The language of the press in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia: Creation of the citizen role through newspaper discourse

Abstract

The Russian media system was during most of the 20th century part of the state institutions. During glasnost and perestroika, the media became gradually more independent of the state. However, the subsequent apex of journalistic freedom in the late 1980s and the early 1990s was followed by stagnation and a pronounced democratic setback following Putin’s accession to power. Despite this, the findings based on qualitative text analysis of articles in the daily press strongly indicate that after 1991 readers of the press are being increasingly addressed as active and knowledgeable citizens, a tendency which is strengthened during the entire period of study. Methods for text examination are speech act and modality analysis, exploring how readers are discursively positioned in the sample text material, which covers the democratically critical time span 1978–2003. The findings imply that although post-Soviet journalism itself faces considerable difficulties, a firm cultural ground for citizen participation in society has been laid through changes in press language.