the new russian nationalismout the possibility of a continuous analysis covering the whole
two years. Instead, we recorded the material in equally spaced
blocks. Three months of recording were followed by a three-
month break in recording, producing four recording periods con-
taining a total of 9,352 items viewed, of which 654 were coded.
To guard against omissions and arbitrariness in our analysis,
we continued monitoring ethnicity- related news in between our
recording blocks, relying on the two channels’ comprehensive
web- archives. While we cannot trace the peaks and troughs in
coverage in a continuous line, our blocks nevertheless reveal
broad changes in emphasis over the entire period. Following the
end of the recording period, we continued to closely monitor
Vremia and Vesti via their archives up to the summer of 2014.
We are, therefore, able to trace shifts in reporting that have been
taking place during Putin’s third presidency, including the new
environment that ensued after regime change in Ukraine.
The period to which the recordings belong encompassed impor-
tant changes in Russia’s political landscape. The winter of 2011–12
saw the first major street protests that Russia had experienced for
nearly two decades, following the December 2011 parliamentary
election (the election was mired in suspicions of falsification).
Despite the scale of the protests, Putin returned to the presidency
in May 2012. Putin’s perceived manipulation of the constitu-
tion to permit him to run for a third term led to further mass
demonstrations on the streets of Russia’s cities. The period prior
to Putin’s re- election witnessed the Pussy Riot scandal and dete-
riorating inter- ethnic relations throughout Russia. (It was also
immediately preceded by major, Islamist- inspired, suicide bomb-
ings in Moscow’s metro system in March 2010 and at Moscow’s
Domodedovo International Airport in January 2011, when the
separatist insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasian periphery dealt
devastating blows to the (post- )imperial heartland.) The state-
aligned broadcast media bore responsibility for some of that
deterioration, yet frequently resorted to suppressing the contro-
versial topics associated with it in order not to fuel the conflict.
Our news recordings captured some of the major milestones in
this contradictory process, notably the media’s confused reaction
to the racially motivated riots in Moscow’s Manezhnaia Square