extends the theoretical understanding of media representation of war, especially how the changing political context impacts which identities are represented and made potent through different emotional appeals. The article conceptualises visual images as affective anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses and construct emotional relationships between the audience and mediated events.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic narratives
• visual images
• affective anchoring
• emotions
• war reporting
• television news
• Russia

Introduction

Russia has been involved in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent years: the armed conflict in Ukraine and the civil war in Syria. Both conflicts have been accompanied by remarkable Russian media campaigns to mobilise public support for its interventions (e.g. Casula, 2015; Hutchings & Szostek, 2015; Jensen, 2018; Roman et al., 2017). Russian television channels, which were set up as the main propaganda platform during the Soviet era (Mickiewicz, 1999; Oates, 2013), play a key role in reproducing and refining national strategic narratives that work to legitimise military involvement specifically and foreign policy more generally. Strategic narratives can be defined as a form of soft power as they aim to justify policies and shape perceptions about certain actors and events (Roselle et al., 2014).

Throughout President Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the journalistic profession in Russia has failed to live up to the ideals of keeping the power elite in check (Roudakova, 2017). While digital media ecologies generally allow for competition between state television narratives and counter-narratives in various media forms, they also allow global publics to watch domestic television channels through different platforms (Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2010). In the Russian media ecology, alternative voices have been marginalised (Hoskins & Shchelin, 2018), and the traditional news media has retained its key role in bolstering pro-government narratives (Gaufman, 2019; Szostek, 2018). In 2014, when the crisis in Ukraine started to unfold, around 90% of Russians cited television as their main source of information (Levada Center, 2014) and 59% were likely to trust their source of information (Levada Center, 2016). Although the Russian television audience has decreased to 74% by 2020, television remains the dominant and most pervasive news distribution medium and enjoys a relatively high level of trust (48–57% depending on the news topic) (Levada Center, 2020).

The present article contributes to the discussion on the projection of strategic narratives in the Russian media ecology by analysing news coverage of the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts by one of Russia’s most watched broadcasters, Pervyi Kanal, or Channel One (Ch1) (Levada Center, 2019). Ch1 is understood in this article as a key tool in articulating the country’s position on international conflicts and creating identity claims around those conflicts for Russian-speaking audiences (Miskimmon et al., 2012, p. 3). Specifically, we examine how Ch1 has used visual images to shape the public’s view of Russia’s role in the aforementioned conflicts and in the contemporary international order.

While the power of images to shape public perceptions of news events has been emphasised in the extensive literature on media and conflicts (e.g. Domke et al., 2002; Griffin, 2004; Mirzoeff, 2005; Powell et al., 2015), visual images have received little attention in the scholarship on strategic narratives. Visual images, we argue, bring emotional resonance to strategic narratives. They provide the public with emotional resources that are key to understanding complex political ideas and situations (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007, p. 156) and anchoring them in everyday discourse (Höijer, 2010) and collective memory (Zelizer, 1998). Accordingly, we conceptualise visual images as affective anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses and construct emotional relationships between an audience and mediated events.

The present article is structured as follows: first, we introduce the background of the Ukrainian and Syrian cases. Then, we discuss the theoretical framework of strategic narratives and the role of the news media, especially images, in communicating strategic narratives during international conflicts. Finally, we outline the research design and present the results of the empirical analysis conducted on Ch1’s coverage of the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts to account for main patterns as well as similarities and differences in visual representation.

Context: Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts

Ukraine has been experiencing intense political unrest since November 2013 when Yanukovych decided not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union (EU). Many Ukrainians perceived this decision as a loss of their European dream, resulting in deep disappointment in the political regime and protests on Maidan Square (Baysha, 2016). Initially, the protests were peaceful and predominantly consisting of young students, however, after the Berkut, Ukraine Special Force, brutally dispersed demonstrators, they quickly evolved into a nationwide contention against the authoritarian regime (Shapovalova, 2019; Zelinska, 2017). Domestically, this led to pro-EU governmental change in Kiev, economic instability and a pro-Russian movement in the eastern parts of the country, which escalated into a series of violent territorial conflicts.

The domestic turmoil was followed by the collapse of the Yanukovych regime in February 2014 and Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea as well as Russia’s military incursion into Eastern Ukraine under the pretence of support for the so-called people’s republics: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. This was followed by intensification of the military confrontations between the Russian-backed insurgency and the Ukrainian government forces. The Ukrainian government and the West have highlighted Russia’s provision of economic and political support to separatist militants (Miller, 2019) but Russian continues to deny its involvement (Freedman, 2019). The crisis has been seen as the culmination of negative relations between Russia and the West (Charap & Shapiro, 2015; Haukkala, 2015, p. 37; see also Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2017, p. 114). The EU and the United States (US) implemented sanctions against Russia, which were extended after the annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysian Airlines passenger flight MH17 in July 2014 by Buk missile, which was officially identified as a Russian weapon in 2018 (Government of the Netherlands).

Meanwhile, in Syria, armed conflict began in early 2011 with political protests, which were met with increasing violence by Bashar al-Assad’s government. This led to a civil war between the government forces and opposition groups. The Syrian opposition consisted of secular and Islamist armed groups, including a variety of jihadist groups, such as the competing Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) (Anzalone, 2016). The expansionism of ISIS further contributed to the escalation of the conflict (Dal, 2016). In June 2014, after consolidating its hold over several cities in Iraq and Syria, the group declared the establishment of a caliphate and changed its name to the Islamic State (Hassan, 2018).

The rise of the ISIS threat created security and political challenges in many countries and motivated the international community to intervene in the civil war. In September 2014, the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS was formed. While the use of force by the coalition was officially requested and welcomed by Iraq government, the Syrian government characterised the coalition’s operations as a violation of its sovereignty (Gill, 2016, pp. 361–362). The US and its allies, in return, blamed the al-Assad regime for beginning the civil war and increasing the number of civilian casualties. The Coalition supported Syrian rebels identified by the US as a moderate opposition (Casula, 2015).

Russia was a long-term ally of al-Assad’s government and started its military campaign in Syria in September 2015 in response to a formal request by al-Assad for help against anti-government groups. Russia has justified its foray into Syria as an effort to fight global terrorism and defeat ISIS, but Russia’s strategic objectives included keeping its long-time ally in power and securing continued access to the Tartus naval base. Meanwhile, Putin defined Russia’s goal in Syria as ‘stabilising the legitimate power in Syria and creating the conditions for political compromise’ (Interfax, 2015). Its military and diplomatic intervention has ensured Russia’s important role in conflict resolution processes (Casula, 2015). Russia has used media coverage as an attempt to showcase its re-emergence as a global superpower (Frolovskiy, 2019).

The Russian military intervention strengthened the controversy between Russia and the US and its allies. Also, the relationship between Russia and Turkey deteriorated because Turkey supported some Syrian rebel groups, first to overthrow the al-Assad regime and later to fight the Syrian Kurds (Köstem, 2020). The downing of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet by Turkish air forces in November 2015 resulted in a political crisis between the two countries with severe political and economic consequences for Turkey (Köstem, 2018). Russia criticised the operations conducted by the US-led coalition and Turkey, claiming that they were not only erratic but also purposefully supported terroristic groups in Syria (Casula, 2015). In return, international organisations accused Russia of committing war crimes in Syria and killing hundreds of civilians in aerial attacks (Amnesty International, 2018; Human Rights Watch, 2018).

Strategic narratives and media

Roselle et al. (2014, p. 2) defined strategic narratives as a ‘means for political actors to construct a shared meaning of the past, present and future of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors’. This widely-quoted definition has been used to show how strategic narratives are always intentionally constructed by political actors to influence their target audience and facilitate their policymaking (Freedman, 2006; Miskimmon et al., 2012).

The conceptual framework of strategic narratives is recognised as a systematic and specific approach to examining soft power (Roselle et al., 2014). In particular, it looks at how and what narratives are used by foreign policy actors, including authoritarian states, such as Russia (Hutchings & Szostek, 2015; Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2017); bloggers and other narrative intermediaries (Hellman & Wagnsson, 2015; Zhabotynska & Velivchenko, 2019); and international organisations, such as the EU (e.g. Chaban et al., 2017). Strategic narratives are communicated on three levels. First, system narratives imagine a desired international order. Second, issue narratives project a specific interpretation of events to influence policy actions. Third, identity narratives construct appealing identity claims and shape an understanding of ‘others’ (Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2017; Roselle et al., 2014).

The temporality of these narratives (‘the past, present and future of international politics’ (Roselle et al., 2014, p. 2)) refers to the quality of the narratives. A strategic narrative is like a ‘palimpsest’ (van Noort, 2020, p. 186), a rewritten text that carries traces of the past. In other words, strategic narratives appropriate past discourses, ideas and images to explain political actions in the present. The persuasiveness of strategic narratives, as van Noort (2020) noted, depends on how historical ideas are translated or articulated in present narratives. The power of narratives, then, works through the activation of associations that resonate with the intended audience’s values and emotions (Freedman, 2006, p. 23).

In the present article, we draw on the idea that strategic narratives are fluid and adaptive to the context; they are fluid in the sense that they are situated in a specific political and media context and because they may combine miscellaneous discourses. For example, throughout Putin’s presidency, Russian greatpowerness has been a constant and dominant strategic narrative (Miskimmon et al., 2013; Teper, 2018), but blended the legacy of the Soviet Union, the values of Orthodox Christianity and anti-Western sentiments. The narrative is largely based on binary oppositions and a well-rooted set of stereotypes that present Russia as spiritual, moral and loyal to traditional values, while the West is seen as immoral and acting only in its vested interests (Malinova, 2014).

World War II (WWII) has been used to wield a powerful strategic narrative in contemporary Russia. This narrative is deeply embedded in the culture and loaded with symbolic power, providing a framework through which the present is comprehended (e.g. Colley, 2019; Oates & Steiner, 2018). Strategic narratives that are tightly linked to WWII appear to be naturally embedded in individuals’ worldviews and effectively invoke emotions and cultural values. The literature shows that WWII has been heavily used to discursively construct the Ukrainian crisis in Russian media, especially by associating WWII and fascist crimes with the Ukrainian government (Edele, 2017; Gaufman, 2015; Spiessens, 2019).

An analysis of strategic narratives can focus on processes of narrative formation, narrative projection and narrative reception (Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2019). As media scholars, we are interested in the role of media in projecting or challenging dominant strategic narratives. In an increasingly visual media ecology, it is important to account for the role of visuals in sustaining or challenging strategic narratives. Therefore, our main focus on the visuals that have been used by Ch1 to support the strategic narratives related to the Ukrainian crisis and Syrian war.

War images and emotions

Visuals draw their importance not only from their content but also from the emotions that their content evokes in their audience (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2020). Besides acting as a driver of emotions, visuals can also function as representations of emotions (Schlag, 2018, p. 211). They direct our attention to specific events or issues and move us emotionally. At the same time, images can make moments of distress visible to others. Thus, images represent the feelings of individuals and symbolise the emotions of communities. Therefore, emotions are not (only) personal but collective (Mercer, 2014). As collective phenomena, emotions are regarded as political in the sense that they function as evaluative judgments and social bonds between community members (Fattah & Fierke, 2009, p. 70; Nussbaum, 1996, p. 35). Emotions are thus embedded in strategic narratives with the same aim of constructing a shared ⁣feeling about events to help shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors (Miskimmon et al., 2013, p. 19). Understanding emotions on either an individual or a collective level as already mediated through representations means understanding strategic narratives. From this perspective, visuals that connect us with the historical and cultural narratives in which we locate ourselves, become meaningful and normally evoke powerful emotional replies.

Historical and cultural narratives refer to how history is presented, what is considered socially acceptable, how identities are imagined, who is considered evil and what signifies our better self (religious norms, historical achievements and cultural values). Visual images of war commonly represent certain tropes, such as the victimizable mother or child, as a method of meaning-making, connecting current events with historical narratives (Kotilainen, 2011) and our individual and collective experience of the past events (Cottle & Nolan, 2007; Tumber & Palmer, 2004; Zarzycka, 2017) to generate specific emotions (Loken, 2020; Shepherd, 2017). Due to numerous and structural repetitions (Sturken, 1997; Winter, 2014), tropes in war imagery remain solid and unaltered, despite the transformations in the nature of contemporary warfare driven by the available technologies (Zarzycka, 2017). Williams (2018, p. 882) suggests that, through a combination of romanticised beliefs, norms and values, wartime visuals, as ‘mythic politics’, are employed to generate ‘affective intensity’ in support of military involvement or violence. As O’Loughlin (2011, p. 71) has noted, the power of images to shape interpretations and resonate with the general public depends on the historical narratives and visual discourses in which the images are situated.

In her book about the construction of post-Soviet identity in films and television series, Souch (2017, p. 5) argues that the contemporary Russian identity is created through narratives that invocate and rework popular tropes, including ‘myths of patriarchal authority and brotherhood, the fantasy of the antagonistic other, the countryside idyll and, especially, the family metaphor’. Similarly, the present article starts from the idea that the visual images employed in Ch1’s coverage draw from larger discourses, myths and familiar tropes to create an affective relationship with audiences. We approach war images as ideological practices constructed to create affective intensity and provoke reactions from their audience by using particular symbols and tropes. Easily recognisable and well suited to mass-mediated collective memory, the tropes attain particular power in the coverage of violence. Because of their familiarity, tropes act as conduits of remembering – flashback or memories (Zelizer, 2010) and, thus, convey the un-picturable to the outside word in a knowable form (Zarzycka, 2017, p. XIII). In other words, they are affective anchors for abstract (political) ideas and collective identities (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007). Emotional anchoring, as Höijer (2010, p. 718) noted, ‘makes the unknown known by bringing it into a well-known sphere of earlier social representations so that we may compare and interpret it’. We understand emotional anchoring as a communicative process by which a new situation is attached to familiar emotions.

Methods

Television is a multimodal audio-visual medium. While there is no single methodological approach to studying strategic narratives in a multimodal environment, we use the framing research approach to conceptualise and understand how strategic narratives are projected through audio-visual media. In general terms, framing can be defined as a process of presenting elements of knowledge in a way that sustains or promotes a particular interpretation of events or characters’ actions (Entman, 1993). We defined a strategic narrative as a set of media framing practices undertaken to reinforce, subvert, undermine, overwhelm or replace a pre-existing discourse on a subject that is significant to the audience and the speaker, who is often a political elite (Price, 2014).

In this study, we focused on visuals that are represented in television news. We believe that news images represent a powerful instrument of framing as they provide the tropes of our collective past, ideology and culture and thus advance the construction and reinforcement of strategic narratives (Dunleavy, 2015). However, our analysis did not dismiss the verbal elements of news content. We applied a framing analysis of visual elements in Ch1’s news reports while considering the text and verbal commentary combinations accompanying the visual images.

Thus, we have applied a multi-level model that is inclusive of textual and visual analyses and quantitative and qualitative analyses. The textual and visual analyses contribute to a better understanding of meaning construction mechanisms, while the combination of these analyses and quantitative and qualitative analyses allows for the identification of patterns of meaning construction. We contend that this model of analysis can extend the theoretical understanding of media representations of war, specifically how the changing political context impacts which identities are represented and made potent through emotional anchoring.

Data

We selected Ch1 as our data source due to its popularity and domestic trust rating. Technically, Ch1 is only partly owned by the government, but it closely follows the Kremlin line and is considered to be the Kremlin’s mouthpiece (Tolz & Teper, 2018). In 2014, the channel was the most-watched media source in Russia; around 80% of the domestic audience chose it as their favourite information source (Levada Center, 2014). Although Ch1 is still one of the most popular information sources in Russia, its audience has decreased significantly in 2019 when only 47% of Russians have cited Ch1 as their primary source of news; other popular channels in Russia in 2019 were Rossia-1 (48%), NTV (36%), Russia-24 (31%) and Ren-TV (17%) (Levada Center, 2019).

The dataset incorporated all news articles published on Ch1’s website concerning the Ukrainian crisis and the Syrian civil war within a six-month period for each of the conflicts. The time periods were defined by selecting politically significant events. We examined the news coverage of the Ukrainian conflict from April 1, 2014 to September 30, 2014. In April 2014, the crisis deepened as pro-Russian protestors seized control over a dozen towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, including two major cities – Donetsk and Lugansk – and called for a referendum on independence from Ukraine, which was on May 11, 2014. In response, Ukrainian authorities started an anti-terrorism operation (ATO) against pro-Russian rebels (CrisisWatch, 2014; Flikke, 2015). At the end of September 2014, after the first cease-fire agreement (signed on September 5) was broken in an attack that killed several Ukrainian soldiers, the violence re-escalated (BBC, 2014). The coverage on the Syria conflict was examined from September 30, 2015 to March 31, 2016. This period was signposted by Russia’s first air strikes in Syria (BBC, 2015) and Russia’s announcement of the withdrawal of its military forces from Syria.

The dataset consisted of 3,529 news reports: 2,297 related to the Ukrainian armed conflict and 1,232 related to the civil war in Syria. The data was collected with the help of a specially designed computer programme, which scraped all news from the Ch1 website containing specific keywords, including Ukraine, Donetsk, Kiev, Syria and war, in the Russian language. Ch1 used varied visual sources when covering the crisis in Ukraine, which were divided into three similarly sized groups: visuals produced by Ch1’s journalists (36.4%), visuals sourced from YouTube (34.1%) and visuals labelled as belonging to other official media resources (24.5%) (Table A3). While covering the civil war in Syria, however, Ch1 almost never used visuals from YouTube, Facebook or other social media platforms (2.2%, Table A6). Instead, it mostly used its own visuals (64.0%), including ones accessed by Ch1 journalists through the press representative of the Russian Ministry of Defence and its surveillance systems. In 33.8% of its stories about the Syrian civil war, Ch1 used visuals marked as belonging to other media resources.

Analysis

We coded the visuals into four categories, which were identified after a pilot-test: key actors, visual display of suffering (or lack thereof), visual display of the conflict/war (or battle aftermath), main theme (interpretation of visuals through verbal comments) and source. We used these coding categories for the quantitative and qualitative analyses. We quantitatively compared the patterns employed in reporting on the conflicts (focusing on particular actors or themes) using simple percentages to measure the frequency and relationship between the coding categories. Using percentage agreement and Krippendorff’s alpha (α), a second coder coded 20% of the sample (706 units) to test the coding reliability. The results of the reliability testing indicated a high level of agreement between the coders on all four variables (a = 0.79). We qualitatively identified the presence of identity, issue and system narratives (Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2017; Roselle et al., 2014) and explored the frames that activated or neutralised emotions to help legitimise political decisions about involvement in international conflicts. Framing categories were identified inductively.

Findings

The Ukrainian crisis

The representation of the Ukrainian crisis on Ch1 was largely based on Russia’s victory in WWII (known as the Great Patriotic War), which is the foundation of the Russian national identity (Shelest, 2015; Weiner, 1996). Below, we discuss how references to collective memory were exploited in the news coverage of the Ukrainian crisis, and how the frames and visual images attached to them contributed to the communication of the desired Russian identity.

Identity narrative: Good versus evil

Conflicts and wars expose existing beliefs related to national identity affiliations. Identities, which are aimed to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’, are especially important as they can create moral justifications for violence against ‘them’ (De Graaf et al., 2015; Freedman, 2006) and embody nationalistic feelings, such as pride and patriotism (Cottle, 2006, p. 77). Nygren et al. (2018) in their comparative study on the coverage of the conflict in eastern Ukraine in the Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Swedish mainstream media, discovered that the us versus them dichotomy was clearly articulated in the Ukrainian and Russian media. While Ukrainian and Western media tended to interpret the conflict as a result of Russian aggression (Ojala et al., 2017), the Russian mainstream media predominantly framed the conflict as a struggle of ethnic Russians against fascism (Boyd-Barrett, 2017; Fengler et al., 2020).

The us versus them paradigm on Ch1 was strongly based on the representation of Ukrainian war victims and Russia’s response to their plight. In general, 1,957 reports (86% of the coverage) highlighted actors who were suffering due to the war (Table A2), most of whom were civilians (61.4%). The footage focused on Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians who were either fleeing to other countries – especially Russia (29.1% of the sample) – or struggling to survive in their destroyed homes and communities (32.3%) (Table A2). Roman et al. (2017) also revealed this humanitarian framing in the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict in Russian television.

Ch1’s visual reporting emphasised women, children, and elderly people. This is not a new tactic in war reporting, as news media commonly focus on those who are the most innocent and helpless to evoke empathy for victims or demonise the aggressor (Christie, 1996; Höijer, 2004; Moeller, 1999). Ch1’s visual reporting repeatedly appropriated the trope of the refugee mother and child (Image 1) as a moral and emotional intensifier. Footage of mothers fleeing from the war zones worked to stir up anger at those who inflicted suffering on the families. The women were usually depicted crying, holding their children tight and telling their heart-breaking stories. For example, one woman said, ‘We could not even think that in the twenty-first century anybody would bomb a peaceful town, hospitals or kindergartens’ (Ch1, 04.06.2014¹). Ch1 used also fake images to stir up hatred and anger towards the perceived enemy, such as in the scandalous reportage depicting a mother of four children relaying a fake story about a crucifixion of a little boy, which she purportedly had witnessed in the Ukrainian town of Slavyansk (Ch1, 12.07.2014²). Fake news, in this case, is exploited to advance the strategic narratives through supporting previously constructed identity claims and evoking powerful emotions in the target audience (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016).

Image 1. Typical visual theme used to demonise the Ukrainian government: Refugee women and children

The image of babushkas, or grandmothers, was another visual trope frequently appropriated in Ch1’s reporting. For example, a video clip of an old woman dressed traditionally in a long dress with a headscarf tied under her chin was incorporated into news stories several times (Image 2). The image of a mourning babushka crying in front of her destroyed house in a Ukrainian village epitomised the inhumanity of the enemy and the horror of war. Accompanying commentary by a Ch1 journalist declared, ‘Her daughter and grandson did not have time to hide away. The very first missile got to their house’ (Ch1, 29.6.2014³).

Image 2. Typical visual theme used to demonise the Ukrainian government: Suffering Russian-speaking civilians and destroyed houses.

We argue that representations of human suffering through the depiction of the most vulnerable groups of society create an imaginary ‘we’, connecting the audience to the suffering victims through emotional appeals. Thus, the Ch1 coverage created a perspective in which suffering was perceived as unjust, and compassion for victims blended with anger aimed at the perpetrator (Höijer, 2004, p. 522). Therefore, whereas Fengler et al. (2020, p. 415) argue that the focus in Russian media on civilian suffering represents a tendency to ‘humanise’ conflict coverage, we, like Roman et al. (2017), consider it an effort to amplify the negative representation of the Ukrainian authorities, thereby manipulating public opinion.

Issue narrative: compatriots in distress

Strategic narratives can be used to legitimise political or military involvement in conflicts (De Graaf et al., 2015). When Russian-speaking people abroad, e.g. in eastern Ukraine, are visualised as a target of military aggression and violence, it contributes emotionally to the expectation that Russia must take on the role of saviour and protector of ethnic Russians in foreign countries (Teper, 2018). Russia used a similar issue narrative in the Russian-Georgian military conflict of 2008, justifying its invasion of Georgia as a need to protect compatriots under attack (Gaufman, 2015). However, in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, Ch1 exploited references to WWII to fuel emotions and mobilise the public against a perceived enemy. Like Hutchings and Szostek (2015), we found consistent emotive references to fascism and accusations that the new Ukrainian government was Russophobic and promoted fascist-minded politics (70.6% of the sample, Table A1), causing the suffering of civilians.

Military aggression aimed at ethnic Russians was visually constructed by focusing on the aftermath of battles and showing injured and suffering civilians as well as destroyed buildings and infrastructure in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine (Image 2). Visual reporting frequently included documentary footage with easily recognised symbols and historical records of WWII to strengthen the narrative of fascism in Ukraine (Edele, 2017; Gaufman, 2015). Such visuals were alternated with images of radical Ukrainian Right Sector representatives (identified by flags or special symbols on their clothes). The visual montage worked to form an association between WWII fascists and the Ukrainian army (even though the Right Sector was not a part of the Ukrainian army). Thus, the alternation of battle aftermath images with historical images and visual references to nationalist groups in Ukraine constructed stable parallels between the events in Ukraine and WWII and laid the groundwork for the narrative of Russian rescue.

After 75 years of cultivating the memory and cult of WWII, the Russian people place their victory and their personal and collective experiences related to the war at the centre of their national identity (Fedor et al., 2017; Kucherenko, 2011). As such, the references to fascism being spread in Ukraine simultaneously appealed to Russians’ fears related to Nazi atrocities (Boyd-Barrett, 2017) and their preferred self-image as a moral power that had once globally defeated fascism (Zhurzhenko, 2015). Thus, framing the conflict in Ukraine as a fascist threat aimed at ethnic Russians was an effective instrument to mobilise public support in the pro-Russian regions of Ukraine and, of course, in Russia itself (Kuzio, 2015; Siddi, 2017).

The extensive use of WWII tropes was observed not only in Ch1’s coverage of the Ukrainian conflict but also on social media networks, such as VKontakte and Twitter, providing further evidence of the pervasiveness of the hegemonic discourse in Russia (Makhortykh & Lyebyedyev, 2015; Makhortykh & Sydorova, 2017). In fact, the predominance of the strategic narratives originating from the mainstream media left almost no space to frame the conflict in terms other than those of the official discourse. The official discourse, meanwhile, created a strong sense of insecurity (in the face of fascism) among the Russian population, which justified the issue narrative, i.e. protecting the Russian ethnic population in Ukraine from the existential threat of fascism (Makhortykh, 2020).

War in Syria

In total, 85% of Ch1’s reports on the Syrian civil war focused on advancing the claims of Russia as a great power. Specifically, the reports highlighted the political (34%) and military (30%) power of Russia. In the following section, we outline how these claims and anti-Western sentiments contributed to the construction of the strategic narratives projected by Ch1 about the civil war in Syria.

Identity narrative: global superpower

The mobilisation effect achieved after the annexation of Crimea was winding down when Russia decided to intervene in Syria (Teper, 2018, p. 82). To readjust the identity narrative to the changing political context, Russia focused on its global prestige and authority as a great power (Miskimmon & O'Loughlin, 2017). The idea of greatpowerness has been central to Russia’s state identity for centuries (Forsberg, 2014; Omelicheva, 2013). References to greatpowerness have often been exploited to mobilise Russians for war or explain Russia’s difficult relationship with Western countries (Tsygankov, 2012). In the case of Syria, past wars were instrumentalised in Ch1’s reports to emphasise Russia’s glory, and episodes of Syrian distraction, casualties and military deployment expenses were glossed over with the references to historical heroism, greatness and superiority over the ideological ‘other’ (Makhortykh, 2020; Paez & Hou-fu Liu, 2011, p. 114).

The notion of Russia’s enduring greatness and a sense of patriotism were advanced through historic narratives glorifying not only the victory in WWII but also the Soviet period in general (Nikolayenko, 2008). The majority of Russians surveyed by Nikolayenko (2008, pp. 251–252) emphasised that military might and worldwide respect made the Soviet Union a great power. Still, when it comes to Russia’s self-perception as a great power, military capabilities and international recognition are fundamental assets (Forsberg, 2014). Our findings revealed that Ch1 represented the Russian intervention in Syria as a (successful) campaign to defend its borders and the global community from the terrorism threat, thereby confirming the status of Russia as an internationally recognised superpower.

Thus, in the visual framings of the Syrian civil war, Ch1 focused on Russia’s significance as an international political actor (34% of reports) and a military and technological power (30%) (Table A4). Visual themes were dominated by images of Russian weaponry and showcases of the Russian military arsenal (Image 3). Reports were accompanied by journalist commentary underlining Russia’s significantly advanced military capabilities and increasingly prominent status as a world military power. In one of the reports (Ch1, 22.10.2015) followed international journalists visiting a Russian military base in Syria, the words of a Serbian journalist and military analyst were especially emphasised,

I happen to visit different military bases, [including] American, German, English, [and] NATO [bases]. What I can say about the Russian base is that it is excellently equipped. The jets that I have seen here are simply perfect in technical terms.⁴

Image 3. Typical visual theme of the coverage of the Syrian civil war: Russia’s military arsenal.

Russia’s advanced military capabilities were also visualised through demonstrations of Russian combat surveillance and investigation systems. The visual reporting consisted of black-and-white videos and satellite images of areas where Russian aircraft had reportedly destroyed or were destroying ISIS objects or where terror-related crimes had been committed (Image 4). In war reporting, this kind of visuals is commonly used to reinforce a sense of distance and reduce the audience’s level of emotion associated with the human and economic costs of military operations abroad (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008). Thus, while boosting Russia’s preferred self-image as a strong military and political actor, Ch1 tried to avoid evoking any unfavourable emotions related to Russian military forces’ participation in the Syrian civil war.

Image 4. Images of Russian combat surveillance and investigation systems used to visualise the war against terrorism.

Furthermore, Russia’s greatpowerness claims were enhanced by Ch1’s framing of the activities of the US and its allies. In 12% of all sampled reports, Ch1 framed Turkey as an accessory to terrorism whose actions were only possible with the political support of the US. In 10% of the reports, Ch1 focused on Russian achievements in fighting ISIS, contrasting them with US military failures and the incompetence of US officials. The anti-Western sentiment was visually constructed through public speeches by Russian and US government representatives. US and EU officials were presented as engaging in politically motivated accusations against Russia without evidence. In comparison, Ch1 showed Russian officials and allies speaking as a counter-narrative. For example, one report contained a video of an interview given by Syria’s President al-Assad to the Spanish newspaper El País in which al-Assad argued that the US, while supporting the so-called moderate opposition in Syria, also funded terrorists.⁵

Within this frame, the US coalition forces were seen as unable to tackle the ISIS threat; in comparison, the Russian operation in Syria was represented as a noble mission to fight Islamic terrorism and US global hegemony (Teper, 2018, p. 82). Russia’s invasion of Syria was justified in the Cold War manner by constant pointing to the failures and shortcomings of the US-led coalition’s military operations and diplomatic solutions while simultaneously bolstering Russian political approaches and military achievements (Makhortykh, 2020). These binary identity narratives, along with the demonstration of Russia’s military capabilities, created a trope of the superior nature of Russians as a nation and the superpowerness of Russia as a state.

Issue narrative: Stop the refugee crisis

To legitimise Russia’s invasion in Syria, Ch1 framed the Russian military campaign as a counterterrorist operation that would reduce the number of refugees leaving Syria for Europe (Stent, 2016, p. 110). In line with studies exploring the coverage of the Syrian civil war in Russian newspapers (Brown, 2015) and on RT Arabic (Dajani et al., 2019), we found that, instead of reporting on Syrian civilian suffering caused by military actions, Ch1 focused on the refugee crisis in Europe. Some scholars argued that portraying refugees in Europe as a security threat contributed to the binary contradiction between Russia and Europe, in which Russia was a safe place with an insightful government, while Europe was insecure and moving closer to economic and cultural collapse (Forsberg, 2014; Neumann & Pouliot, 2011). Moreover, Braghiroli and Makarychev (2018) suggested that the strategy of framing Europe as being ruined by refugees was designed to help Russia re-enter the European (geo)political scene as the force that not only significantly reduced the threat of terrorism in Syria but also salvaged Europe from cultural fragmentation and economic collapse.

The refugee crisis was visually framed as a mass disorder in European cities. European authorities were reported as being overwhelmed by refugees and expecting economic collapse, while European citizens were depicted as being afraid of or harmed by refugees. The refugees themselves were visually presented as being culturally different (through their way of dressing or practicing cultural rituals), idle (not working) and aggressive. For example, a Ch1 report entitled ‘Europe is overwhelmed by crimes committed by refugees’, referred to a story in Sweden in which a teenager from Syria killed his classmate of Lithuanian descent because the Lithuanian boy was trying to protect a school girl from harassment. The story presented a portrait of the boy who was killed and images of the police patrolling a school.⁶ Similar instruments of visualisation, e.g. a portrait of a victim who suffered at the hands of refugees and the police in the streets, were used in other reports.

Russian newspapers represented refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a similar way. While the television news focused on the security threat posed by Syrian refugees to Europe, the newspapers produced a view of refugees from MENA as a threat to Russia (Moen-Larsen, 2020). This representation significantly differed from how the newspapers framed Ukrainian refugees. While Ukrainian refugees were framed as culturally and ethnically similar to Russians, thereby legitimising their presence in Russia, MENA refugees were positioned as threats, thereby supporting the narrative of the EU as weak and threatened and of Russia as superior to the EU (Moen-Larsen, 2020, p. 236). We believe that the trope of the Syrian refugee bringing along destruction and chaos merged with the historical dichotomy between Russia and the West (EU) to feed the issue narrative and justify the Russian invasion of Syria.

Discussion and Conclusions

Through television news, Russia narrates its position and concerns within European and international systems. This article has shown how Ch1 used visual images as affective anchors to connect two major global conflicts to collective memory and identity in order to strategically promote a particular interpretation of the events. Our analysis revealed that Ch1 coverage anchored the conflict in Ukraine and the civil war in Syria in different emotions and used different visual materials to construct meanings on the strategical level. While the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict was anchored in compassion for the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine and anger towards the Ukrainian government, the Syrian civil war was framed to fuel a feeling of national pride by focusing on Russian greatness as a political, military and moral superpower.

We can begin to explain these differences in visual framings through the routine practices used by journalists to assess the appeal of news stories for their audiences. Journalism scholars have repeatedly shown that cultural and geographical proximity shapes how stories about war and disaster are told (e.g. Hanusch, 2008). In culturally proximate stories, journalists employ various narrative tools, such as references to a historically shared identity, memory and enemy, to construct a sense of closeness between the viewers and the event and to appeal to their emotions. Thus, the humanitarian framing of the Ukrainian conflict and the deeply emotional discourse in the coverage reflected the cultural proximity of the event. The emotional appeals were condensed into a small range of visual materials repeated across the coverage, which was strongly focused on making the suffering of the victims poignant and demonising the claimed aggressor and included excessive references to the historical memory regarding fascism. In terms of strategic narratives, the emotional discourse on shared history and identity can be understood as justifying Russia’s actions and interest in Ukraine, which, together with other post-Soviet countries, is Russia’s most important area of influence. The visual and textual framing legitimised Russia’s foreign policy aimed at safeguarding Russian compatriots and identity abroad (Casula, 2017; Teper, 2018).

While, in the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict, Ch1 attempted to enhance a narrative of the need to protect civilians, the fraternal Ukrainian people, Ch’s silence regarding the suffering of the Syrian people in its coverage of the Syrian civil war was striking. Visually, the Syrian coverage was characterised by what Griffin (2004, p. 385) defined as ‘backstage images’ of weaponry and Russian politicians’ statements. It was constructed as a clean high-tech war to boost Russia’s international status. While the idea of greatpowerness has long been at the core of Russia’s state identity (Forsberg, 2014, p. 321), recognition of Russia as a powerful actor in international politics became especially important after the annexation of Crimea, which damaged Russia’s reputation and led to international sanctions (Teper, 2016, p. 378). Thus, the great power narrative was not only aimed at improving Russia’s image abroad as a central player in the global order and international conflict regulation for the international audience but also served to boost national feelings and justify military involvement to Russians who were experiencing the economic consequences of the sanctions. Similarly, the intensive reporting of the European refugee situation aimed to enhance a sense of national superiority vis-à-vis the political impotence of the EU and individual European countries. At the same time, this narrative reflected the increased tensions between Russia and the EU and served to justify Russia’s widely condemned bombardments as a means of bringing stability to the Middle East.

In conclusion, our research contributes to an understanding of how strategic narratives exploit visual materials in an effort to influence people’s perceptions of global conflicts (Colley, 2019; De Graaf et al., 2015). Our focus has been on how Ch1, as the Russian state’s voice, uses visual images to communicate and justify the country’s involvement in international crises to its domestic audience. Visual images function as emotional anchors by building connections to past ideas, images and experiences (Gaufman, 2015); in doing so, they intensify the emotional impact of the strategic narratives that imagine Russia’s role in the world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irina Grigor (Khaldarova)

Dr. Irina Grigor (Khaldarova) completed her PhD in Media and Communication Studies (University of Helsinki) in 2020. Her doctoral research focused on the visuals employed in the Russian television news to mediate the international conflicts and advance the state’s interpretation of the events for domestic and global audiences. Her research interests center around strategic narratives and, more broadly, the role played by news media in shaping public opinion and political behaviour.

Mervi Pantti

Dr. Mervi Pantti is Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research is concerned with the emotional dimension of mediated communication, crisis and disaster reporting and media accountability. She is co-author of Disasters and the media (with Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Simon Cottle, Peter Lang, 2012) and editor of Media and the Ukraine crisis: Hybrid media practices and narratives of conflict (Peter Lang, 2016).

Notes

1 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-06-04/43274-detey_chi_roditeli_ostalis_v_zone_boevyh_deystviy_razmestili_v_sanatorii_v_rostovskoy_oblasti.

2 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-07-12/37175-bezhenka_iz_slavyanska_vspominaet_kak_pri_ney_kaznili_malenkogo_syna_i_zhenu_opolchentsa.

3 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-06-29/44874-kiev_i_opolchentsy_ob_yavili_o_peremirii_no_dialog_shel_pod_grohot_kanonady.

4 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2015-10-22/8834-v_sirii_rossiyskie_voennye_priglasili_na_aviabazu_zhurnalistov_iz_raznyh_stran.

5 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2016-02-21/946-moschnye_bomby_byli_vzorvany_v_damaske_i_homse.

6 https://www.1tv.ru/news/2016-01-18/3236-evropu_nakryvaet_volna_prestupleniy_s_uchastiem_bezhentsev.

Appendix A. Sources and Representation of Main Narrative Themes and Actors in Numbers

Table A1. Main narrative themes presented in Ch1’s reporting on Ukraine.

Narrative theme	Number of reports	%
Fascist regime of the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian government:	1623	70.6
- Use of army against the population of the eastern regions of Ukraine	755	32.9
- Pro-fascist political decisions and speeches	356	15.5
- Resistance of the eastern population and self-defence forces to government’s army	349	15.2
- Casualties among journalists	79	3.4
- Provoking Russia into conflict	63	2.7
- Responsibility for shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17	21	0.9
Other topics:
Russia as a big brother	616	26.8
US/EU support fascism and the civil war in Ukraine	43	1.9
Miscellaneous	15	0.7
TOTAL	2297	100.0

Table A2. Main actors presented in Ch1’s reporting on Ukraine.

Main actor	Number of reports	%
Civilians who stayed and are suffering from the conflict	743	32.3
Displaced civilians (refugees)	668	29.1
Self-defence combatants	564	24.6
Right Sector	161	7.0
US/EU	107	4.7
Other	54	2.3
TOTAL	2297	100.0

Table A3. Sources of visuals used by Ch1 in its reporting on Ukraine.

Sources	Number of reports	%
Ch1’s own sources	835	36.4
YouTube	784	34.1
Other official media resources	563	24.5
Facebook/vk.com/Twitter	115	5.0
TOTAL	2297	100.0

Table A4. Main narrative themes presented in Ch1’s reporting on Syria.

Narrative theme	Number of reports	%
Russia as a global superpower:	778	63.1
- Russia is the strongest international political actor and peace builder	414	33.6
- Russia is the strongest military power	364	29.5
Russian versus other countries:	271	22.1
- Turkey is a supporter of terrorism and a violator of human rights	150	12.2
- The coalition’s operation is ineffective. Political and media accusations against Russia are not supported by evidence.	93	7.6
- Syrian refugees destabilising EU	28	2.3
ISIS:	106	8.6
ISIS Crimes	78	6.3
ISIS is a threat to Russia	28	2.3
Syrian government as an ally	70	5.7
Other	7	0.5
TOTAL	1232	100.0

Table A5. Main actors presented in Ch1’s reporting on Syria

Main actor	Number of reports	%
Russia as superpower	1046	84.9
Civilians who stayed and are suffering from the conflict	73	5.9
Displaced civilians (refugees)	70	5.7
Other	43	3.5
TOTAL	1232	100.0

Table A6. Sources of visuals used by Ch1 in its reporting on Syria

Sources	Number of reports	%
Ch1’s own sources	788	64.0
Other official media resources	416	33.8
YouTube	26	2.1
Facebook/vk.com/Twitter	2	0.1
TOTAL	1232	100.0