DIGITAL MEDIA AS A TOOL FOR NON- SYSTEMIC OPPOSITION IN : A CASE STUDY OF ALEXEY NAVALNY’S POPULIST COMMUNICATIONS ON YOUTUBE

Sofya Glazunova Bachelor, Master

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Communication Creative Industry Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2020

Keywords

Content analysis; digital activism; investigative journalism; Alexey Navalny; network society; political communication; political performance; populism; press freedom; ; Russian opposition; Russian politics; Russian media; truth; visual aesthetics; YouTube.

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube i

Abstract

This Doctor of Philosophy project explores how Russia’s opposition figurehead Alexey Navalny uses YouTube’s affordances to communicate populist discourses that establish him as a successful leader and combatant of the elite of long-running leader Vladimir Putin. The project draws on theories of populism, investigative journalism, and digital media. Text transcripts and screenshots of Navalny’s YouTube videos during his electoral campaign for the 2018 presidential election are studied through mixed-method content analysis.

Political communication in the 21st century is characterised in many countries by a decline in trust in conventional news media, the emergence of new political communication actors such as social media platforms and the rise of populist content. The constant search for new journalistic practices that take advantage of the affordances of new and alternative media has led many political activists to create new communication projects that seek to challenge and expose political elites by playing a watchdog role in society. In the Russian context, the primary reference point is opposition leader Navalny, who uses these political communication “shifts” to challenge Putin’s elite and to overcome the limited press freedom in the country by creating a direct pipeline of information to the people.

Navalny exemplifies Russia’s so-called “non-systemic” opposition, which has been forced to operate from the “ghetto” since the 2011-2012 mass protests that he played a key role in instigating. Despite the frequent harassment from the police and authorities, Navalny’s online and offline popularity continues to grow through the years due to digital instruments available to the activist and his anti-corruption investigations published on new media, most particularly on YouTube. He often resorts to a populist style of communication, which employs people-centric and anti- elitist ideology and a set of populist performances to attract the peripheral electorate.

The results show that Navalny uses different types of “populisms” in his YouTube narration: these have been termed superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy populism. The latter combines investigative journalism and digital activism practices to call people to action. Navalny is one of the few activists who is able to regularly and successfully hold mass protests in contemporary Russia, and the research ii Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

data indicates that he uses advocacy populism in his YouTube narrations specifically before protests to maximise the political participation from the audience. Among other things, Navalny employs the stylistic elements of visual aesthetics for his populist performance on YouTube, such as stage, body, and colour representations to show his exceptionality as a leader while also creating a feeling of intimacy with the audience. The opposition leader performs as a typical “YouTuber” stylising his message for the needs of the platform and its audience, involving idiosyncratic YouTube functions and genres to make his videos viral.

This research contributes a case study of Russia’s main opposition leader to the vibrant research field of populism as mediated through social media. It particularly focuses on the YouTube platform — the most popular platform in Russia by volume of users, often overshadowed in studies of political communication by “political” Facebook and Twitter.

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube iii

Table of Contents

Keywords ...... i Abstract ...... ii Table of Contents ...... iv List of Figures ...... vi List of Tables ...... viii List of Abbreviations ...... ix Statement of Original Authorship ...... xi Acknowledgements ...... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Background ...... 1 1.2 Context ...... 4 1.3 Purpose ...... 6 1.4 Significance and scope ...... 6 1.5 Thesis outline ...... 8 Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 11 2.1 Political communication and the rising power of digital media ...... 12 2.2 Digital investigative journalism. A shift towards an advocacy continuum ...... 27 2.3 Populist communication and populist narratives ...... 42 2.4 Significance, theoretical gaps and research questions ...... 58 Chapter 3: The political communication ecosphere in Russia ...... 63 3.1 Non-systemic opposition, electoral authoritarianism, and populism in Russia ...... 63 3.2 The media in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s ...... 69 3.3 The “Sovereign Internet” and social media in Russia ...... 73 3.4 Alexey Navalny in Russian political communication environment ...... 78 Chapter 4: Research Design and Methodology ...... 83 4.1 Measuring populism ...... 83 4.2 Methods ...... 86 4.3 Characteristics of the overall sample of Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 96 4.4 Research stages ...... 99 4.5 Ethics and limitations ...... 123 4.6 Summary ...... 123 Chapter 5: Themes, symbols, and ideological content of Navalny’s communication ...... 125 iv Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

5.1 Themes of Navalny’s communication ...... 125 5.2 Targeting executive and economic powers in Russia ...... 138 5.3 Discrediting the elite and appealing to “the people” ...... 148 5.4 Structure of Navalny’s populist narration ...... 155 5.5 Four themes and four populisms ...... 158 5.6 Summary ...... 161 Chapter 6: Four types of populism in Navalny’s communication ...... 163 6.1 Superficial populism ...... 163 6.2 Investigative populism ...... 166 6.3 Radical populism ...... 173 6.4 Advocacy populism ...... 179 6.5 The meaning of Navalny’s populist narration on YouTube ...... 183 Chapter 7: YouTube as a medium for spreading Navalny’s populist and anti-corruption sentiments ...... 189 7.1 YouTube and anti-corruption discourses in Russia ...... 190 7.2 Populist imagery of Navalny ...... 199 7.3 Stylising the message for the YouTube medium ...... 209 7.4. Summary ...... 216 Chapter 8: Conclusions and discussion ...... 219 8.1 Navalny and his populist communication on YouTube ...... 219 8.2 Contributions to the field ...... 227 8.3 Limitations of the project ...... 231 8.4 Future prospects for the research ...... 232 Bibliography ...... 237 Appendices ...... 255

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube v

List of Figures

Figure 3-1: Hybrid regime rulers’ utility curve and policymaking ...... 65 Figure 3-2: The percentage of the Internet Penetration in Russia 2000-2017 ...... 74 Figure 4-1: Procedural model of qualitative content analysis ...... 95 Figure 4-2: Ideological elements of populism in Navalny’s videos. Categories for coding ...... 112 Figure 4-3: The formula for the calculation of sub-sample for reproducibility test ...... 114 Figure 4-4: The formula of the thematic density in Navalny’s texts ...... 118 Figure 5-1: Concept map in Leximancer of 52 English transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 127 Figure 5-2: Detailed concept map in Leximancer of 52 English transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 128 Figure 5-3: Most co-occurred words connected with the word “Medvedev” in Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 132 Figure 5-4: Connectivity of the words in the “truth”-themed cluster ...... 134 Figure 5-5: Number of references to the categories of political communication actors on secondary excerpts ...... 141 Figure 5-6: Distribution of references between pro-Putin and pro-people camps in secondary excerpts of Navalny’s videos ...... 143 Figure 5-7: Distribution of the categories of actors in 77 of Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 144 Figure 5-8: Most referred actors in Navalny’s secondary excerpts on YouTube .... 146 Figure 5-9: Sources (videos) with references to actors in secondary excerpts ...... 147 Figure 5-10: References to categories of actors of the elite in secondary and main excerpts ...... 154 Figure 5-11: Structure of Navalny’s videos ...... 156 Figure 5-12: Themes and types of populism in Navalny’s communication ...... 158 Figure 7-1: Google transparency report: Requests to delete content in Google in Russia ...... 195 Figure 7-2: Google transparency report: Satisfied requests to delete content in Google in Russia ...... 195 Figure 7-3: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video...... 197 Figure 7-4: Screenshot of Yashin’s YouTube video ...... 197 Figure 7-5: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 200 Figure 7-6: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 202 Figure 7-7: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 202 vi Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

Figure 7-8: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 203 Figure 7-9: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 205 Figure 7-10: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video ...... 205 Figure 8-1: Screenshot of Zhdanov’s YouTube video ...... 235

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube vii

List of Tables

Table 2-1: YouTube characteristics as global news medium compared with conventional public television news ...... 26 Table 2-2: Criteria for identifying investigative journalism in content analysis ...... 29 Table 2-3: Approaches for defining populism (with definitions and authors) ...... 43 Table 2-4: Types of populism ...... 46 Table 4-1: Level of inter-coder agreement in coding ideological components of populism in Navalny’s main excerpts ...... 115 Table 4-2: Sampling for the four types of populist excerpts in Navalny’s communication ...... 117 Table 4-3: The sub-categories of populism and the questions for the qualitative summaries of the video excerpts for the coder ...... 120 Table 4-4: Research design ...... 124 Table 5-1: Main themes and concepts of 52 English transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos ...... 126 Table 5-2: Main themes and words/concepts from 52 English transcripts of Navalny's videos ...... 136 Table 5-3: Number of references and sources (videos) consisting of references to the category of actors in Navalny’s videos ...... 140 Table 5-4: Content analysis of the combination of sub-categories of populism in Navalny’s YouTube communication ...... 149 Table 5-5: Categories of the elites targeted by Navalny in his YouTube excerpts ...... 151 Table 5-6: Types of populisms in Navalny’s narration based on the combination of sub-categories of populism ...... 153 Table 5-7: Ranking of themes in types of populisms in Navalny’s communication ...... 159 Table 6-1: Main characteristics of four types of populism in Navalny’s narration ...... 184

viii Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

List of Abbreviations

Abbreviation Meaning

ACF Anti-corruption Foundation (Russia)

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BC Before Christ

CV Curriculum Vitae

EE Eastern Europe

FSB in Russia

GDP Gross Domestic Product

ICT Information and Communications Technology

IJ Investigative Journalism

KGB Committee for State Security in the USSR

KPRF Communistic Party of the Russian Federation

LDPR Liberal-Democratic Party in Russia

Mosgorizbirkom Election Commission of

MP Member of Parliament

MS Microsoft

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

NO DAPL Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

PC Political Communication

PhD Doctor of Philosophy

PM Prime Minister

PR Public Relations

QUT Queensland University of Technology

Roskomnadzor Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media in Russia

Rosreestr Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography in Russia

RS Research Stage

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube ix

RuNet Russian Internet

SNS Social Networking Site

SORM System for Operational-Investigative Activities (Russia)

UK United Kingdom

UN United Nations

UR (a party in Russia)

US (USA) United States of America

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

x Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube Statement of Original Authorship

Some of the fragments of this thesis were previously published as:

Glazunova, S. 2020. “‘Four Populisms’ of Alexey Navalny: An Analysis of Russian Non-Systemic Opposition Discourse on YouTube.” Media and Communication, 8(4). DOI: 10.17645/mac.v8i4.3169 (in press).

Glazunova, S. 2020. “Mediating populist discourse in Russia via YouTube: The case of Alexey Navalny.” In 30 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, edited by Akimov, A. and Kazakevitch, G, 191-213. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-0317-7

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the rest of the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature: QUT Verified Signature

Date: ___08.10..2020______

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Acknowledgements The PhD journey is not an easy road; it requires stamina, perseverance, creativity, and some other qualities that I did not know I had. Moreover, it is a lonely adventure, while moving to the other side of the world to do a PhD was an easy decision for me but leaving my family and friends behind was not. Through its ‘highs’ and ‘lows’, I was lucky enough to have a team of true supporters, my family, friends, and colleagues, who were with me throughout these three years. I dedicate my thesis to these wonderful people.

First and foremost, I would like to thank my family, the major motivators behind my academic career. To my mother, Elena, thanks for being in touch 24/7, for believing in me, for supporting my crazy endeavours, including getting a PhD degree in the other hemisphere. You taught me how to be strong and patient and not to give up on my dreams. Thanks to my father Maxim I learned how to fight for things in life but enjoy life to the fullest. Thanks to Stefania for being kind and supportive little sister.

Academia-wise, I would like to genuinely thank my supervisors Professor Clive Bean and Associate Professor Angela Romano for their invaluable and insightful guidance during my PhD. My special gratitude goes to Clive who was really helpful in showing me the main research strategies and contributed to my cognition of the “philosophy” of a PhD. Clive taught me how to be an independent researcher and navigate my own academic adventure. Thanks, Angela, for the thorough feedback, for being excited about my research, when sometimes I was not. Your mentorship during the QUT education tour to Indonesia was immeasurable, I acquired a lot of experience and knowledge from you there including teaching empathy and working resilience.

I cannot thank enough my unofficial PhD mentor Dr Aljosha Karim Schapals. Your mental support, career advice, editing skills, and, most importantly, your friendship were inestimable throughout my candidature. Thanks to Aljosha, I was able to join the Political Communication unit at QUT what made me fall in love with teaching. Among other merits, I would like to acknowledge Aljosha’s contribution to my Final Seminar as a panellist as well as his proof-reading work for my thesis.

It was a great pleasure to work along with like-minded and supportive colleagues who form a really strong community at the Digital Media Research Centre, Creative xii Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

Industries Faculty, and QUT broadly. My sincere gratitude goes to Ehsan Deghran, his research ideas, advice, and help with computational software were really valuable during my candidature. Thanks to Silvia Montana for being the best office buddy and a great colleague. Thanks to Yi Wang, Jarrod Walczer, and Delfi Chinnappan with whom we started this PhD journey together. From casual get-togethers to inspiring conversations, you were great examples to look up to and achieve new heights. Thank you, Maryline Kassab, for your genuine friendship, for fixing my grammar, for organising our catchups, and keeping our cohort in a great and kind spirit. To Younghui Kim, thank you for your friendship and support. Your understanding, wisdom, and patience helped me a lot. Special thanks are also due to Smith Mehta, Kelly Lewis, Eddy Hurcombe, Zin Myint, Katherine Kirkwood, Ariadna Matamoros- Fernández, Terry Flew, Stephen Harrington, Callum McWaters, Elija Cassidy, Mark Ryan, David Myles, Xu Chen, Gabriela Lunardi, and many others.

Institutionally and financially, as a recipient of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Postgraduate Research Awards from 2017 to 2020, I would like to thank the Research Students Centre and QUT for funding my studies. As well as I want to acknowledge the Australian Government Research Training Program which provided me with financial student support. Thanks to these funding bodies, I was able to undertake my research activities in Australia and QUT, particularly.

In addition, at the end of my PhD and at the time of the global pandemic, I was incredibly honoured to get a postdoc position at the DMRC, QUT. Thanks for believing in me and trusting to be your team member, Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess, as well as Amanda Lotz, Michael Dezuanni, and Patrik Wikstrom.

Being in academia it is important to have a life outside of an academic bubble. Thanks for supporting me in that, Ritwik Swain, Adriana Edral, and Julia Loginova. To Riccardo Milan, thanks for your endless optimism, adventurous energy and inspiration, you made me believe that everything is possible. To my Russian friends Maria and Mikhail, thank you for staying in touch and supporting me during these years. I also want to acknowledge Maria’s contribution to this thesis as a coder for content analysis. Furthermore, it was both pure happiness and luck to meet like-minded colleagues at the Political Communication summer school in Milan in 2018. Thanks to the school and its organiser Professor Gianpetro Mazzoleni, I met friends for life –

Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube xiii

Susan Vermeer, Abelardo del Prado, and Susana Rogeiro Nina. Thank you, Susan and Abelardo for being happy for my wins and emphatic during my ‘lows’.

The special place in my heart and a stand-alone “thank you” deserves the family of Payers. Michael, Sean, Aidan, Callum, Donna, Scott, Ron, and Marge, thank you for the support, caring, and many laughs, which were much needed in this adventure.

xiv Digital Media as a Tool for Non-Systemic Opposition in Russia: A Case Study of Alexey Navalny’s Populist Communications on YouTube

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 BACKGROUND

The year 2021 will mark three decades since the dissolution of the , which has changed the political trajectories of all countries of the former Soviet bloc — both in Russia and beyond — changing the established world order. Russia has undergone several political transformations during these thirty years which have involved heydays and decay for crucial institutions of democratisation for the society. These involved the development of parliamentarism in the country, where Russia has gone from a multi-party to a dominant party system through several rounds of manipulations with electoral mechanisms.

The opposition, which was well-represented in the parliament at the end of 1990s, was all but excluded from the political system by the 2010s and operated mostly underground, afraid of political harassment. The relative press freedom that followed the “Glasnost” era in Russia increased openness and transparency in political communication (PC) from 1986 and through the 1990s but, following the dissolution of the Soviet structure, it was progressively curtailed with limitations on freedom of speech; elimination, harassment, and censorship of dissident journalists and media outlets.

As scholar and journalist Maria Repnikova (2020) notes in her New York Times article, however, “authoritarianism is the mother of creativity”. The path to authoritarian tendencies in Russia that has been increasingly noted in the Freedom House report (Repucci 2019) — and, incidentally in many other countries including Western nations — has led to the emergence of new hybrid communication projects that oppose mainstream narratives using digital technologies.

Growing up in a family of political journalists, I have observed in my own life the troublesome transformations of journalism and political communication in Russia. These observations have motivated me to study political communication and search for unique communication projects that are able to adapt to the increasingly restrictive political environment in the country but, at the same time, can challenge the dominant political discourses and monopoly of political power. From personal observation over

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

decades as a journalist, government communications officer, and informal observer of politics, I believe that, for an average Russian citizen with some political knowledge, opposition leader Alexey Navalny stands exemplar of someone who creatively uses communications tools and discourses to challenge the dominant political elite; a strategy he has employed since rising to popularity in the 2010s.

Navalny became well known during the mass protests of 2011-2012 occurring in response to the parliamentary and presidential . The election to the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament — the — in 2011 was believed to be a subject to electoral manipulations and fraud which resulted in many thousands of protesters demonstrating in Moscow, , and other big cities across Russia in what became known also as the protests “for fair elections”. The various opposition forces from across the political spectrum and all sections of society — both parliamentary and non-parliamentary — united towards a common goal: the reconsideration of the results of the State Duma election and the resignation of high- ranking officials including then-Prime Minister (PM) Vladimir Putin. The biggest rallies were held in December 2011 in Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov’s Square in Moscow and were followed by rallies in February 2012 anticipating the upcoming presidential election. Protests were supported by already famous opposition figures such as Grigory Yavlinskii, Garri Kasparov, and , but new leaders, such as Navalny, also emerged at that time.

The protesters did not succeed in their goals. The results of both the parliamentary and presidential elections were not reconsidered, the accused officials and politicians stayed in power and, further, hundreds of protest participants were harassed or persecuted. Left-wing activist Sergey Udaltsov was put in jail for four years for the organisation of protests (Luhn 2014); and his son, Dmitry — both politicians and opposition figures — were later expelled from their party “A Just Russia” for their protest activities (Herszenhorn 2013) and lost their support at the next parliamentary election. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in 2015 (BBC 2015); however, his murder was not directly connected to the protests.

Following these actions, almost all prominent opposition figures who participated in those protests incrementally disappeared from the public sphere except Navalny, who managed to remain a popular, “non-systemic” politician in Russia; a

2 Chapter 1: Introduction

non-elected politician who operates outside of the Russian political system. In Russia, the ability to stay in a public sphere and organise protests for opposition figures, regardless of whether they are successful or not, can be considered as relative success that leads to the diversification of political discourses in the country. The ability to survive political and police harassment and yet still be able to remain politically active is not something easily achievable in Russia.

Despite the frequent harassment, Navalny ran several anti-corruption projects within his non-profit organisation, Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). He published numerous journalistic investigations into Russian politicians’ corruption online which resonated in Russian society. In 2017, one of Navalny’s investigations into corruption about then-Russian PM led to several large-scale protests in big Russian cities in March, June, and October 2017, as well as in May 2018. These were the first regular, mass anti-government protests to occur that were reminiscent of the events of 2011-2012.

Other protests in Russia after 2012 were mostly occasional, irregular, and local in nature. There were notable protests against the pension reform in 2018; ecological protests against building of incinerators in different regions in Russia in 2018-2019; a commemoration march following the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and other local protests. All of these events, however, remained local — for example, the ecological protests arose only in regions where incinerators were to be built — or they did not have a distinct leader who could hold repetitive protests and develop them into a larger societal movement across the country. Navalny and his associates managed to secure a strategy of attracting supporters of the anti-government movement which involves different instruments of communication, as will be discussed in later chapters.

Navalny is known as a famous blogger. At first, he actively used LiveJournal to publish and discuss his anti-corruption investigations. He then involved all notable social media platforms in his communication including Russian VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and finally YouTube, which, since 2015, has been the main media for the release of his investigative video documentaries on Russian corruption, these videos have gone viral and inspired mass public protests.

The non-systemic opposition project of Alexey Navalny remains a unique phenomenon in Russia of the 2010s. The popular opposition figure has instigated mass protests successfully and regularly. As in many autocratic countries, the success of his

Chapter 1: Introduction 3

protests can be measured not by the reaching of the protesters’ goal (because they are usually not achieved) but simply in their ability to organise a large protest at all in Russia’s politically restricted environment. Many protest organisers cannot attract enough supporters, mobilise their networks or even coordinate the location for a rally, and authorities usually create many obstacles to such processes. This thesis connects Navalny’s ability to remain a popular opposition figurehead in Russian electoral authoritarian politics to, among other things, his skillful use of communication strategies such as populist ideologies and styles, investigative journalism practices and digital instruments used to mediate his philosophies.

1.2 CONTEXT

Navalny’s communication fits within a global trend of rising populism around the world. Freedom House (2020) also reports the rise of antiliberal populist movements with far-right views across the globe. These populist movements, according to the report (Freedom House 2020), have a damaging effect for democracies and the media as they contribute to the polarisation of the press, state regulation of media outlets, and even physical threats to journalists. It is believed that far-right populism has an anti-democratic effect for established democracies and their media. In autocratic countries, however, where all of these tendencies are already in place, new populist projects with mostly leftist views emerge to resist to the strengthening of authoritarianism and restrictions to media and press freedom.

An example of this phenomenon can be seen in the Arab Spring, a series of anti- government protests and revolts from 2010-2012 in North Africa and the Middle East. Believed to be “a populism of the streets” and “a populism of the Left”, the Arab Spring movements were typified by the role that social media played in the development of the social movements (Gandesha 2018, 49). These left-wing, populist projects “of the streets” had more democratic potential in this context than those on the right as happened with Tunisia after the Arab Spring, for example. From a “not free” country as Freedom House (2011) has documented, Tunisia became a free, democratic political regime in the 2010s (Freedom House 2019).

Navalny tends to associate himself with “the people” and attacks the elite of the long-running Putin regime using both online and offline tools. Even though Navalny’s project itself does not change the Russian political system significantly per se (the

4 Chapter 1: Introduction

goals of his protests are not achieved, he is not elected to government bodies, he cannot work within the systemic political system, etc.), his activity has democratic potential as it challenges the incumbent elite and their monopoly of the system through protests and anti-corruption investigations into Russian high-ranking officials. Populism and investigative journalism, in this case, go hand-in-hand with exposing corrupt elites.

The protests of 2011-2012 in Russia, in which Navalny was a key actor, coincided with the events of the Arab Spring of 2010-2012. The impact of social media on global protests such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other protests has been acknowledged by authors including Howard et al. (2011), DeLuca et al. (2012), Juris (2016), Schapals (2019), and others.

In Russia, social media platforms are being seen increasingly as alternative mediums for spreading anti-establishment views in the absence of an environment of media freedom. But not all platforms can resist political censorship and blockings initiated by regulatory bodies. Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all big international technology companies, are still relatively capable of resisting the RuNet (Russian Internet) regulations according to an Agora (2019) report. However, Russian social media platforms and companies such as VKontakte, Mail.ru, and Odnoklassniki struggle to do so. In this context, YouTube — a subsidiary of Google — is seen as one of the platforms that can be used to help create and spread counter-narratives to the Russian elite.

Given the above-mentioned trends in the world and Russia in particular, there are several prospective research areas that invite investigation. This thesis presents the results of a study of how non-systemic opposition in Russia use social media to oppose themselves to Putin’s current elite. Specifically, there is a focus on Navalny as Russia’s foremost opposition leader, and on YouTube as one of the favoured digital platforms conducive to creating and spreading anti-government narratives in Russia. Moreover, there is an emphasis on Navalny’s populist strategies which combine investigative journalism and digital activism practices to facilitate both a greater reach for his messages and, perhaps, the mobilisation of the peripheral Russian electorate. This research provides insight into how Navalny’s political communication strategies on YouTube contribute to his opposition project in Russia.

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1.3 PURPOSE

This study explores how Alexey Navalny uses YouTube’s potential to establish himself as a successful leader opposed to Putin’s elite communicating populist, anti- corruption discourses in Russia’s political system. The nature of this research problem is multi-faceted and will involve a closer investigation of Navalny’s YouTube content from different angles. In this context, it is crucial to understand what Navalny is talking about in his videos; what makes Navalny’s communication populist; and how he combines investigative journalism and digital activism practices under a populist “umbrella”. Moreover, I will investigate what makes YouTube a favourable platform for his communication, and how the opposition leader adapts his message to the needs of the YouTube audience to make his videos viral. For these purposes, the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of content analysis method will be used. The study will help to understand the communication strategies of Russian non-systemic opposition which are meant to awaken citizen protest potential in the conditions of Russia’s political environment.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE AND SCOPE

This research contributes to several emergent fields of political communication theory. First, it sheds light on digital communication strategies of Russian non- systemic opposition to position itself against the incumbent political elite. There are few studies about Russian opposition communication, and existing scholarship covers the political strategies, reasons for opposition failures and their inability to create a competition to the current elite (Gel’man 2005, 2013, 2015). Second, this study diversifies the research on populism dominated by Anglo-American scholarship with a Russian case study, which has its distinctive features and national context. Whereas Anglo-American studies look at how populism brings a destructive influence to established democracies; this study can contribute with a case where populist communication can be used for the diversification of a non-democratic political communication environment.

Third, this project explores the specificities of the YouTube platform and its communication in Russia. YouTube is the most popular social media platform in Russia (Statista 2019a) followed by the Russian VKontakte and Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp. Russia had the third-largest YouTube audience in the

6 Chapter 1: Introduction

world after the United States (US) and Brazil (Statista 2017). Due to such big audiences, it can have a great societal impact inside and outside of Russia, especially in a political context. Currently, the research on the political effects of social media platforms is mostly dominated by studies of Facebook and Twitter, which are considered as the most political platforms in political communication. However, YouTube political communication affordances (boyd 2010) are just as interesting for research as other platforms’ affordances, especially its ability to “host” populist performances. The list of contributions is not limited to those mentioned above and further contributions can be found in Section 2.4.

I narrowed down the scope of this research to a case study of Navalny within a broader non-systemic opposition movement in Russia. For the reasons outlined in Section 1.1 and 1.2, I consider his case as the most influential and “vivacious” within Russia’s opposition movement, and the country’s political environment more broadly. There has been evidence to date of how Navalny’s associates replicate his strategies for engaging the public in politics, such as the example of the Moscow protests in 2019 about municipal elections. Furthermore, I focus on the electoral period of Navalny’s communication when he was vying to be elected as the in 2018 as, usually, electoral campaigns contain the biggest concentration of populist messages.

I also concentrate on YouTube only as it is the most influential social media platform in Russia. Research covering all platforms that Navalny uses in his communication or a decade-long political communication of Navalny would not be possible in the three-year timeframe of a PhD project. Each platform has a different type of content, policies, features, and affordances, and Navalny might use different strategies for each of them. This thesis focusses on YouTube, but there is considerable scope for follow-up research about opposition activity on other social media platforms.

Through a mixed-methods content analysis, I analyse text transcripts and screenshots of Navalny’s videos which can give rich information relevant to the research questions. I draw on theories and studies of political communication, populism, investigative journalism, digital media, and political performance which can frame the Navalny phenomenon. I conceptualise and advance established terms in political communication and propose new terms featuring different types of populism in narration, or such term as “digital anti-corruption ghetto” and others. The next section provides more details on the structure of this project.

Chapter 1: Introduction 7

1.5 THESIS OUTLINE

This thesis consists of eight chapters exploring different aspects of Navalny’s populist communication. In Chapter 1, I have set the scene by introducing Navalny as the main object of study, explained the rationale, background and context of Navalny’s case which led to formulating the research question for this project. Chapter 2 gives an overview of PC theory which frames this research, including the major shifts in PC that happened in the 21st century and their importance for Navalny’s case. For the purposes of this research, the shifts that were deemed most important for a study of Navalny’s political communications were the emergency of social media, the decline of trust in the news media and press freedom, and the global rise of populism.

Chapter 3 maps the political communication ecosphere in Russia, where Navalny operates. It describes the specificities of the Russian political regime entitled “electoral authoritarianism” (Golosov 2011) which involves electoral manipulations and restrictions on media freedom. It sheds light on the place of the opposition in Russia since the mass protests “for fair elections” in 2011-2012. During that period, the non-systemic opposition started to use populist strategies to be able to mobilise supporters (Gel’man 2013). Starting from the 1990s the Russian establishment have been using legal, financial, and other instruments of controlling of the mainstream media and journalists in the country. Furthermore, the RuNet and social media platforms are subject to frequent blocking and censorship in Russia. Navalny as a politician, journalist, and a citizen with a proactive political position considers all these challenges but also the possibilities of Russian PC for his messages, creating a unique and hybrid communication project with investigative journalistic inquiries that involve counter-narratives to the official discourses of Putin’s elite.

Chapter 4 provides the methodological framework and research design of the project dictated by the research questions and project objectives. The project explores a case study of populist digital communication of non-systemic opposition in Russia, particularly the YouTube videos of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. The study involves mixed-methods content analysis of text transcripts and screenshots of Navalny’s videos as it allows for the triangulated, empirical evaluation of the populist phenomenon of the opposition leader. The project consists of eight research stages containing different methodological procedures of content analysis and frame mapping outlined in the chapter.

8 Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 5 presents the results of the quantitative dimension of content analysis. It helps to understand what Navalny is talking about in his videos. It shows that the Russian opposition leader uses themes such as “Russian political system”, “elections”, “corruption industry”, and “truth and ways to communicate it” under a populist umbrella. He mostly targets the executive and economic powers and considers these alongside the mainstream media and the repressive state apparatus as forming the core of Putin’s elite in Russia. This chapter shows different populist categories that Navalny employs in his speech derived from people-centrism and anti-elitism. Discrediting Putin’s elite and appealing to the Russian people, he presents evidence of the elites’ crimes gathered through watchdog reporting and calls people to action. Different combinations of these elements in text formed the types of populism that serve different purposes in his narration. I dubbed them as “superficial”, “investigative”, “radical”, and “advocacy” populisms.

Chapter 6 provides qualitative explorations of the types of populism in Navalny’s narration. Using qualitative content analysis, it shows how Navalny combines practices of investigative journalism and citizen activism in the same text excerpts from his videos. The combinations of populist categories vary from: “superficial” populism where populist ideas can be communicated through a few words representing two antagonistic populist entities such as we/us (“the people”) and they/them (“the elite”); to “advocacy” populism, where he presents evidence of the elites’ corruption crimes and calls people to political action, both online and offline.

Chapter 7 sheds light on the role of YouTube in Navalny’s communication. Being the most popular platform in Russia (Statista 2019a), it became a digital “shelter” for different anti-corruption activists in Russia who choose to use it over pro- government media sources. I explore how Navalny stylises and adapts his message according to the needs of the platform and its audience using elements of visual aesthetics of populism and capacities of the platform. Finally, Chapter 8 summarises the outcomes of the research on Navalny’s YouTube communication and suggests dimensions for future research in this field.

Chapter 1: Introduction 9

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives

This chapter explores the changing nature of PC. Communication about politics has significantly changed in the 21st century, where three major shifts are currently being observed. Section 2.1 reflects on the shifts in the understanding of PC with its new emerging actors and means of communication, which are conditioned by rapid digital advancement. Notably, as will be argued, social media platforms have brought new perspectives to communication about politics by creating fora for hosting counter- narratives in the autocratic political environment and populist performances for attracting the electorate, as the case of Navalny will show.

In this new PC environment, trust in news media in the world continues to decline according to the Digital News Media Report (Newman et al. 2019). One of the reasons for growing distrust, according to the authors of the report, is the lack of independence from business or government elites (Newman et al. 2019, 20-21). Freedom House (Repucci 2019) has also acknowledged the deteriorating of press freedom in the world, including in well-established democracies. Where general coverage of mainstream media fails to follow democratic principles of unbiased and transparent coverage, investigative reporting combined with citizen activism can play a “watchdog” role in society. In non-democratic regimes, such investigative journalism practices are seen as exceptional and almost impossible in the conditions of limited press freedom. Section 2.2 sheds light on the nature of modern practices of digital watchdog reporting combined with citizen activism, and how they can potentially contribute to democratisation of the society and to contesting elite corruption or other misconduct.

In a “mediatised” public sphere, where media logic is considered primary in politics (Mazzoleni & Schulz 1999), many politicians have started massively spreading populist messages offline and online, using style and content that emphasises the purported antagonism between two populist entities “the people” and “the elite”. Section 2.3 looks at how populist content and presentational style elements

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 11

within one communication strategy are being spread to a broader audience with the help of social media.

The understanding of this “fluid” political communication environment will be further reflected in the case of Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny, who stands out as a prominent example of all these changes. The theoretical review of current political communication research will help to understand his place in Russian public sphere and the contents and style of his YouTube videos.

2.1 POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND THE RISING POWER OF DIGITAL MEDIA

At its most basic level, PC is purposeful communication about politics between different groups of interests. Modern definitions of PC need to take into account the shifts in the history of PC, relationships between traditional and new actors of communication, and, finally, the role of social media in modern politics. According to Blumler (2013), we now live in the “fourth age of PC” characterised by the extensive use of Internet facilities in communication. The new actors that have emerged in public sphere, such as citizen journalists or social media platforms, have “shaken” the established rules of PC, bringing new messages, formats, relationships, and channels of communication to the fore. Within social media platforms, YouTube stands out as a perfect example of change in the established rules of communication, previously contained within limits of mainstream media. This research explores how Navalny specifically uses YouTube in the absence of access to the mainstream media market in Russia. Its affordances allow him communicating anti-corruption and anti- establishment rhetoric to a broader Russian population.

2.1.1 The history and definitions of political communication The history of PC with its earliest features can be tracked to the 5th century BC, to ancient Athens. Athenian citizens actively participated in the work of popular assembly ecclesia, which can be one of the earliest well-attested and well-described forms of the political interaction between the authorities and citizens (Richards & Gastil 2016). With the introduction of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the culture of communication changed significantly in Western society, with eventual flow-on effects to other parts of the world. With the further development

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of mass communication, media started to play the role of a new influential actor in the political process, named later as a “fourth estate” (Schultz 1998).

In the 20th century, one of the founders of political communication theory Walter Lippmann (1922) suggested ways of shaping public opinion through the media. Significant to the early definitions of PC was Harold Lasswell’s (1948) theorisation more broadly of communication. He described an act of communication as “Who Says”, ‘Says What”, in “Which Channel”, “to Whom”, “with What Effect” (Lasswell 1948). This model stresses the meaning of communication as a process, the interaction between actors using special technologies. Most definitions of PC that have been developed since that time have been consonant with Lasswell’s model, and Navalny’s YouTube communication in this project will be investigated through the prism of this communication model. Precisely, I am interested in “Who Says”, ‘Says What”, and in “Which Channel” components of Navalny’s communication.

PC research has been developed after the Second World War by mostly American and British researchers. Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) at the end of the 20th century divided PC history into three ages. The “first age of PC” that took place during two decades after the Second World War was characterised as “golden age of parties”, because the political system was party-dominated and stable political institutions and beliefs were connected with party identifications (Blumler & Kavanagh 1999, 211). In the 1960s, with the introduction of television and broadcasting, the “second age of PC” started. In this period, voters’ loyalty to parties weakened, and the new medium of television contributed “to the enlargement of the audience for political communication” through television news. The “third age of PC”, which began in the last two decades of the 20th century is associated with “media abundance, ubiquity, reach, and celerity” (Blumler & Kavanagh 1999, 213). Different trends affected the political communication sphere, including intensified professionalisation of political advocacy, an increasingly competitive environment among the mass media and journalists, and anti-elitist popularisation and populism, among others (Blumler & Kavanagh 1999, 213-225).

Navalny’s communication reflects some of the features of the previous PC ages, however, it is characterised by new and emerging communication practices. Academic discussion has shifted to the existence of the “fourth age of PC” (Blumler 2013). Its new features include “diffusion and utilisation of Internet facilities, the emergence of

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 13

synchronous communicative networks replacing simple interpersonal communication and audiences moving from being just receivers of information to producers of content by themselves” and other features (Blumler 2013). New trends in political communication, refer mostly to network relationships, which more accurately describe human activities, starting from family relationships, ending with political and business activities. The “network” vision of the world has become increasingly prevalent in academic scholarship on communication.

Castells (2011, 501) introduced the idea of the network society, which is a “highly dynamic, open system, susceptible to innovating without threatening the balance”. He sees the network as a set of interconnected nodes, with thin and thick connections and different distances between them. This logic precisely describes the political communication process too, as PC is a system but also a process, which involves different types of interactions between “nodes”. Using this “network” logic, Hobbs (2016, 372) defines PC broadly as “part of the information exchanges that traverse society’s interacting networks of communication and that influence thought and action”.

Overall, all of these challenges and transformations require a new framework and understanding of PC, which this project will contribute to. Based on the modern trends and definitions of PC, I deploy a definition which understands PC as a dynamic network structure, which involves the exchange of political messages between politicians and organisations seeking political power, media, citizens, and new emerging actors utilising traditional and digital communication technologies. This definition highlights the network structure of PC, previously not taken into full consideration and also emphasises the distinction between traditional and new emerging PC actors, which play a crucial role in communication about politics in current times.

2.1.2 Traditional actors of political communication Before the description of the traditional and new actors of political communication, the term “actor” itself should be explained. At first glance, it can be organisations and individuals who are involved in the political process or are the recipients of political information. Nevertheless, not only humans are involved in a political communication interaction, but for example, social media platforms or even

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artificial intelligence like Robot Sophia, an invention of Hanson Robotics, who gives interviews to media outlets.

The definitions above illuminate three traditional actors of PC, who were involved in the PC interaction long before the 21st century. These are politicians and political organisations, the media, and citizens. The relationship between them is well studied at different stages, starting from the “first age of PC”. Though political communication now is unlikely to be possible without professionals who master communication technologies, help politicians, media and citizens to build a connection between each other. This pool of actors includes political consultants, public relations (PR) departments and their officers, speechwriters, image-makers, and other professionals; the latter is not the main focus of this research, who emerged in the United States (US) at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite being traditional actors of PC, PR specialists and lobbyists are not the main objects of our research, as the case of Navalny does not reflect on their role in PC. Therefore, citizens, politicians, political organisations, and news media will be explored further as the core of traditional political communication.

Citizens Describing citizens, Isin and Turner (2002, 2) observe that the understanding of citizen as a member of a state “has been contested and broadened to include various political and social struggles of recognition and redistribution as instances of claim- making, and hence, by extension, of citizenship”. Concept of citizenship have also opened to consider diverse notions such as sexual, ecological, diasporic, aboriginal citizenship, and others (Isin & Turner 2002). The “extension” of the definition of citizenship is complicated by a different understanding of the concept in every country, formalised in constitutions and laws, developed in the rights and duties of citizens. One of the attempts to find an equivalence between the concepts of citizenship can be seen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1948. In practice, the principles of the Declaration are not always fulfilled by authorities and always changing depending on a political situation in a country. In addition to the Declaration, Marshall (1950) suggested dividing citizenship into three sets of human rights: civil, political and social. Each of three parts constitutes a set of rights respectively: rights for individual freedom; a set of rights “to participate in the exercise of political power”; and a diverse range of rights “to live the life of

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 15

civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society” (Marshall 1950, 30). This of human rights was formalised later, in the basis of such documents as the UN Declaration and national constitutions. In his communication, Navalny often advocates these sets of rights, protecting his own freedoms but also essential social rights of Russian citizens. In doing so, Navalny often criticises the Russian establishment, which sets the limitations on political freedoms. This is an example of what Gerbaudo (2017a, 40) called “anti-oligarchic citizenship”, citizenship that “revolves around the populist aim of uniting the dispersed citizenry to confront the concentrated and entrenched power of economic and political elites”. This understanding of citizenship is familiar to an ordinary Russian citizen, and Navalny maximises this impression through his digital means of communication. In general, the understanding of citizenship in Russia is hybrid (Henry 2009). Typically, Russians are more concerned about social than political rights, as well as their social rights violations. They believe the best way to resolve social rights violations is to appeal to high-ranking officials, as they still subscribe to the Soviet model of welfare — but at the same time recognise the need for the liberalisation of this system (Henry 2009, 63). This hybrid nature of perceptions of Russian citizenship influences not only political communication but political participation, too. In general, political communication impacts citizens’ participation in many ways, including mediating, educating, and mobilising people for political action. McLeod, Scheufele, and Moy described this as follows (1999, 316-317):

Through communication, citizens acquire information about issues and problems in the community and learn about opportunities and ways to participate…While community integration provides the infrastructure for participating, media and interpersonal communication provide the knowledge or incentives to use the opportunities for participation that are provided.

With the introduction of digital technologies, academics both have optimistic and pessimistic predictions about its role for citizens’ participation. Optimistically, Gurevitch, Coleman, and Blumler (2009) admitted that new technologies allow citizens access to inexpensive communication technologies to create their own content and alternative networks for information dissemination. In addition, Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal (2007) found that digital citizens in the US, who use online

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technologies frequently, were more likely to participate politically and vote, especially in the US presidential elections. The great facilitating and mobilising the power of social media was widely observed in popular social movements such as the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. Nevertheless, citizens also face information overload from different providers of information and inequality in the distribution of this information. For example, Davis (2010, 1) interviewing British Members of Parliament (MPs) revealed that the Internet was “neither widening nor deepening political participation”. He noted that along with growing intra-party participation caused by digital technologies, the consumer interest is decreasing, and those who are excluded from politics are becoming more distant from it (Davis 2010, 15). Despite the contrasting predictions and interpretations, the strong effect of social media on political participation is undeniable. Voting for a political party, joining a social movement, organising a protest — all of these political actions can be done nowadays through online technologies. The further shift from citizens being merely the receivers of information towards becoming the producers and active participants in politics themselves has created a “Pleiad” of new citizen actors that require a rethinking of their role in political communication.

Politicians and organisations seeking political power Another core group of actors involved in PC is those who are seeking political power. Drawing from a Morgenthau and Thompson’s (1993) notion of politics, where it is understood as a struggle for political power, Navalny’s communication can be studied as a part of a struggle with long-ruling elite.

Typically, this group of actors includes individuals, such as politicians and politically active citizens, political parties, and public organisations such as trade unions, consumer groups, professional associations, pressure groups, and even terrorist organisations (McNair 2011). Although it may seem odd to include terrorist organisations, such associations, in common with any other political actors, have an ideology, leaders and a governance hierarchy; terrorists pursue political objectives by illegal means such as city bombing, hi-jacking and assassination. However, the core part of political communication interaction, as Habermas (2006) argued, constitutes parliaments, courts, administrative agencies, and the government. This core reflects the democratic idea of the separation of powers — which notably can exist in non-

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 17

democratic political regimes too — but generally have weaker influence on political decision-making.

There are cases when politicians can be former journalists and vice versa. This phenomenon is an immediate effect of dynamics of PC, as some of politicians and journalists’ functions are similar within the public sphere, for example providing political information to citizens. As Page (1996) remarkably noted, journalists on a par with politicians, can significantly influence the decision-making process in politics. Despite this synergy, there is also a conflict of roles between journalists and politicians in a public sphere.

Most prominently, this has been exemplified by the public conflict between the US President Donald Trump and the news media. Trump has regularly publicly accused media in his Twitter posts of fabricating stories, which he calls “fake news”. In one of numerous examples, his tweet on January 12, 2017, Trump publicly attacked the famous broadcaster Cable News Network (CNN) of the falsification of news (Trump 2017): “@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since the election and their credibility will soon be gone!”. Trump’s discourse on “fake news” has proved to undermine the power and trust in the news media in the US; however, it is also seen as a struggle for a right to provide one’s “truth” to the public. The conflation of “politician” and “journalist” roles and the struggle over the “truth” will be observed in Navalny’s case.

News Media News media emerged long before the 21st century and constitutes now journalism organisations such as printed and online newspapers, radio and video broadcasters, journalists themselves with editorial offices, and different media holdings. I do not include in this category online blogs, independent aggregating sites like WikiLeaks, or social network sites. In this project, social media platfroms are seen as new actors, emerged in the 21st century, which mostly use digital technologies in political communication and perform new PC roles and functions.

Different political traditions define multiple functions of the news media. Gurevitch and Blumler (1990, 25) stated that in democracies media is responsible for surveillance of the socio-political environment, meaningful agenda setting, creating a dialogue across a diverse range of views and advocacy functions for some of the

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political actors. Voltmer (2006) noted that in Western democracies, scholars tend to see the media’s role as diverse, creating a “marketplace of ideas”, information delivery system and enlightening citizens as a public “watchdog” holding governments’ accountable. The Russian experience is far from that of democratic journalistic practices considering the limitations on freedom of the press and autocratic political settings in general. This makes it fair to note that most of the practices of classic “watchdog reporting” will be simply not applicable or impossible in the country.

Some scholars, like Hanitzsch and Vos (2017, 118) have tried to determine roles of journalists stressing that there are no universal roles or functions of journalists even in similar political settings, for example, in Western countries. They suggested to look on journalistic roles through the lenses of “normative ideas (what journalists should do), cognitive orientations (what they want to do), professional practice (what journalists really do), and narrated performance (what they say they do)”. These roles and their applicability to Navalny’s case will be explained in the detail in Section 2.2.

The roles and performance of the journalists are directly related to the state of press freedom in particular social settings. Discussing media freedom almost a century ago Lippmann (1922, 322) wrote that “free press” for readers means media that is “virtually given away” in terms of its purchase price. Apart from this ambiguity, freedom of the press is directly connected with essential human rights as freedom of speech or freedom of expression and can be supported or violated by different governments. According to Freedom House (Repucci 2019), even in democracies, the rising power of right-wing populism has threatened to media’s independence. Following Trump’s case, the author of the Freedom House report, sees similar trends in countries as diverse as Hungary, Serbia, India, and Austria. Non-democratic countries, including Russia, contributed the most to the overall trend of declining press freedom. The report notes they “established autocratic governments continue to tighten the screws on dissenting voices, as any breach in their media dominance threatens to expose official wrongdoing or debunk official narratives” (Repucci 2019). These settings dictate Navalny how to navigate in extremely tight for media freedom circumstances and continue to produce and broadcast content of a high quality.

In the search of truthful and unbiased journalism which can play a watchdog role in politics, new actors with new journalism practices have emerged in non-democratic countries like Russia. These practices will be explored in detail in Section 2.2.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 19

2.1.3 New political communication actors New actors of political communication emerged mostly in the 21st century, compared to the traditional actors which history can be traced back for hundreds of years. New actors are both human and technological actors. Online bloggers, citizen journalists, and social media platforms are just a few of the actors who have appeared in the “fourth age of PC” and its Internet abundance (Blumler 2013). In this section, I explore the type of influential actors in modern PC such as social media platforms. Despite the dominance of traditional PC actors, they are of growing importance, filling the gaps of media communication in democracies.

Social media and its influence on politics Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) used two terms to describe social media: firstly, Web 2.0 which is “a platform for the evolution of the social media”, and, secondly, user-generated content which is “the sum of all ways in which people make use of social media” (2010, 61). Consequently, they defined social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010, 61). Currently, we live in Web 3.0 era, an emergent “online environment, which will integrate users’ generated data to create new meaning” (Barassi & Treré 2012, 1270). In this project, I consider social media platforms as separate actors of PC, following the logic of Schrape et al. (2016, 13), who consider that:

The character limit on Twitter or the algorithmic curation on these social networking platforms as well as on media streaming portals (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple Music) are not just technical gimmicks but rather social structure elements that are incorporated in the platform design.

Online technologies and social media as social structure elements can significantly influence both the consumers and the providers of information and their communication about politics.

Social media platforms have their policies, strategies and “weight” in politics. The confirmation of the latter can be seen in the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election in the US, where the representatives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter have testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee (Shaban, Timberg, and Dwoskin 2017). The American senators were challenging the power of

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social media in the political process, adding impetus to contemporary discussions about to what extent social media can influence politics.

Social media plays a great role in organising social movements as one of the forms of citizen activism. Social movements are seen as gatherings of individual members of the public “in response to the grievance, and maybe a means of communicating an explicit desired course of action” (Trottier & Fuchs 2018). Social media can play a significant role in facilitating of these “gatherings”, as was found in the case of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 (Schapals 2019), as well as mobilising and motivating of its supporters, such as the wave of global protests that started in 2010 from North Africa and the Middle East, known as the “Arab Spring”.

Research has found that social media contributed to shaping political debates in the events of the Arab Spring, that major revolutionary conversations online preceded mass protests, and social media has helped “the spread of democratic ideas across international borders” (Howard et al. 2011, 23). Later, in 2011, the wave of protest reached established democracies like the US, where the Occupy Wall Street movement was prominent in employing social media. Juris (2016) argues that social media have contributed to “an emerging logic of aggregation” in the “Occupy” movements, gatherings of groups of people “from diverse backgrounds within physical spaces”. Exploring social media influence in the Occupy Wall Street movement, DeLuca et al. (2012, 500) concluded: “Social media create new contexts for activism that do not exist in the world of traditional mass media organisations.”

With this said, Russia has not fallen out of the overall trend of “social media revolutions”. Similarly, in 2011-2012 mass protests “for fair elections” occurred in central cities related to the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament) and presidential elections. Facebook, as was found, mostly helped to mobilise supporters for the anti-regime demonstrations as opposed to Russian social media platform VKontakte, which also was used for mobilisation, but it was controlled by pro-government business structures (White & McAllister 2014).

However, both White and McAllister (2014) and Spaiser et al. (2017) showed that the government was also effective in countering protests with Information and communications technologies (ICT). Denial of service attacks, poor mobile Internet service at the protests, prevalent pro-government discourses on Twitter and other platforms are seen to be among the means that prevented escalation of the protests.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 21

Spaiser et al. (2017) argue “that regardless of the promises that new digital technologies hold in terms of empowerment of marginalised or weaker (political) actors, these technologies are still part of the overall system of power — in particular, uneven resource distributions — and may therefore still be utilised by governments in their favour.” In other words, even though social media contributes to growing democratisation of power in countries like Russia, it is still predominantly controlled by those in power. Notably, mass protests in 2011-2012 were a trigger for the government to regulate the RuNet more. Activists and others continue to operate from the “digital underground” in Russia despite the obstacles from censorship bodies.

In the Russian context, it is particularly important to understand which social media affordances enable creation and re-production of anti-establishment narratives online. In a case study of Alexey Navalny, it can be seen that different technological and structural affordances can take place when he is interacting with networked publics. Term “affordance” is used “to describe what material artifacts such as media technologies allow people to do” (Bucher & Helmond 2017, 235). Networked publics conversely are “publics that are restructured by networked technologies” and “they are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice” (boyd 2010, 39).

Four affordances that help users to engage with different type of digital environments are what boyd (2010) refers to as replicability, searchability, scalability, and persistence. These four affordances are defined as follows (boyd 2010, 46):

• Persistence: Online expressions are automatically recorded and archived.

• Replicability: Content made out of bits can be duplicated.

• Scalability: The potential visibility of content in networked publics is great.

• Searchability: Content in networked publics can be accessed through search.

These characteristics are attributed to what is known as high-level affordances of the social media platform (Bucher & Helmond 2017, 239), “the kinds of dynamics and conditions enabled by technical devices, platforms and media”. Navalny’s videos are highly visible, take for example his 27-million-views video on corruption of the Russian PM, replicable across the platforms, what helps to gather masses on the street too. The videos are archived and stored on the platform despite the government’s

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attempts to remove them, besides his videos can be easily searched through particular hashtags, key words, and names. Low-level affordances are specific technological features attributive to the platform (Bucher & Helmond 2017). These and other social media affordances shape and define Navalny’s communication with YouTube audience as will be seen in Chapter 7.

Social media platforms and their affordances serve as channels of dissemination of information that can impact citizens’ engagement in politics. While Facebook and Twitter are usually seen by scholars as the leading platforms for political discussions; YouTube stands as a unique marketplace of the exchange of political messages in the form of videos.

YouTube as a platform for political communication The Arab Spring and other global protests at the beginning of the 2010s were not the only events where social media played a vital role in its escalation. In the US, recent Mueller’s investigation in the possible Russian digital interference in the 2016 presidential election along with Cambridge Analytica Scandal in the United Kingdom (UK) and its influence on the Brexit results have brought political capacities of digital media platforms to the fore. Facebook, Twitter, and Google have become key players in political scandals. YouTube, as a Google subsidiary, was no exception in these processes.

In essence, YouTube is a type of social media, also known as “content community” (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010), which allows exchanging content between its users. YouTube was launched in 2005 by former PayPal employees, subsequently became a Google subsidiary, and quickly turned into the dominant platform in the global social media market (Burgess & Green 2018). YouTube has a plethora of functions and affordances, which allow it to develop as the major digital platform in the world. This study illuminates those affordances which, are crucial for the communication of outsiders of Russian politics in Russia tackling limited press freedom in the country.

Starting with its technological characteristics or low-level affordances, YouTube, unlike social network sites such as Facebook or Twitter, does not require users to create accounts to watch its content (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010, 63). To interact with the content and other users, for example, to leave comments about the videos,

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 23

YouTube users need to use a Google account and provide only little information about oneself. Compared to Facebook and Twitter; YouTube users do not necessarily need to create substantial users’ profiles, make friends or post any content even though all of these functions are available to the users. Videos themselves have become the means of interaction and communication between users (Paolillo 2008).

More sophisticated and community-based affordances of YouTube are (Burgess and Green 2018, 15):

• Consumers upload their videos to YouTube. YouTube takes care of serving the content to millions of viewers.

• YouTube’s video encoding back-end converts uploaded videos to Flash Video.

• YouTube provides a community that connects users to videos, users to users, and videos to videos.

Burgess and Green (2018) also point to enterprise and business affordances of the platform, as the revenue for business, however, they will be not taken into consideration in this project.

While full anonymity online cannot be guaranteed to YouTube users posting and interacting on the platform, access to public videos is still provided to users, regardless of whether they logged in with a Google profile or not. This feature distinguishes YouTube from Facebook, Twitter, or Russian VKontakte, where to access the content you need to register, link the profile to your phone and ensure that profile information is “truthful”. The ability to access and share content without linking it to a social media profile can be a crucial factor in attracting Russian users, who suffer from extensive restrictions on the Internet. Freedom House (2018) in its Freedom of the Net report, identified more than 400 criminal cases connected to users’ activity online in 2017 in Russia. To avoid penalties, many users can choose not to interact around the content where users need to register their identity. However, regulatory bodies such as Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media in Russia) can also censor or block the content on the platforms. Russian-based social networking sites like VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and other Russian platforms are affected the most in these processes, as they are affiliated with the domestic stakeholders.

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Apart from its interactive facilities, YouTube has many algorithmic functions, including algorithms suggesting recommended content for users. As YouTube developers describe it (Davidson et al. 2010): “The system recommends personalised sets of videos to users based on their activity on the site”. In 2018, this function was a subject of rising critique from the journalists. Newspapers articles entitled “How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners” (Nicas 2018) or “YouTube: The great radicalizer” (Tufekci 2018) describe the authoritarian or radicalised nature of the algorithmic recommendations, which provides a sensationalist effect to attract more viewers. YouTube developers confirm the existence of the issue and their readiness to improve it (Nicas 2018).

In a political sense, radicalization, and sensationalism of social media content can lead to offline actions such as protests, rebellions and even terrorism. Radicalisation according to Schmid (2013, 18) is accompanied by:

…ideological socialisation away from mainstream or status quo-oriented positions towards more radical or extremist positions involving a dichotomous world view and the acceptance of an alternative focal point of political mobilisation outside the dominant political order as the existing system is no longer recognised as appropriate or legitimate.

YouTube and its community exercise the identification and the elimination of the most extreme content through its policies (YouTube n.d.). Furthermore, governments around the world and their regulatory bodies have their own strategies, laws, and policies of regulating online extremist content. As will be seen in Chapter 7, in the case of Navalny and YouTube, the government undertook several attempts to remove the activist’s content.

Furthermore, YouTube is considered as a global news medium, which “promotes visually motivated, amateur-driven news culture that alters the truth claims of news and the professional hegemony of news making” (Sumiala & Tikka 2013, 318). Among many other features, it is operated simultaneously by different actors with different levels of professional journalistic training: from professionals to amateurs. Often it is perceived as a stable alternative medium to conventional television news, due to extended and advanced characteristics summarised by Sumiala and Tikka (2013, 322) in Table 2.1.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 25

Table 2-1: YouTube characteristics as global news medium compared with conventional public television news

Conventional television news YouTube news Centered (in a studio) Decentered (in a network)

Hierarchy of news discourse System of linkages of news

Institutional voice (news anchor, Institutional and individual voices (e.g., correspondents) vloggers)

Transmitted news (professional, structured) Accessed postings of news (structured and spontaneous)

Distinctive class of ‘‘reporters,’’ ‘‘producers,’’ Ordinary people as ‘‘grass root ‘‘correspondents’’

Construction of otherness (e.g., national journalists/citizen journalists’’ ‘‘Broadcast outlook) yourself’’ (global outlook)

Delegated looking User navigation

Due to the convergence of the media, “the synthesis of two histories” (Manovich 2001, 25), that has involved “the historical trajectories of computing and communications technologies converging” (Flew 2014, 4), YouTube did not fully replace television and its functions, but proffered broader possibilities for audiences to engage with the content. Due to the decentralised, networked structure of the platform, YouTube gives a voice to amateur, grassroots, citizen, and other non-mainstream journalists who have limited access to conventional television channels as in the Russian case. As will be seen in the following section that is what makes YouTube the most accessible and favourable platform for disseminating Navalny’s populist messages in Russia.

2.1.4 Summary In this section’s exploration of the history, definitions, and actors of PC, it can be seen that traditional actors such as citizens, politicians and news media are now accompanied and heavily influenced by new emerging actors in political communication, most particularly, social media platforms. In the “fourth age” of PC, established rules of communication about politics have been shattered. Citizens, news media, politicians, and political organisations face numerous challenges caused by advanced digital technologies.

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Citizens are becoming producers of information themselves online as their political participation increasingly becomes dependant on online technologies. Politicians and news media are struggling for the role of the main information providers in the context of a rise in fake news. Social media platforms themselves are becoming crucial political actors with their own political goals and strategies. Social media platforms not only facilitate and give rise to grassroots social movements, but they also serve as a channel for dissemination of alternative political agendas for activists who use different journalistic practices. YouTube, for example, has become an alternative platform for disseminating political news in Russia in the conditions of globally declining trust in conventional news media (Newman et al. 2019). The next section will explore how new journalistic practices, as for example, such as those that develop investigative journalism, are in high demand in the context of declining “faith” of the public in the democratic power of mainstream news media.

2.2 DIGITAL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM. A SHIFT TOWARDS AN ADVOCACY CONTINUUM

Evaluating the state of press freedom in the world in 2019, Freedom House called its report “A Downward Spiral”, referring to the global trend of declining media freedom. In both democratic and non-democratic countries, governments use different tools from economic to violent measures to regulate the media (Repucci 2019). The author of the Freedom of the Media report acknowledges this trend in democracies is connected with the rise of right-wing populism; however, authors fail to establish the causation of these two phenomena. In fragile democracies, the toolbox of media regulation by the state includes government backed ownership takeovers, threats against journalists, abusing licensing practices, and other anti-media measures (Repucci 2019). In these conditions, the need for quality niche forms of journalism emerges, which can contribute to the objective, independent, fact-based coverage of politics in both democracies and non-democratic regimes.

Niche forms of journalism — including citizen journalism and investigative journalism, which operate “to reinstate transparency and balance for the public good and according to democratic values” — can assist in serving this function (Hanh & Stalph 2018, 3). The emergence of new digital practices can elevate journalists’ capacity to reveal corruption, power abuse, and fraud in governments at a higher level. However, in authoritarian and transitional countries, investigative journalists are often

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 27

forced to work in the conditions of secrecy and extreme pressure and take the risks of possible persecution from the authorities. An example is the famous investigative journalistic project “Panama Papers” which united hundreds of journalists around the world, revealing the malicious facts of corruption which has brought risks not only to incumbent governments but also to journalists covering these events. Maltese journalist Daphne Galizia, one of the main contributors to the Panama Papers report in Malta, was assassinated in 2017 following her regular reports on Maltese government corruption (Ochab 2019).

New media is helping to provide a stable medium and bring prominence to alternative media and the minority of mainstream media that are trying to combine objective reporting and advocacy of citizen rights and media freedoms in a fusion known as “advocacy journalism”. As will be explored further in this thesis, advocacy journalism can offer a form of media communication that is more populist, radical, and pluralistic in its nature.

2.2.1 Investigative journalism: History, traits, and definition Debates on investigative journalism (IJ) date back several centuries. Carson, one of the recent contributors to the theory of IJ in modern democracies, provided a concise and substantive overview of its history. IJ’s history can be traced back to the early 19th century in the US, where one penny tabloid-style newspapers, known as “penny press”, emerged (Canada 2011, Carson 2019). In the early 19th century, first investigative reporters targeted mostly individuals to uncover “fortune tellers, matrimonial brokers, and backyard abortionists, to expose examples of ‘moral transgressions’ and illegal practices blighting the city” (Carson 2019, 55). In the second half of the century, the focus of investigative reports shifted from particular individuals to the systemic analysis of corruption and “breaches of public trust” (2019, 56). The Golden era of investigative reporting started in the mid 20th century, coinciding with “the second age” of political communication (see Section 2.1.1) that followed the introduction of television. As Carson (2019, 61) argues, this era also enabled journalists to learn from one another in other parts of the world. However, the beginning of the 2000s brought several cases where purportedly investigative reporting failed to scrutinise government actions. One well-known case was during the Iraq invasion in 2003, which involved the work of so-called embedded journalists, who travelled with military troops and

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covered the tide of the war. Numerous lies and inaccuracies in journalism reporting and the US government statements during the war were subsequently revealed, as summarised in a non-academic book of Charles Lewis “935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity” (2014). But there was smaller scale and intermittent exposure of the government lies and journalistic inaccuracies before then, too. Carson (2019, 54) describes IJ as “a distinct reporting genre with specific elements that combine to provide audiences with more information than they are likely to get from non-investigative reporting”. She highlights nine main characteristics of the operational definition of investigative reporting that distinguishes it from other types of journalism as seen in Table 2.2 (Carson 2019, 78). To be identified as falling within the genre, a journalistic story should contain at least five of these features marked with asterisk in Table 2.2.

Table 2-2: Criteria for identifying investigative journalism in content analysis

1. *Does the article set the public agenda/or is it exclusive to that publication? 2. *Does the story provide evidence of skills, and techniques of active reporting? 3. *Is there evidence of time, research, and effort in the story, or series of stories? 4. *Does the story investigate (and verify ‘facts’), rather than rely on a compilation of opposing viewpoints? 5. *Does the revelatory information belong in the public rather than private sphere (e.g. is it in the public interest)?

6. Does it identify victims or villains?

7. Does it investigative a breach of public trust?

8. Does it expose hidden information or pursue a suppressed truth, and is it in the public interest to do so? 9. Is a moral standard implied?

In the description of five main features of IJ, Carson notes that investigative reporting is centred on the public interest “by exposing abuses of power in society” (2019, 65). IJ always requires greater time, money and effort from journalists compared to other journalistic genres to conduct the investigations as well as specific skills and techniques of active reporting. In investigative reporting, journalists should apply a higher level of scrutiny, verify the facts and look for legitimate sources of information (Carson 2019, 66). An investigative story needs to contribute with an exclusive agenda to a public sphere. Some of these criteria will also be used to identify

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 29

the investigative parts in Navalny’s videos. However, one IJ feature that needs closer attention in terms of Navalny’s journalism is the weight of evidence which is of a high importance in investigations like Navalny’s.

Journalists are believed to have a hierarchy of evidence, where each piece of evidence and information source has its own weight (Ettema & Glasser 1984, 17): “Video evidence is seen as most convincing, followed by paperwork, then accounts from participants, and then non-participating witnesses. Below these are journalistic ‘hunches’, and on the last rung of evidence are anonymous phone calls.” Video is the most reliable source of evidence and, significantly for this research, it is also the format of the investigative report that is produced by Navalny. Previously, Ettema & Glasser (1984) distinguished at least six of them in the following order of their importance:

• Video

• Paperwork

• Accounts from participants

• Accounts from non-participating witnesses

• Journalistic hunches

• Anonymous phone calls

With new digital investigative methods, new sources of evidence have emerged which broaden the toolkit of investigative reporters including Navalny and his team.

2.2.2 Practices of digital investigative journalism The 21st century has brought investigative reporters more opportunities to shed light on governments’ or elites’ crimes or misconduct thanks to the Internet and digital instruments, which has facilitated the emergence of new, substantive methods of reporting, resources and evidence. Living in a digitised world, journalists, as well as other political communication actors, need to develop new practices in order to adapt to new sources of information. Hanh and Stalph (2018, 3) state that “they develop software, techniques and mindsets to prolong investigative shoe leather reporting in the digital era”. Depending on the instruments, new sub-types of investigative journalism have emerged such as data journalism, drone journalism, investigative storytelling, visual investigations, and others. Navalny seems to incorporate many of

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these digital practices in his investigations in the absence of access to conventional media instruments. In their book Digital Investigative Journalism, Hanh and Stalph (2018) describe data journalism from a practitioner point of view; it is concluded that data journalism is one of the most efficient investigative approaches that journalists use nowadays. Other authors define data journalism as “a form of storytelling, where traditional journalistic working methods are mixed with data analysis, programming and visualisation techniques” (Nygren et al. 2012 as cited in Appelgren & Nygren 2014, 394)1. Data journalism opens up tremendous possibilities for journalists to gather information from different datasets, including official, open to the public government databases and digital datasets (Bradshaw 2018). Nevertheless, working with datasets is not something new to journalists (de la Hoz 2018). Even in the 19th century journalists were working with data (Kayser-Bril 2018). Whereas Internet technologies have brought data journalism to the fore. Famous cases of Edward Snowden’s leaks of the US National Security Agency data or the cross-national Panama Papers investigations showed that big data leaks followed by an investigative analysis of journalists could bring politicians and even governments accountable (Carson 2019). Navalny himself works a lot with social media data as well as public online databases, as his organisation, ACF, consists of lawyers who have the access and advanced skills of search in official online datasets.

Data journalism is often used to follow “the money trail” of the officials who are suspected of corruption crimes (Patrucic 2018). At some extent, majority of IJ practices can be considered as anti-corruption practices. Sampson (2010, 262) considers the anti-corruption logic as a complex phenomenon or the whole industry comprising “knowledge, people, money, and symbols”. The anti-corruption industry also includes donors, international financial institutions, think tanks, the private sector, NGOs and individuals (Walton 2016, 12). As an industry, Sampson (2010, 262) argues that anti-corruptionism brings a new way of thinking about the world, a new discourse. Navalny uses this anti-corruption logic and scheme of investigation to track offshores,

1 A secondary reference to the text by Nygren et al. (2012) has been used on this occasion because the original text is in Swedish, which is not a language spoken by the researcher. The researcher presumes the reference to be correct and contextually accurate, because it is cited from a text written by Appelgren and Nygren – two of the three authors of the original report.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 31

property estates, luxurious items, and properties of Russian establishment. In most general terms, the typical scheme of corruption investigation looks as follows (Patrucic 2018):

• Request about salaries and other benefits that a government official possess

• Research on an official’s biography or Curriculum Vitae (CV)

• Search in asset declaration forms

• Tracking land records (mostly online)

• Tracking companies’ records

• Tracking offshore assets

The last three elements of investigations require work with big online datasets that contain the most relevant information on officials’ properties. As will be seen in later chapters, this scheme is used by Navalny in his attempts to discredit Russian officials.

As was mentioned in previous section, video is one of the most valued sources of information used by investigative reporters. In this regard, video footage conducted through new drone journalism practices stands as a common source of evidence used in modern investigative reporting. Sections 6.3, 7.2 and 7.3 discuss how Navalny uses drones in the vast majority of his YouTube investigations to show elite Russians’ properties. As Kreimer (2018, 91) argues, drones create new storytelling possibilities from the air, as they function as a “much safer, more cost-effective, accessible, and easier to operate” alternative to conventional video footage with an operator. Tremayne and Clark (2014) in their analysis find that “anti-authoritarianism” was the driving motivation to use drone journalism in the investigations. Where authorities do not want to publicise certain areas or events, drone journalism can be used to overcome the restrictions on the accessibility in those countries (Treymane & Clark 2014, 239):

While there is often helicopter video of major events in Western countries, in other locations such as or Russia, where helicopters may not be available or allowed by the government to cover the event, drone technology that is harder to detect and control can circumvent prohibitions.

Drone journalism can help citizens, activists, independent journalists, and alternative media outlets to challenge and contest the power of the mainstream media what is

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extremely valued in the conditions of limited press freedom and authoritarian tendencies in Russia.

Whilst drone video footage can be attributed as an “old” type of the evidence that is collected with new technologies, social media data has become popular in investigative journalism in the last two decades. Social media data can include text, photographs, video, and other types of data, for example geolocations. As Hahn and Stalph notice (2018, 2), any “digital formats can be highly distinct, contain accurate and detailed information and metadata.” Nevertheless, these data have a high risk of being manipulated content, which can mislead both journalists and people who see social media posts.

Considering that the majority of misleading stories or so-called “fake news” are spread through social media, on the one hand there is a risk in the rise of using the them as evidence in investigative journalism, but on the other hand, debunking fake news has become a staple of investigative journalism. It has become a new 2010’s agenda for many media outlets, academics and political and non-governmental (NGO) organisations. Many fact-checking initiatives exist helping to verify facts, including social media data. Despite the global rise of fact-checking organisations worldwide, these new initiatives along with new instruments of verifying information can be not demanded in autocracies, where the majority of mainstream media outlets are controlled by the governments or affiliated business companies and neglect many principles of verifiability. Although verifiable facts are prerequisite for quality watchdog journalism.

2.2.3 Journalist roles and logics of watchdog reporting in Russia The term “investigative journalism” is often interchangeable with the term “watchdog journalism” (Carson 2019), which emphasises its main role in politics. Watchdog reporting covers (Coronel 2010, 2) “an array of malfeasance: from sex and personal scandals to financial wrongdoing, political corruption, enrichment in public office, and other types of wrongdoing.” There is a debate as to whether journalists can really perform a watchdog role in contemporary politics. Critics of the idea consider the watchdog role of news media to be “romanticised 18th-century notions of small papers fighting autocracy” (Coronel 2010, 5). Media often can be controlled by the governments, business stakeholders, and oligarchies and holding governments and the

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 33

elites accountable, thus critical reporting can be challenging both in democracies and autocracies.

The prerequisite to quality watchdog reporting can be strong journalistic values and identities combined with the sense of professional community. However, as research shows, both are not characteristic of Russian mainstream journalism. In their analysis of regional journalism in Russia, Lowrey and Erzikova (2013, 642) state that there are two major logics for news producers which guide news processes and decisions:

(a) Western enlightenment principles, suggesting that society, politics, and economics are naturally pluralistic, competitive, and oriented toward individuality, and (b) a traditional conformity to authority, and a tendency to view the external world as mostly threatening.

These “duelling, fluctuating environments” (Lowrey & Erzikova 2013, 643) are a product of the free spirit of Westernised Russia after the introduction of Perestroika (Engl. “restructuring”) era and glasnost (Engl. “openness”; the concept of official transparency and accountability) policy in the 1980s and at the same time a Soviet heritage with its propagandistic style of the press. Both logics determine federal and local mainstream journalism in the country. However, as authors show on the example of regional journalism, in recent years, the propagandist, Soviet logic wins, as the merge of public relations and journalism functions is observed among state journalists who glorify the Russian establishment and constitute the “alarming trend in Russian media system” (Lowrey & Erzikova 2013, 656). Local journalists in Russia, scholars conclude (Lowrey & Erzikova 2013), do not possess stable professional identity to overcome financial, ideological, and organisational constraints and its dependency on the government, having a weak autonomy of professional community.

Though the study of Lowrey and Erzikova (2013) was held only in one province of Russia and did not have generalisable findings for the rest of the Russian regions or federal journalism, their logic is quite fair in describing the settings of the Russian media system, explained more in detail in Chapter 3. The prevalence of propagandistic and public relation functions in the news coverage of the Russian establishment by the mainstream journalists is one of the main critics of Navalny in his videos and investigations on YouTube. Navalny presents major Russian journalists Vladimir Solovyev and as public enemies, meaning their over-biased pro-

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government coverage and excessive wealth that they earn on it. Therefore, journalistic logic of Navalny could be seen as a confronting logic, more westernised with its pro- democratic and pluralistic values. The essence of these values is still to be determined.

As was mentioned in Section 2.1, Hanitzsch and Vos (2017) suggested to look at journalistic values more universally, they suggested four dimensions of role orientations. Normative role orientations represent what is expected from journalists from the public, and how journalists are expected to meet those aspirations of public (2017, 124). Whereas in democracies, most public expectations could be connected with citizenship and democratic participation; in countries like Russia journalists can be perceived as partners of the government, empowering power-builders. Navalny though prefers a more democratic logic, inviting his followers to participate in protests and other political activities. Cognitive role orientations are associated with “the institutional values, attitudes, and beliefs” that journalists adopt in the process of their socialization (2017, 125). The socialisation happens in professional communities containing old and new generations of journalists sharing their practices. However, as found by Lowrey and Erzikova (2013), Russian journalist professional community is weak and not autonomous, characteristic of generational conflicts between journalists which did not contribute to the socialisation of local journalists.

Practised role orientations are those that capture “the institutional roles of journalists as they are executed in practice” (Hanitzsch & Vos 2017, 126). Those roles can be measured through journalists’ tangible behaviour and performance: through observation, we know what they actually do. Such dimension relates to this project particularly, as we are seeing Navalny’s videos as an act of political performance, and therefore can observe it through discursive (texts) and visual (images) practices. Another dimension to take into consideration in case of Navalny is narrated role performance which represents journalists’ “subjective perceptions of and reflections on the roles that journalists carry out in practice” (Hanitzsch & Vos 2017, 127), in other words, their own reflections on what journalists do. Navalny one of the few media producers who perform investigative journalism in Russia, however, he immodestly claims himself as the only truth-provider in Russia as will be seen in findings’ chapters.

Overall, Russia’s media system can be characterised by two controversial frames that legitimate journalist actions (Western and traditional Russian), weak professional

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 35

community and the sense of journalistic identity, and contradicting or vague journalists’ roles and functions. Navalny is an amateur investigative journalist who operates in this environment. Adhering to the Western logic of journalistic values, he tries to overcome propaganda-style news coverage of mainstream media aimed at empowering elites according to normative expectations. Facing weak institutions of socialisation of individual journalists in Russia, Navalny is creating his own media rules, values, narratives, and performance to attract supporters. He believes that in this environment due to his journalistic investigations and relevant skills, he is the only truth-provider in Russia. Though, Navalny with his highly contested claim still cannot boast with the positive political changes that his investigations could have brought to modernise and democratise Russia. As the next section shows, this is due to the political context and system in which investigative journalists are operating.

2.2.4 Democratic and authoritarian practices of watchdog journalism In democracies, the environment for watchdog reporting is the most favourable. The legal premises for freedom of speech and freedom of the media in many cases allow media institutions to hold authorities accountable (Coronel 2010). The system of checks and balances, along with strong and independent prosecution offices, enable media to hold politicians accountable. There are several successful examples where media investigations led to resigning of high-ranking officials in democracies.

One of the classic successful investigative media projects that held a politician accountable in democracy was the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, which led to the impeachment of US president Richard Nixon (Coronel 2010). Up until today, it is still debated whether the media played the primary role in Nixon’s resignation (Coronel 2010, Feldstein 2004). Feldstein (2004), revisiting the literature about the Watergate events, summarises that in contrast to the “Hollywoodization” of Watergate media heroes, most scholars who have studied the events conclude that the media played a more significant role in publicising the scandal rather than actually investigating it. However, as the author notes, Watergate gave a big push to investigative journalism in the US in that period, the number of investigative journalists has overwhelmingly increased, and more new organisations and non-profit organisations supporting IJ emerged (2004).

Another recent example of “real” influence of investigative work of journalists on politics is the corruption scandal around South Korea president Park Geun-hye.

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Media is believed to contribute to the revelation of president’s corruption, namely “a tablet that had belonged to Choi Soon-sil, the hidden power behind President Park Geun-hye. The data on the device exposed a web of unprecedented corruption.” (Kim 2016). Finally, in 2016, when the impeachment of Geun-hy occurred, the power of social media has been also notable in escalation of the scandal. Lee (2018) found that publics who read controversial news online about the incident were most likely to participate in the protests that emerged across Korea. With this said, investigative journalists can play if not a crucial but at least a significant role in holding politicians to account. However, taking these well-known cases in consideration, the scepticism towards the watchdog role of the media in societies still prevails, where the public believes that IJ is driven by sensationalism or vested interest of the media to attract audiences with scandals, rather than a desire to uncover misconduct (Coronel 2010).

In the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe (EE), which Russia is closer to in a political sense, watchdog reporting operates in a situation in which “the already resource-weak news organisations becoming even weaker” (Stetka & Örnebring 2013). Stetka and Örnebring (2013), exploring cases of investigative journalism in EE, suggest that the number of investigative journalists in the country tends to be directly dependent on the level of media freedom in the country: the freer the media, the more investigative journalists function there. They distinguished two types of investigative journalism in EE countries (Stetka & Örnebring 2013, 422): “one where investigative journalism — despite the above-quoted concerns about its quality — is still largely the domain of the established, mainstream media organizations, and the other one, where a substantial amount of investigations — and possibly the majority of the “real ones” — is done by alternative, predominantly Internet-based outlets and projects, or even by individual bloggers.” The first type of journalist organisations is represented by countries like Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic, while the second type is represented by Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, and Romania. Three years after the publication of Stetka & Örnebring, the media in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria remain as partly free according to Freedom House (2017). In these countries, low- budget investigative Internet-based projects can play the role of democracy watchdogs (Stetka & Örnebring 2013).

Overall, Stetka & Örnebring (2013) find that investigative journalism has a “weak impact on power holders”. IJ cannot function fully with low autonomy and/or

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 37

weak institutions as police, courts, and other prosecution authorities (Stetka & Örnebring 2013). A similar situation is observed in Russia, where most mainstream media outlets are not autonomous, and the repressive state apparatus serves the interests of the elite. The notion of a repressive state apparatus came from a Marxist theory, where different bodies possessed “hard power”, or in other words, could use violence against its citizens. Objective investigative reporting in countries like Russia can have an effect on society when it entails with a call to political action to change the system. Activists and independent journalists in a country like Russia need to pursue at least two political goals simultaneously: the first is to overcome pro- government mainstream media bias, and the second is to exercise their essential political rights. In these circumstances, the notion of advocacy journalism emerges.

2.2.5 Premises to advocacy journalism In a situation, where simple investigative reporting does not bring societal change and the elites accused of power abuse and corruption do not face prosecution due to weak political institutions and checks and balances systems, journalists and activists will often start to embed the elements of advocacy. If advocacy is defined as “pleading another’s cause or arguing in support of an idea, event or a person” (Fisher 2016, 712), then almost all types of journalism can be considered as “advocacy journalism”. Fisher uses a continuum point of view, in which advocacy journalists are not only promoting their own interests, such as political changes that lead to increased democracy and thus greater freedom of speech, but they can also create social, political, economic and cultural change in the society. Media organisations producing advocacy materials serve as platforms for civic activism and provide the information resources that enable people to engage in political action. This section illuminates modern civic advocacy journalism practices that were brought to the fore in autocratic regimes to challenge the monopoly of power and/or corruption.

Explaining a phenomenon of advocacy journalism, scholars as Waisbord (2008) tend to differentiate between advocacy journalism where journalists perform as the advocates of their own interests, political views and rights; and “civic” advocacy journalism where media serves as a channel to mobilise public opinion and create social change. Describing the Russian case, Repnikova (2018, 49) states that critical journalists there associate themselves with the opposition. This fact links them to the first type of advocacy journalism as defined by Waisbord (2008). When it comes to

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practical implications and political effect of those investigations, journalists face difficulties as described by one of Repnikova’s interviewees, an anonymised investigative journalist from Novaya Gazeta: “The main problem is that Russian press, and critical media more broadly, can barely influence anything. In every edition of our newspaper you can find plenty of opportunities for initiating small governance reforms, but nothing happens” (Repnikova 2018, 51). However, Repnikova describes the experience of critical professional media outlets like Novaya Gazeta, Vedomosti, Vlast’, and New Times who can sometimes initiate investigative projects. These media outlets have substantial financial resources and professional journalists behind them, but small amateur or alternative investigative Internet projects are increasingly gaining impact in Russia. Navalny’s YouTube channels represent both types of advocacy journalism according to Waisbord (2008), as the channels help him to achieve his political goals by calling people to action.

In line with Stetka & Örnebring (2013), who distinguish mainstream investigative journalism and independent niche investigative projects, advocacy journalism can exist in mainstream and alternative formats. Mainstream advocacy journalism is known also as “muckraking” in the US which led to crucial political reforms there (Serrin & Serrin 2002). Journalists, despite exposing the “villains” were still embedded in the mainstream media market and played by its rules; additionally, they had access to greater resources and instruments of journalism. At the same time, activists and alternative media outlets often avoid mainstream agenda, as they think it ignores alternative issues and problems (Atton 2012; Forde 2011; Wall 2003). Alternative journalism is often produced by amateurs for non-commercial purposes and involves a high level of bottom-up participation forming the media agenda (Atton 2012). However, as Forde (2011) argues, alternative advocacy journalism can be produced by professionals too.

Regardless of the channels and instruments of communication that they may use, all advocacy journalists have similar roles — to bring political change to the society. Waisbord (2008, 375) argues that modern advocacy journalism is connected with the “professionalisation of media tactics of social movements and interest groups”. Navalny represents a group of anti-corruption activists and anti-establishment movements that are not satisfied with the political monopoly of Putin’s elite in the country. This movement has existed since protests of 2011-2012 and was acting on

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 39

and off during the 2010-s, depending on a political situation in the country and the state of opposition itself which tends to be mainly polarised and fragmented.

The ability of Navalny to keep his audience focused and active is among many things due to the fact that journalists like him turn from simple communicators into motivators for action (Charles 2013, 387) and consequently mediators of civic activism. With the rising power of social media, which was described in Section 2.1.3, IJ with advocacy elements has a great role in facilitating social movements, and give a voice to the voiceless, too.

2.2.6 Investigative journalism and its “call to action” The deviation of news media from traditional functions of “watchdogs” of society and the decline of press freedom in the world have created a niche for truthful, objective and reporting that can lead to a real socio-political change. Investigative reporting, known also as “watchdog reporting”, can potentially fill this niche with its traditional and digital practices. IJ has distinctive features: it serves the public interest of exposing political power abuse; it requires more effort, sources and money from journalists; it has a critical reporting style; its reports have an exclusive character; it involves detailed scrutiny and verification of facts; and finally, it involves relying on “new” and “traditional” sources of information. The final of these elements is considered in this project as the most distinctive feature of IJ.

In a new digital era, along with traditional methods of IJ, new advanced technologies have become heavily employed in this type of reporting. Journalists make use of data and drone journalism to reveal corruption and power abuse in politics. Digital technologies enable access to public and government datasets that can play a crucial role on corruption investigations. Examples of use of drone journalism in autocracies prove that investigative reporters can challenge the monopoly of the mainstream media to cover major events and locations. The expansion of sources of information in investigative journalism driven by new Internet technologies included social media and Internet data which are increasingly used by journalists to expose abuses of power and corruption.

Navalny operates in the midst of a media environment that is dominated by Kremlin loyalists whom he opposes, based on his own purported (often seen as “Western”) values of journalism proclaiming pluralism of views, citizenship, and

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democratic participation. Being not a professional journalist, he combines most of the universal roles ascribed to journalists, according to Hanitzsch and Vos (2017), using them as a tool for attracting people’s attention and make his message more truthful and trustworthy to the audience through the IJ methods. In the same way he uses a populist communication style as a tool to make his message more “people-friendly” as will be seen in next sections.

In practice, despite its obvious “watchdog” purposes, according to sceptics, investigative journalism is far from bringing real reformist change to societies. The example of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s is believed to be an excellence model of investigative journalism that led to impeachment of the president. However, sceptics deny the crucial role of IJ in those events and acknowledge that media majorly played a role in publicising and scandalisation of the matter. The impeachment of Nixon, they believe, was a joint effort from prosecution investigators, media and the public.

Despite examples of the success in democratic countries, in authoritarian or transitional countries, traditional IJ does not bring real political change due to the strong monopoly of political power by the elites and restrictions on the freedom of the press. In post-Communist countries, new independent Internet-based projects have started to gain power to challenge the power of mainstream media (Stetka & Örnebring 2013). Journalists in these countries are increasingly bringing the elements of civic activism to their stories, use alternative formats and instruments to create political change and to challenge the political, economic, or media elites. As later chapters will show, Navalny with his discourse fits these parameters trying to expose the cases of corruption within Russian establishment.

Reflecting on future of IJ, Houston (2010, 45) notes that this type of journalism is inherently populist and adversarial in its nature, “challenging the powers that be”. By exposing the power abuse and corruption of the “villains”, protecting the “victims” and their public interest, sometimes more radically calling people to action, IJ has many intersections with populism that is based on antagonism of “the people” and “the elite”. In this project, Navalny is believed to skilfully use this confrontation for journalistic and political purposes.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 41

2.3 POPULIST COMMUNICATION AND POPULIST NARRATIVES

Describing the “third age” of PC, Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) noted the shift between political communicators and their audience from top-down to bottom-up communication. The rise of populism in PC since the early 1990s was conditioned by an increasing number of media outlets and the weakening of party identifications, “leaving a sort of legitimacy gap that populism helps to fill” (Blumler & Kavanagh 1999, 220). As will be outlined in Section 2.3.5, the spread of populist discourses has become even more intensified with the introduction of the Internet and social media. The language, style, and narratives of politicians and media have become more people- oriented and accessible to a general audience. However, the effects of the rising populism and its role in politics are still debatable. Whether rising populism has motivating or discouraging effect towards democracy will be explored in this project through the case study of Navalny.

I start this section with explorations how to define populism. I subscribe to a style-oriented definition of populism, which contains ideological populist content along with a presentational set of elements which I describe in the following chapters. The purpose of this section is not to create yet another definition of populism. Instead, the goal is to find a practical explanation of rapid spread of populism and its prevalence in political communication. It will help to reflect on the role that social media plays in a spread of populist content, and to identify the distinguishing characteristics of populism that are manifest in the Russian political sphere. This section gives the background on the populist style and content that Navalny uses in his digital communication to interact with the audience.

2.3.1 Approaches to define populism There are various approaches to defining populism. Different authors consider populism as an ideology (Mudde 2004), a philosophy (Inglehart & Norris 2016), a logic (Laclau 2005), a discourse (Laclau 1977, 1980, 2005, Laclau & Mouffe 1985), a political style (Moffitt & Tormey 2014), a communication phenomenon (de Vreese et al. 2018), or other approaches. The definitions have undergone transformations over time due to difficulties to evaluate populism empirically and the growing importance of the style and narration in populism communication. The main definitions, approaches and their authors in chronological order are summarised in Table 2.3.

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Table 2-3: Approaches for defining populism (with definitions and authors)

Authors Approach Definition

Laclau (1977, 1980, 2005); discourse “an anti-status quo discourse that simplifies the Laclau & Mouffe (1985) political space by symbolically dividing society between the ‘people’ (as the ‘underdogs’) and its ‘other’.” (Panizza 2005)

Mudde (2004, 543) ideology “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”

Laclau (2005, 117) logic a political logic which relates to the institution of the social that proceeds out of social demands and is inherent to any process of social change.

Moffitt and Tormey political style “the repertoires of performance that are used to (2014, 388) create political relations.”

Inglehart and Norris philosophy “a philosophy that emphasizes faith in the (2016, 6) wisdom and virtue of ordinary people (the silent majority) over the ‘corrupt’ establishment.”

de Vreese et al. communication an expression of political communication (2018, 426-427) phenomenon content and style. Content is the core component of populist ideology (people- centrism and anti-elitism, exclusion of out- groups), and style is associated with the set of presentational style elements used while expressing populist ideology.

The definitions in Table 2.3 to some extent reflect the history of the transformation of understanding of populism throughout decades. There are observed commonalities between these particular approaches which exist in the abundance of other definitions of populism. For example, the expressed antagonism or struggle between two or more groups of actors: the people and the elite (or “Other”, enemies, establishment), sometimes excluded groups of actors, so-called “out-groups” can be

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 43

identified as a common feature between these approaches. Mudde (2004) argues that initially the populism substance is centred around “the people” as the elite is the opposite of “the people”. Describing populism as a “thin-centred ideology”, Mudde (2004, 544) states that it can be combined with other ideologies and it is rather “moralistic than programmatic”. But like any other ideology, it needs to be articulated to the people, in order for parties or politicians to attract general support or achieve political goals. In this regard, it is communicated easier, because it is addressed to the people directly, the main object of the ideology. This communication process has changed over time as the media environment itself. If earlier, parties, and politicians had only a few communication channels, consisting of mostly mainstream media outlets, agitation materials, or direct communication with voters, now, in the digital era, politicians and citizens have access to the Internet and social media platforms which changed the way how populism is communicated between them. Instead of one-way communication, there are multiple channels, instruments, and formats that populist can use to spread their sentiments. Different mediums, for example, social media platforms, have their own formats of messages what can also influence the way populist politicians talk to the electorate. In addition, on social media, messages can quickly go viral, they can involve more engagement from users, as unlike mainstream media, social media offers in most of the cases an option to comment or like the message. With this rapid digital development, and encouragement of the communication or even political participation “from the bottom”, from “the people”, it is aptly to speak about the style of populist communication, which became important in the last two decades and make some populist politicians more visible or popular than others. From Table 2.3 it can be seen, that in last definitions of populism, there is a trend of exploring the phenomenon through the communication and performative lens. The definitions of Moffitt and Tormey (2014) and de Vreese et al. (2018) both acknowledge the importance of style in populist communication. Moffitt and Tormey (2014, 388) argue that “the contemporary political landscape is intensely mediated and stylised and as such, the so-called ‘aesthetic’ or performative features are particularly important”. When politicians become pseudo-celebrities, they use “flash mobs, protests, and different types of content to attract the attention of voters using stylistic features” (Moffitt & Tormey 2014, 388).

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YouTube, in this sense, is a favourable environment for the populist style allowing the populist leader to perform and appeal to users directly involving the visual, audio, and text content. The analysis of a populist style allows looking at the presentational elements of a populist’s performance, and finally, the structure and the affordances of the medium for disseminating populist messages.

Populist political style Previous studies proffer other definitions of the populist communication style. Jagers and Walgrave (2007), as the prominent contributors to this field, divide populism into two following categories: “thick” and “thin”. “Thin populism” is a “political communication style which refers to the people”; thick populism also refers to the people and additionally contains anti-establishment sentiments and homogeneity/exclusion of specific population categories (2007, 312-313). The example of a “thin” definition of populism can be definition of Bracciale and Martella (2017, 3), who describe populism as “a style for reporting the typical communication practices of audience democracy, deductible by the presence of similar communication features, themes and performances among leaders from different political parties”. It stresses not only the pro-people nature of populist style but also features and performances which will be heavily studies in this project. Another “thick” definition of populist style was outlined by Block and Negrine (2017, 179), who describe populist style as an “act of speech, as populist actors use words, signs, and images — forms of communication — to connect with the people (the disenchanted, disadvantaged, aggrieved groups mentioned) and demonise the Other, usually the centre-ground elite, or the establishment”. Navalny’s communication is indeed oriented towards the people, but it is significantly more anti- establishment in its nature which places it closer to “thick” definitions of populism. Finally, de Vreese et al. (2018), in their review of populism as a communication phenomenon, distinguish between the political communication content and the style as can be seen from Table 2.3. The authors claim that by studying the characteristics of content and style features of populism, it is possible to determine “degrees” or types of populism as shown in Table 2.4 (de Vreese et al. 2018, 426), which provides useful concepts used in this PhD project measuring populism through the case study of Navalny.

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 45

Table 2-4: Types of populism

Types of populism Description Complete populism includes reference and appeals to the people, anti-elitism, and exclusion of “out-groups”2 Excluding populism includes only references and appeals to the people and exclusion of out-groups Anti-elitist populism includes reference and appeals to the people and anti-elitism Empty populism includes only reference and appeals to the people.

Most of the provided above definitions substantiate the belief that a political style is first and foremost a set of performances associated with the concept of political power. However, in their definitions, authors fall short of addressing the idea of the medium importance in a populist political style. Some scholars, for example, Block and Negrine (2017), recognise the crucial role of the media in the populist political style; however, she admits that not all populist communication is media communication. The channels of the dissemination of populist communication require additional attention of scholars. In this project, I argue that populist messages are stylised to the medium to satisfy the expectations of the audience and increase its reach. Choosing the media, political actors take into consideration the characteristics and affordances of the medium. The form and content of messages also needs to be tailored to the media it is being distributed to — television, newspapers, web, or social media platforms. Media outlets often hire separate employees and use different strategies to work with social media content on different platforms. Modern journalists and editors recognise the diversity of the form and the content of the message and stylise it for each channel of communication accordingly. The same process can be applied to the populist messages and political actors who are spreading them as I argue. Populists acknowledge the advancement of media technologies and choose the medium based on their needs and external factors. In choosing YouTube, Navalny has selected the most affordable platform that is also relatively free from government control as will be described in the following sections. His choice as any other political actor influences the “what” and “how” going to be transmitted.

2 “Out-groups” are the categories of the people that excluded from the populist appeal (Jagers and Walgrave 2007)

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Taking de Vreese et al.’s (2018) approach as a starting point for understanding populism, where it is seen as a communication phenomenon, “an expression of the content and the style”, I do not intend to create a new understanding of populism in the already abundant scope of work on populism. However, it is essential to stress the shift in the understanding of populism from more abstract to pragmatic and communicative approaches, which enables a study of populism in daily political practices. My approach also adds emphasis on the importance of the medium for transmitting populist messages. As I argue, populist messages are often adapted for the particular communication medium, which has its own communication rules and style. The message consisting of textual, visual, art, performative, symbolic, and other elements can be structured and stylised to the needs of the audience and capacities of the medium. When they are perfectly adapted to the medium, messages have higher chances to become popular/viral on the communication platform, and attract larger audiences. The next section will look closer at the ideological content of populism, which is used in the empirical analysis of the populist phenomenon.

2.3.2 The content of populism: people-centrism and anti-elitism Table 2.3 indicated standard features of all the approaches to define populism, precisely, the common agreement on what are considered to be the main content categories of the populist style, and these are people-centrism and anti-elitism (Jagers & Walgrave 2007, Moffitt & Tormey 2014, Bonikowski & Gidron 2016, Casero- Ripolles et al. 2017, Bracciale & Martella 2017, Engesser et al. 2017, de Vreese et al. 2018). Some argumentative structures within these two virtues of populism are particularly important for opposition communication in Russia.

“The people” and a “call to action” Populism research does not usually substantively describe the category of “the people” that takes a central place in populist communication. Most authors understand people-centrism as referring to “the people”; where people are the primary source of legitimate power (Bonikowski & Gidron 2016) and sovereignty (Moffitt & Tormey 2014, Jagers & Walgrave 2007). Populists associate themselves with, appeal to or refer to “the people”. This project focusses mostly on in the empirical indicators of “the people” category in texts which are often represented by collective nouns “people”, “citizens”, “voters”, “taxpayers”, “residents”, “consumers”, and “population”. Populists can also use the mass pronouns “we” and “us” to identify themselves with

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 47

“the people”. These are simple markers to indicate in texts; however, not many populist scholars go into detail on how exactly populists appeal to “the people” and what makes this appeal political.

Mostly politicians refer to “the people” in terms of them being their central electorate, but artists, businessmen, and journalists also can appeal to “the people” as their primary audience, and they are not labelled as “populists”. Political appeals are distinguished from other types of appeals by the presence of political goals in communicator’s message. The political goal of populists can be holding a protest, getting votes on the elections, getting information and others. Bracciale and Martella (2017, 1315) also refer to this as the “function” dimension of populist style, and they describe such goals as self-promotion, setting an agenda, position-taking, irony, endorsement, request for interaction, pointless babble, campaign updating, and, finally, call to action. The “call to action” is one of the radical forms of political appeal; it can overarch all other goals.

Politicians addressing “the people” usually want some form of direct or indirect action from them: to vote in someone’s favour, to protest, to disseminate information and other actions. Even the encouragement of political apathy of citizens can be a political goal, as seen in many traditional and autocratic societies. These goals require some invitation to action or inaction of citizens. It can be identified through verbal constructions such as “vote”, “protest”, “boycott”, “volunteer”, and other examples of political action supported by a set of conditions for this action (place, time, and forms of actions). An example of this construction can be “go to the streets” or “vote for me”. “streets” and “me” determine the circumstances of the action. “Call to action” together with the circumstances for its emergence is a clear goal that can be identified in populist messages. It determines the “political” side of populist appeal to “the people” as any political communication is the purposeful communication and aimed at creating political relationships between people.

In this project, I am interested in why Navalny’s messages attract large audiences and subsequently influence political participation of citizens. “Call to action” as a radical form of appeal to “the people” in populist communications, among other reasons can be vital to the success of increasing political participation among audience. Communication addressed by populists to “the people” is a purposeful communication driven by different political goals and requiring some form of action (or inaction from

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them). To consider people as a source of legitimate power and the sovereignty is to acknowledge their political rights and variety of forms to exercise them, i.e. to act.

Discrediting the elites Anti-elitism is another central element of populist communication described by many scholars. The typical anti-elite descriptions within populism contain notions that elites are (Jagers & Walgrave 2007; Bonikowski & Gidron 2016): • Distancing from “the people”

• Associated with the external enemy (“us” – “them”)

• Politically incompetent, indifferent to public interest and sabotaging

• Corrupt

• Betraying public trust

• Serving special interests to increase their political power

• The anti-establishment claims always contain actors, whom populists criticise.

Populists can refer to the elite more generally with the word-indicators such as “they”, the “government”, “establishment”, and “elite” but also, they can embody the critique with particular individuals, groups of people and institutions of political power. Jagers and Walgrave (2007, 324) suggested a broad classification of the elites: • Political elites (parties, government, ministries)

• Media (media tycoons, journalists)

• The state (administration, civil service)

• Intellectuals (universities, writers, professors)

• Economic powers (multinationals, employers, trade unions, capitalists)

The authors argue that the more diffuse and general the accusations towards elites are the more radical anti-elitism is. It is also worth noting, that depending on the national context, these groups can differ from country to country. The Russian political

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 49

system is indeed unique and outlined mostly in the Constitution3, where it is claimed to be democratic with the separation of powers. De facto, the state institutions can serve the elites’ interests, which is formally not enshrined in the Constitution. As an example, Russia has an extensive hard power apparatus, including military elites, security services, censorship bodies, prisons, the judicial system, and para-military organisations which possess extensive political power. This fact will be taken into consideration while exploring how Navalny’s texts critique the virtue of Putin’s elite. In general, the populist critique can be directed towards specific groups, for example, NGOs, volunteer organisations, other activists, supporters of the incumbent regime, and asylum seekers, all of whom populists can try to discredit in their communication. According to populist studies (Jagers & Walgrave 2007), these can be so-called “out-groups” or categories of the people excluded from the populist appeal. Not all scholars attribute demeaning of out-groups as being a core element of populism, so in this regard, this project uses de Vreese et al.’s (2018) vision of “anti- elitist populism” (Table 2.3) that contain anti-elitist and people-centrist sentiments only, without any smears against out-groups. Even though asylum seekers and ethnic, religious or other minorities are sometimes subject to journalistic “investigations”, in Navalny’s YouTube videos out-groups are not prominent targets. Furthermore, Moffitt and Tormey (2014) stress that elites are not necessarily corrupt or oppositional; instead they are distinct from populists and “the people”. However, in Navalny’s communication, I find that populists can not only differentiate but also discredit elites. By the fact of discrediting, populists can strengthen the distance between “us” and “them” to sharpen the antagonism of actors involved in populist communication (populists, “the people”, and elites). Populists like Navalny can disrepute target groups by providing arguments and purported evidence of elites’ crimes and misconduct. Here, as was stated in Section 2.2, we can find an interesting intersection with investigative journalism that also aims at exposing “villains” in corruption and abuse of power. Populists can use evidence of crimes as their “weapon” against the elites; in the same manner, investigative and advocacy journalists are using evidence in their

3 In July 2020, the referendum was held in Russia in order to amend the Russian Constitution of 1993. 77,92 % voted in favour of amending the constitution. All references to the Russian constitution in this thesis are referred to the not version of the document from 1993.

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investigation to expose elites or create a political change or motivate people to action. Navalny’s team employs an investigation genre, using some evidence of corruption on social media, the Internet, and offline sources. As will be discussed in Chapter 6, the genre of Navalny’s communication, a documentary YouTube video, clearly uses ample evidence to support his claims but also it denigrates Putin’s elite (often without pointing to any specific evidence). Overall, the content of the populist phenomenon consists of a political appeal to “the people” and its radical form of “call to action”, in which I am interested in the most in this project, as it has the potential to increase political participation. It also contains attempts to discredit the elites represented by a divergent spectrum of actors and institutions, using the evidence basis of elites’ crimes and misconduct. The presence of evidence while exposing elites’ crimes can indicate the use of investigative journalism practices to collect and present the evidence. Both people-centrism and anti-elitism which use above-mentioned argumentative structures can be presented with performative elements of a populist style.

2.3.3 Performative elements of the populist style “The set of performances” (Moffitt & Tormey 2014) or “set of presentational elements” (de Vreese et al. 2018) are attributive to populist style which further emphasises the populist nature of communication. Unlike de Vreese et al. (2018), Moffitt and Tormey (2014) do not distinguish between content and style of populism when they identify the main elements of populist style in general as being an appeal to “the people”, a perception of crisis, breakdown, or threat, and “bad manners” of populists (as outsiders of “normal politics”). Apart from the appeal to “the people”, authors emphasise that the crisis can sourced in social, political, ecological and other issues in the society created by the elites. In addition, Moffitt and Tormey (2014) mention emotionally coloured language, such as slang and dialectisms, as characteristic of the populist communication style. Populists often resort this “tabloid- style” language to be closer to ordinary people, to outline the “emergency” of the political crisis and to trigger the negative emotions of citizens. As will be discussed in more depth in subsequent chapters, Navalny is known for promoting the slogan created during the 2011-2012 protests such as “party of crooks and thieves” applied to the dominant party in Russia in his offline and online communications. He also uses other slang in his narratives to discredit the elite and distance them from “the people”.

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Scholars of populism concentrate on performative nature and aesthetic features of populist communication, which are not merely limited to text representations. Political performance as a whole consists of speech, body, stage, and performative labour, according to Rai (2015). Whereas speech can be attributed to the content of populism, I am exploring YouTube communication, thus the visual representation of the body and the stage, as well as specificities of platform interaction coming to the fore, as they determine the aesthetics of the genre.

Visual aesthetics of populism: body, colours, and the stage One of the visual representations of populism is the body of the politician. As Diehl (2017, 361) claims “the body is the medium by which leader demonstrates her or his popular belonging to the people she or he claims to represent”. In populist communication, a leader tends to mirror people as a whole. In a democratic context, the body of a politician is “the medium for the truth” as the body of citizen resonates emotionally and rationally with this truth (Diehl 2017, 364). In the era of mediatisation (Mazzoleni & Schulz 1999), where political performances are often staged, the emphasis on a visual representation of politicians’ bodies becomes more and more crucial for public relation specialists and other actors helping to stage their performance.

In Western democracies, it is usually accepted that politicians distance themselves from an ordinary voter. They wear suits, use professional jargon, and demonstrate their belonging to a political class. However, populists tend to do exactly the opposite, having an anti-elite character of their performance, they appear to be closer to people, avoiding “technocratisation”, mirroring audience identities (Diehl 2017). However, populists somehow combine the closeness to “the people” and the distance from them in one identity. This paradox was described by Casullo (2018), who among other scholars has noted that creating distance and mirroring the people are attributive features of populist bodies representations. Populists can mirror “the people”, but also show their exceptionality through the symbols of possession of institutional power like “presidential emblems, military uniform, displays of wealth, diplomas of higher education, and the like” (Casullo 2018, 6). One of the popular forms of body representations are clothes or the style of dressing. What a populist wears evidences how close is he/she to people, or whether he/she creates distance with the audience or associates himself/herself with political power.

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The body is not the only representation of the visual aesthetics of populism. I consider colour as another symbolic dimension of populism that can be transmitted through YouTube affordances. In politics, colours are used to represent identities of nations, parties, social movements, ideologies, and other political institutions. In this regard, red can often be associated with socialist, labour and communist movements or parties around the globe (Sawer 2007). Black was often used by proponents of both anarchism and fascism. Green was historically used by Islam political parties and radicals in Great Britain; now, it is a colour representing environmentalism and green parties (Sawer 2007). Considering how well-studied the populist phenomenon is these days, the colour representation of populism is still an underdeveloped research area.

Casullo (2018), in her study of body representation of Latin American presidential candidates, evidences a preference towards black, white, and blue colours in the clothing of Argentinian candidate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as well as traditional indigenous colours in clothing used by populist candidate Evo Morales in Bolivia. White and blue, she notes, can reflect the colours of the Argentinian flag, whereas indigenous colours and a style of clothing of Evo Morales shows that he is closer to respective groups of population in Bolivia. This study will look into what colours Navalny uses in his populist communication with YouTube audience, what they symbolise, and what emotions he is trying to trigger using colour representation.

The last but not least element of visual aesthetics that is essential for YouTube communication is the image of a stage where a populist performs. Coming from the notion that a public sphere is a stage for political performance (Rai 2015), I am interested more in physical and visual parameters, or the symbolic “filling” of the scene, where the populist presents. As Rai acknowledges, “the performing body also brings the stage into being by occupying it, speaking from it and creating an aesthetic marking it” (2015, 1183). Along with the “front” stage, the “back” stage also has important meaning for the audience; where the “gaze is integral to systems of power and ideas about knowledge” (Sturken & Cartwright 2009, 94). A visual analysis of YouTube videos can be used to evaluate how a populist leader presents himself on the scene, how the scene is staged, and what objects-symbols he/she uses to strengthen his/her message. All of these components will be researched in Navalny’s case. YouTube as a social media platform, stands as a perfect stage for political performance, which involves visual, audio, and text elements, but also functions of

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 53

interaction with its audience. Before proceeding to a special role of YouTube in populist performances, the connection between populism and social media needs to be outlined.

2.3.4 Populism and social media The relationship between populism and social media were explored by many scholars in the late 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Bimber (1998, 138) outlined the wave of enthusiasm towards populism with the introduction of the Internet, where it was expected “that elites and political intermediaries will grow less important”, and mass audiences “also be fundamentally less dependent on linkage organizations and group politics.” Twenty years later, Paulo Gerbaudo, one of the most significant contributors to the studies of the inter-relationships between populism and social media, argues that social media “have offered a channel for the populist yearning to ‘represent the unrepresented” (2018, 746). People can express their opinion openly and freely on social media, expressing their anger or dissatisfaction with mainstream media and government politics.

Gerbaudo (2018) stresses the ideological nature of populist sentiments online, which is driven by the economic crisis and the crisis of neoliberal order. He sees the potential of social media in uniting those who are dispersed politically (2018, 750):

Social media discussions have provided gathering spaces where the ‘lonely crowds’ produced by the hyper individualism of neoliberal society could coalesce, where the atoms of the dispersed social networks could be reforged into a new political community, into an ‘online crowd’ of partisan supporters.

In that regard, social media is favourable if not radical platform for populism, because as with the powers of online crowds, it can challenge established elite’s rules and their authority not only online but also offline.

The scholarly discussion mostly concentrates on Facebook and Twitter as mouthpiece-platforms for the spread of populism. Engesser et al. (2017, 1123), in their comparative analysis of populism on social media in four European countries, conclude that “the network logic of social media gives the populists more freedom for the use of strong language when attacking the elites and ostracizing others” unlike traditional mass media with its own logic. Exploring the use of Twitter by presidential candidates in Latin America, Waisbord and Amado (2017, 1342) come to the

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conclusion that politicians continue to use Twitter typically for populist top-down manner to avoid “tough questions, dissident views, and open exchanges with citizens.”

In their review of the use of Twitter and Facebook for populism, Jacobs et al. (2019) explore what purposes populist parties can use Twitter and Facebook. They conclude that Twitter can be used to target journalists, “publicly name and shame them to increase media coverage” (Jacobs et al. 2019, 2) whereas Facebook can be utilised for mobilisation of large groups of audience activating anger among them (Jacobs et al. 2019, 2). While the authors’ conclusions are based on the audiences of the social media platforms and need further testament in a cross-country perspective, YouTube is still overshadowed in the research of populism and social media by the dominance of “political” Facebook and Twitter.

Three dimensions can be interesting for the research of populism and YouTube. The first dimension is the performative nature of YouTube and populism performative style. YouTube performers, whether they are politicians or ordinary users, among other purposes, are trying to attain fame and become popular on the platform. In doing so, they act like celebrities who, according to Marwick and boyd (2011, 140), are seen as “an organic and ever-changing performative practise rather than a set of intrinsic personal characteristics or external labels.” Burgess and Green (2009b) note that celebrities on social media resort to a traditional media logic.

Another interesting angle was summarised by Horton and Wohl (1956), who explored the relationships between audience and television and radio presenters. The so-called “intimacy at a distance” (Horton & Wohl 1956, Levy 1978) characterises this as creating a feeling of “face-to-face interaction” with a host (journalist) being remotely located from the audience. Using video format on YouTube, the platform that appropriated many television technologies, a celebrity politician or politician- influencer can create this feeling of intimacy by speaking directly into the camera as if speaking straight to the audience, wearing casual clothes and using casual language. At the same time, he/she can use symbols or attributes that portray a different identity, more “political” and leader position using different symbols and journalist practices. In this project, I will look at how Navalny uses such practices in attaining popularity and viewership on YouTube.

The second dimension is connected with the radical nature of YouTube and populist appeals. In Lewis’s report (2018) on the broadcast of far-right reactionary

Chapter 2: Political communication: new actors, practices, and narratives 55

views on YouTube through the network of influencers, she acknowledges that YouTube is often undervalued in the research of discourses on the spread of disinformation and far-right views. Although, I do not consider Navalny as a far-right activist, several conclusions of Lewis in this report are useful for this research.

YouTube influencers, explored by Lewis (2018), represent so-called alternative media opposing themselves to a mainstream format of traditional media. These influencers “signify an identity of both social underdogs and a hip counterculture — courting young audiences looking for a community with a level of rebellion” (Lewis 2018, 20). Young audiences are popular targets of YouTube influencers, to attract them influencers create a “countercultural” identity which contains “hipness” and “edginess” of previous youth movements (2018, 22).

Lewis acknowledges that despite polarised political views, some influencers use “avowed populism to align with the antiestablishment sentiment of past movements” (2018, 23). Similar patterns can be observed in the activities of Navalny who often targets young audiences in his speeches, and there a high level of participation of youth in his anti-establishment protests has been observed (Balmforth 2017). Therefore, YouTube can be seen in this project as a favourable platform for spreading alternative, sometimes radical views against the establishment and the elites. Influencers like Navalny are trying to target particularly younger generations, who in many societies, including democratic countries, are considered as peripheral, or undecided electorate.

The third dimension is the participatory affordances of YouTube and its potential to mobilise people through populist communication. There are two different types of participation of users that can be observed on the YouTube platform. The first type of participation is internal and attributive to users on YouTube particularly, including casual viewing and content creating (Craig & Cunningham 2017). Burgess and Green (2018) describe this experience as purely communicative phenomenon: “Through their individual and collective activities — uploading, viewing, discussing and collaborating — the YouTube community formed a complex, distributed network of creative practice and social interaction.” Another potential of YouTube is connected with political participation, which goes beyond accustomed limits of the platform and sometimes can turn into real offline action. Earlier observations on the effects of social media on political participation and protests particularly showed a significant role of social media platforms. Exploring Facebook use in the events of the Egyptian

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Revolution in 2011, Tufekci and Wilson (2012) noted that interpersonal communication facilitated through Facebook influenced people’s knowledge about protest and motivated them to attend protests on the first day.

Exploring the participatory potential of YouTube in the Occupy Movement and California Proposition 8 ballot initiative, Vraga et al. (2014, 133) reach the conclusion that different social movements have different ecospheres on YouTube, and that online spaces are flexible in terms satisfying a movement’s needs. Social media use is seen as an instrument of an “inbound mobilisation call” according to Askanius and Uldam (2011). Researching the role of YouTube in protests around the 15th UN Climate conference in Copenhagen organised by the Global Justice Movement in 2009, researchers summarise that YouTube and its videos can be seen as “a vibrant, agonistic public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted” (Askanius & Uldam 2011, 81). In similar logic, I explore digital activism of Navalny. Considered as alternative media, YouTube gives “space” for challenging establishment and producing counter-cultural narratives to seek Russian people’s support. In the analytical sections of this thesis, I explore what role YouTube plays in the populist style of Navalny.

2.3.5 Digital communication for “the people” and against the elites In this section, I explored the nature of the populism phenomenon from a particular, empirical angle. Coping with the ambiguity of the term “populism” and the abundance of approaches to define it, I did not find it useful to create yet another definition of populism. Omitting philosophical and discursive explaining of populism, I am more interested in the communication side of populism, which can be measured empirically in the form of the content and a style. Among main content elements of populist phenomenon, it is common to distinguish people-centrist and anti-elitist sentiments of populist content. An appeal to “the people” is political in nature, that is what distinguishes it from other forms of appeals. However, politicians or parties often call people to action illuminating their genuine political goals. This is more radical form of appeal that is typical not for all populist messages; however, as can be seen in this project, Navalny employs it extensively in his YouTube videos.

The anti-elitist character of populist communication is distinctive not only because populists are trying to differentiate themselves from the elites, individually or in a general manner, but also often they try to discredit members of the elites with

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different pieces of evidence of misconduct. That is where investigative journalism practices can help. Using different journalistic practices and types of evidence, populists can discredit the elite and accuse them of serious misconduct. Furthermore, investigative journalism as populism is often aimed at the exposing elites or “villains” in the societies.

Content is not the only distinctive element of populist communication nowadays. Scholars agree that the style or a set of presentational/performative elements is an attribute of the populist phenomenon. I explore stylistic features of populism through the lens of theory of political performance, where performance consists not only of the speech but also visual attributes such as body, stage, and colour representations. All of them are relevant to the medium that I am investigating, namely YouTube and its potential to “host” populist discourses. The performative, participative and sometimes radical nature of the platform allows for creating counter-narratives and possibly leads to political changes.

2.4 SIGNIFICANCE, THEORETICAL GAPS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In this project, I provide context for my explorations of the phenomenon of Alexey Navalny in Russia and his populist online communication on YouTube, taking into account three significant shifts in political communication. The first shift is associated with the changes in the sphere of political communication itself and new emerging actors that have shaken the established rules of media logic. Citizens, politicians, and the news media, as established PC players, face constant challenges in relationships between each other and communications. Unlike before, citizens more often turn into producers of information instead of being just consumers of information. The introduction of social media and the Internet has offered new possibilities to their political participation. Politicians are confronted by a 24/7 news cycle and constant Internet scrutiny of their actions and statements. In their role of providers of information, politicians often compete with the news media, who set the political agenda in a public sphere. The conflict between Donald Trump and established liberal media in his first presidency in the US accused of producing “fake news” by the President has only confirmed relentless tension between these PC actors and their fight over who can represent themselves as the speaker of “truth”. Within this background, social media, a new emerging actor of PC in the 21st century, provides

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both new opportunities for PC actors but also challenges to the established rules of communication.

The second shift is connected with the societal trust loss in the mainstream media and its watchdog role in democracies. The shift to authoritarianism in political systems worldwide, including long-standing democracies and the limitations of freedom of press reported by Freedom House (2020) has questioned the role of news media as the watchdogs of the society. Investigative journalism, also known as a form of watchdog reporting, could potentially fill the role of holding politicians and other political actors accountable by exposing their corruption crimes and other misconduct.

Although the role of investigative journalists cannot always be heroic, as it was popularised during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s in the US, new digital practices have opened many possibilities for them to hold political actors accountable. In addition to traditional practices of investigative reporting, new digital practices such as data journalism and drone journalism diversify and strengthen the facts outlined in investigations. These “new” practices are cost-effective; they take less effort and also accessible to amateurs of investigative reporting. The latter is important to the activists and journalists in autocratic regimes, who face in addition to the financial and legal difficulties that occur in journalism these days, political pressure and even harassment.

It was identified how in some of the Eastern European countries, that have a partly-free press, investigative journalists turn to open Internet, NGO projects to expose breaches of public trust and the corruption in their countries (Stetka & Örnebring 2013). In order to fight injustices of autocratic regimes and freedom of speech, some journalists resort to advocacy tactics in their reporting, calling people to action and representing different social movements. As an amateur journalist, Navalny performs most of the roles (Hanitzsch & Vos 2017) that professional journalists do and goes beyond employing advocacy techniques as later chapters will show.

The last shift, which is observed in the case of Navalny, is the spread of populist communication, which is conditioned by the spread of Internet facilities in the 21st century. These facilities undermined established previous top-down ways of communication, giving voice to the “voiceless” (Gerbaudo 2018) and challenging the monopoly of political and media power. The ambiguity of the term “populism” is complicated by the abundance of approaches to defining this term in political science. I concentrate on content and style of populism (de Vreese et al. 2018), where the

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former dimension is represented by two main elements such as people-centrism and anti-elitism attributive to populist discourses. The populist appeal to “the people” is above all political and in some cases presupposes invitation to some political action. This political action can be radical, which can challenge established elites and regimes and lead to political changes. Some populists, such as Navalny, not only differentiate themselves from the elite but also attack or discredit them by using different facts and evidence of their crimes. The evidence can be collected through investigative journalism practices; in that way, they have more verifiability in the eyes of an ordinary citizen.

The set of performances that populists use in their style of communication among other elements comprise of visual representations of body, stage, and colour. Drawing from the theory of political performance, I explore these elements mainly, as they answer the needs of the YouTube platform used by Navalny for communicating his messages. YouTube, as other social media platforms can be a favourable platform for spreading populism as it has performative, participative, and mobilising potential for its users and creators of content.

Therefore, after the conceptualisation of studies in these three major areas of political communication, I mapped out several potential literature and empirical gaps that can be addressed in this project. First, in general, this study addresses the Anglo- Saxon academic bias towards the research of political communication and populism. The abundance of PC and populism research often contain case studies and comparative analysis of established Western democracies, whereas the case of Russia can diversify both of the research agendas in future.

In this study, I also complement populist studies by adding a performative, stylistic dimension of exploring populism, which draws from a theory of political performance (Rai 2015) and involves visual content analysis. I extend the empirical understanding of populist communication research, which requires the use of practical methods such as content analysis which will be described further in Chapter 4. Second, the project contributes to the evolving corpus of literature on digital media in political communication, precisely in populist political communication. Social media is seen if not a panacea from all the challenges that political communicators experience these days but more a creative space flexible, provoking, and to some extent transformative when it comes to the public sphere and its processes.

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More specifically, in the literature, I found the thought-provoking intersections between investigative journalism and populism in at least two cases. Both IJ and populism can expose the elites to hold them accountable or create political change. In doing so, both populism and IJ can utilise innovative and traditional journalistic practices, collecting the evidence of elite’s crimes which form the basis for further investigations. A distinctive example of a combination of these practices can be explored in the case of Navalny.

Furthermore, it is commonly believed that Facebook and Twitter are the main political platforms for spreading populism, however, in this project, I will try to understand what role YouTube plays in populist communication and how populists adapt their message to the needs of the platform to become “popular”. To some extent, YouTube channels can be considered as an alternative television channels on their own, valuable both for politicians and journalists alike.

Hence, in order to fill these gaps, I formulate a research question and sub- questions for this project that will subsequently be explored in the following analytical sections of this thesis.

Q1 How does Alexey Navalny use YouTube’s potential to establish himself as a successful leader opposed to Putin’s elite to communicate populist, anti-corruption discourses in Russia’s political system?

Q1.1 What themes, symbols, and ideological elements inform Navalny’s YouTube communication?

Q1.2 How does Navalny combine practices of investigative journalism and digital activism in his populist communication on YouTube?

Q1.3 What visual representations does Navalny use for his populist performance?

Q1.4 How does Navalny adapt his message to the YouTube medium?

Q1 is an overarching question for the whole project. Q1.1 will serve a basis for the analysis in Chapter 5; Q1.2 will be analysed in Chapter 6, respectively; as the remaining questions will be investigated in Chapter 7. All of these questions require an empirical analysis of text and visual representations of populism, which can be analysed, as was mentioned earlier, through the means of content analysis. However,

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before proceeding to the research design of this project, the case of Navalny needed to be described. In the next chapter, I will shed light on his political project and why it is so unique to the Russian political communication ecosphere.

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Chapter 3: The political communication ecosphere in Russia

This chapter gives an overview of the PC ecosphere in Russia in which Navalny operates. I start with a summary of Russia’s political regime which is characterised as “electoral authoritarianism” (Golosov 2011) and includes among other things electoral manipulations, the non-systemic opposition operating from underground using populist strategies to attract supporters. I then proceed to actual characteristics of the media system and the Internet in Russia. In the context of limited press freedom in the country, new PC actors are forced to employ new digital practices and use alternative spaces to communicate their messages, to avoid harassment and punishment from the elites. In the end, I situate Navalny’s place in political communication of Russia and explain what makes his case unique to the Russian political environment.

3.1 NON-SYSTEMIC OPPOSITION, ELECTORAL AUTHORITARIANISM, AND POPULISM IN RUSSIA

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the emergence of “new democracies” in the post-Soviet territory. Huntington (1993) was classing this process as a final part of the “third wave of democratisation”, which purportedly started with the fall of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s. The process of democratisation included several stages: liberalisation of the old regime and its possible decomposition; transition to democratic order; and consolidation and maturation of the newly established democratic rule (O’Donnell & Schmitter 1986). The evidence at that time showed that only a few transitional countries had gone this path successfully; the majority became the part of the reverse wave to the authoritarian rule (Diamond 1996). These countries, as Carothers (2002) stated, fell into a “grey zone”, where they were no longer dictatorships, but also not democracies yet. Among successful transformations were political systems in Eastern Europe such as Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic; others, as Carothers (2002) explained, if not returned to authoritarianism, then failed due to syndromes such as “feckless pluralism” (Moldova, Bosnia, Albania, and ) or “dominant-power politics” (Armenia, Azerbaijan,

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Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia). The countries in a grey zone had a lot of in common, but also significant differences that make each one unique (Carothers 2002).

The political regime in a “grey zone” In describing political regimes of a “grey zone”, which can also be called “hybrid regimes”, Diamond (2002) noted that their history started the 1960-70s, hybrid regimes were multiparty and electoral, but non-democratic. Among several regimes of this type, Malaysia and Singapore were the most illustrative examples (Diamond 2002). The contemporary Russian regime followed the hybrid competitive authoritarian path, what Levitsky and Way (2010, 5) defined as “civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents.” Electoral fraud, civil liberty violations, and abuse of state and media resources were seen as main constraints of these regimes (Levitsky & Way 2010, 366-368).

Petrov et al. (2014) described the Russian case through the lens of three dilemmas: elections, mass media, and the state. They claimed that institutions of “free and fair” elections and independent media bring both risks and benefits to rulers, whereas the direct repression can bring even more risks and costs for the society and the elite (Petrov et al. 2014). These risks can be seen from the utility map in Figure 3.1 (Petrov et al. 2014). In order to not fall into the area of policy Y where persecution of rulers is possible, they need to stay between policy B and X, which means that they cannot be fully authoritarian because of the risk of mass protests and consequently coup d’etat (Petrov et al. 2014).

All of these require smart and imaginative policy from political elites to keep the balance of hybridity. In doing so, the Russian establishment constantly introduces new changes to the electoral system in the country, which aim at non-admission of new influential players to the political arena. The aim of this project is not to analyse the list of electoral changes and manipulations prior to elections, which is continually updating. One of the examples here can be the decision of the Central Electoral Commission in Russia to bar Alexey Navalny from participation in the presidential elections in 2018 which further confirms the rigidity of electoral market in Russia and is essential to note in this research. The decision was justified by the presence of

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criminal convictions in Navalny’s background, which Navalny himself claimed as “politically motivated” (BBC 2017).

Figure 3-1: Hybrid regime rulers’ utility curve and policymaking

This manipulative environment has been described a basis of Putin’s regime entitled as “electoral authoritarianism” (Diamond 2002, Golosov 2011). Researchers find that it employs “a variety of techniques, from outright fraud to more sophisticated means of placing all actors in the electoral arena under the more or less direct control of the executive” (Elklit & Svensson 1997 as cited in Golosov 2011, 623). Moreover it “restricts the freedoms of association and speech, monopolises the media and employs unfair electoral practices” (Golosov 2011, 623). In these conditions, new emerging political players have almost no access and possibilities to be elected; instead, they are forced to operate from a “ghetto” (Gel’man 2013). Ghetto can be literally defined as a “quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure” (Merriam-Webster 2020). In the context of the Russian opposition, it means that key non-systemic opposition players are forced to function from underground, because of political pressure coming from Putin’s elite. Navalny, operating in these conditions, has transformed this “abstract” space to a “digital ghetto” for non-systemic opposition that will be described in the analytical chapters.

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Non-systemic opposition in Russia Before describing the state of Russian opposition, the distinction between loyal systemic and non-systemic opposition needs to be made in the Russian political context. Armstrong et al. (2020, 2) described this distinction as follows:

In many authoritarian settings, regime leaders divide the political opposition into a systemic component that is allowed to participate in official politics and a non- systemic component that is excluded from elections, spoils distribution, and policymaking. In some settings, the “systemic” opposition is called the “loyal” or “official” opposition. Excluded groups meanwhile are sometimes referred to as the “radical opposition” or the “unrecognized opposition.”

Gel’man outlined the state of political opposition in Russia since 2000 (2005, 2013, 2015). At the beginning of the 2000s, as he described, the extinction of principal opposition (requires total control over power resources through radical change) and semi-opposition (critical of government policies but backing its major decisions) took place (Gel’man 2005). It happened due to the strengthening of Putin’s elite, the rise of its integration, and a decrease of the elite’s differentiation. The non-systemic opposition remained in a ghetto until the State Duma elections of 2011, which led to mass protests “for fair elections” (Gel’man 2013). At that time, both systemic and non- systemic opposition movements could effectively activate and mobilise supporters.

The rare cases of co-ordinated protests from systemic and non-systemic opposition forces were observed by Armstrong et al. (2020) later, too. The authors found the cases of co-ordinated protests (the protests of systemic and non-systemic opposition that happened at the same day for a similar cause), where the Communistic Party of Russia (KPRF) organised and co-ordinated protests with outsider opposition forces in the regions (Armstrong et al. 2020, 3). Mostly these co-ordinated protests were related to “material demands — such as inflation, social assistance, wages, and employment — that are of primary importance to the KPRF’s core electorate.” However, when KPRF leaders held legislative positions in the regions, they did not do so (Armstrong et al. 2020, 3). Similar patterns could be observed during the protests against the increase of pension age in Russia in 2018. The cases of co-ordination are driven by common demand of Russian citizens to fight for their social rights, what was outlined earlier in Section 2.1.2; however, it is still arguable whether they are as motivated to do so when it comes to their political rights.

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At the beginning of the 2010s, the heyday of non-systemic opposition was observed, which resulted in mass protests of 2011-2012 in Russia around parliamentary and presidential elections. New emerging opposition leaders came to the front including activist Alexey Navalny. Gel’man (2015) puts forward three major explanations of this phenomenon. Firstly, he explains the heyday through the involvement of youth and new young politicians in the opposition forces who gave rebirth to old strategies and opposition agendas. Secondly, the process of “modernisation” initiated by then-president Dmitry Medvedev, which anticipated the protests, had distinct liberal rhetoric towards democratic system changes. Gel’man argues (2015) that it weakened the pressure on civil society and opened a space for liberal discussions. Finally, the restructuring of opposition demands towards more populist, anti-establishment claims happened. “Refreshed” opposition of the beginning of the 2010s concentrated on the “resistance to the regime as a whole” rather than concrete policies or construction liberal democratic agenda (Gel’man 2015, 180). Populism had become a new revived strategy used by the non-systemic opposition against the repressive regime in the protest events of 2011-2012; however, populism in Russia goes back decades, if not centuries, of its history.

The Russian version of populism First mentions of populism in the Russian context were connected with the movement of “Narodniks” (. “narod” means “people”) in the late 19th – early 20th century. The movement consisted of “intelligentsia”, the Russian intellectual class, whose aim was to get closer to “the ordinary people” of Imperial Russia, peasants. Among Narodniks, there were different sub-movements from liberal to radical and even terrorist organisations that wanted to overthrow the emperor. The ideas of “narodnichestvo” (as an ideology) formed the basis of the Socialist Revolutionary Party that promoted ideas of democratic socialism in imperial Russia, the Provisional Government and later Soviet Russia. One of the prominent attributes of early Narodniks was so-called “going to the people” when students-Narodniks or individual revolutionists went to Russian peasants in villages and propagated distrust in religion, the authority of the tsar and “samoderzhavie” (Eng. “autocracy”). These ideas were not met positively among peasants and did not become popular.

The intentions of Narodniks to become popular among peasants failed; however, several scholars argue that the movement gave roots to further revolutionary ideas and

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movements of the early 20th century in Russia. Some scholars claime that Marxism- Leninism ideas of the 20th century were populist in its nature (Clarke 1998). Marxism in Lenin’s version, as Clarke (1998, 4) claims, “provided the ideological bridge from romantic populism to modern socialism, providing a scientific theory which could both explain the failures of populism, and point a new way forward.” Laclau (2012, 109) considered socialism as “the highest form of populism”, claiming that the working class, the proletariat, is also part of “the people”. Moving forward from yet historical and meta-philosophical discussions on Russian populism, I am more interested in modern, empirical characteristics of it.

The modern Russian version of populism, in general, has its own distinctive features. First, populism in Russia is mostly personified. Unlike Narodniks, who did not have distinctive leadership in their movement, modern Russian political leaders oppose to their counter-elite and seek active feedback from voters. The first examples of personification of populism could be found in discourses of Yeltsin who fought against the privileges of nomenclatura (Petrov 2018). The leader of KPRF, Gennady Zyuganov, has been expressing the nostalgia of Communistic past, and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) opposes himself to the “Evil West”. The Evil West rhetoric was regularly used by Putin too, for example, in his Annual Addressing to the Russian Parliament in 2018. The distinction of “us” and “them” in Putin’s rhetoric has gone several transformations from “them” as terrorists, the West and the US particularly to the opposing liberals known and labelled as “Fifth Column” (Kolesnikov et al. 2018). Petrov (2018) claims that Putin is a typical populist who borrows different populist narratives from other leaders: “nostalgic communist past” from Zyuganov, “Evil West” from Zhirinovsky, and “anti- corruption” from Navalny.

As was mentioned in the previous section, the opposition movement of 2011- 2012 has also resorted to populist rhetoric in their struggle against Putin’s regime (Gel’man 2015). Using the consolidation of fragmented opposition forces in the country, protesters eventually turned it in the conflict of the state and the civil society (Gel’man 2015) which resulted in mass protests. Following the consequences of the economic crisis in Russia in 2008-2009, president Medvedev’s modernisation protesters were unsatisfied with the elite’s actions. Precisely in this period, opposition leaders have become prominent. Navalny and his fellows have launched several anti-

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corruption projects targeting Russian officials and institutions (Gel’man 2015). After protests “for fair elections”, and the popularity of the discourse of Alexey Navalny and his supporters, it was believed that the “Kremlin is no longer the sole definer of Russia’s political discourse” (Lassila 2013).

Gel’man (2015) noted the prominence of new independent media movements such as private television channel Rain (rus. ’) during the events of 2011-2012 which first went to air in 2010 but became popular online broadcasting platform for the protests. In addition, the power of social media helped activists to mobilise supporters at the early stages of the protests. However, to understand the media environment of Russia in which protesters and Navalny mainly operated, a brief overview of the media system in Russia will be provided.

3.2 THE MEDIA IN THE 1990S AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 2000S

The conditions of press freedom in Russia had changed dramatically since 1991 when there was a transition of Russian media from Soviet propaganda and policy of concealment to the policy of glasnost. Glasnost heralded the disappearing of censorship and helped an “opening up of Soviet history and contemporary affairs to public scrutiny and debates” (McNair 1994, 115). The beginning of the 1990s saw a flourishing of the Russian media. However, many conflicts around media arose during the late 1990s, mostly connected with the ownership of media assets. Arutunyan (2009) called them “media wars”, and they took place together with the process of privatisation in Russia and the struggle of businessmen for power over media. During the 1990s many assets of Russian media were privatised and concentrated in the hands of media moguls, also known as oligarchs. The media power played an influential role during the presidential election in 1996 when oligarchs used their media sources to help to President Yeltsin to be re-elected (Arutunyan 2009).

The beginning of Vladimir Putin’s presidency started with an open political conflict with the main businesspeople of the 1990s in Russia who used their media assets to play a role in political life. One illustrative example was a government conflict with a 1990s’ media mogul, Vladimir Gusinsky, who owned a media group Media- Most with a private television channel NTV among other financial assets. NTV mainly contributed to the television coverage of military actions during the First Chechnya War 1994-1996 and the second war 1999-2000, the latter occurring mainly during the

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presidency of Putin. NTV was also known for its critical coverage of Putin and his government (Lipman & McFaul 2001). In 2001, Gusinsky was arrested, and Media- Most stakes were sold to Gazprom Media, affiliated with the Russian gas and oil company Gazprom, where the government held more than 50 per cent of stakes. The most prominent journalists such as Marianna Maksimovskaya, Evgenii Kiselev, and Leonid Parfenov left NTV. Lipman and McFaul (2001) called the conflict between Gusinsky and Putin a “political and personal vendetta”. However, as Arutunyan explained (2009), the conflict was not the only example of government pressure on media. Almost the same fate overtook businessman Boris Berezovsky, who owned television channel TV-6 and television company ORT (Arutunyan 2009).

3.2.1 Financial and administrative instruments of media control Levitsky and Way (2010) identified violations of media rights and the uneven playing field for the media as intrinsic to regimes like Russia’s. Among them are censorship or restrictions on broadcasting; discretionary use of licenses, concessions, or subsidies to reward/punish private media; government pressure to fire journalists/cancel programs; and closure, suspension, eviction, or physical incapacitation of major media outlets (Levitsky & Way 2010, 366). Starting from the 1990s and till these days, the Russian government controlled the media by a mixture of business and administrative measures. The more recent illustrative example of financial and administrative attacks was the dismissal of the editor-in-chief of Lenta.ru Galina Timchenko in 2014. The disgraced chief editor of the news website believed she was fired for political reasons (Caroll 2015); later on, Timchenko with her colleagues launched another online media outlet Meduza.io which this time operated from outside of the country.

In 2016 the editorial office of RBK Group, which included a business newspaper, a business magazine, a business television channel etc., was dismissed after the publication of the Panama Papers revelations about Putin’s relatives (Boletskaya 2016). RBK Group belonged to businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, who was one of the prominent candidates for the presidential election in 2012, and he took the third place with around eight per cent of votes. His ongoing political activity together with RBK publications attracted the attention of Kremlin, and in 2016, his business quarters were raided; he sold all of his Russian assets, including media assets (Terentieva, Lyauv, & Filatov 2017).

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Arutunyan (2009) noted that even with “twisting nuts” and further restrictions on freedom of the press in the 2000s, Russia’s media model is still different from a Soviet model (2009, 33):

The last decade has seen the oligarchs becoming increasingly tamer, with many opting to adopt a Pro-Kremlin stance in their media to curry favour with the administration. In this case, while the owner does not directly dictate editorial content, the editor is frequently either like-minded or careful to remain within a set of unspoken boundaries of allowed criticism.

In other words, during the last 10 to 15 years, Russian business has shared the responsibility of media control along with the government. “The unspoken boundaries” that Arutunyan refers to, according to recent journalistic detentions, dismissals and punishments, are the military conflict in Ukraine, military operations in Syria, and critical publications about Putin and his family. When these “boundaries” are violated, it creates problems for the non-media business of oligarchs. Businesspeople are scared of raids and harassment, and they are ready to provide relative political loyalty in their media and, in cases of violations, sacrifice their editorial offices. Despite this, liberal media outlets still exist inside and outside of the country.

3.2.2 The enclaves of relative media freedom in Russia The examples of relatively liberal or oppositional outlets can be the aforementioned online newspaper Meduza, whose headquarters are located in Latvia. Another example of liberal media is the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (Engl. “New Gazette”), whose largest private shareholders and investors are businessman Aleksander Lebedev and former Russian President . Novaya Gazeta is known for its high-profile investigations about political topics in Russia. Performing widely discussed investigative journalism in Russia puts its journalists at risk: the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in 2006, was a journalist of Novaya Gazeta, while the cases of assaults of journalists from this newspaper take place regularly. The journalist of Novaya, Yulia Latynina, left Russia in 2017 after several assaults on her and her family.

Among other liberal media are the radio station Echo Moskvy and a television channel Dozhd (Rain). Echo Moskvy belongs to Gazprom Media Group, while Dozhd exists based on a paid subscription. Both were endangered because of

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their opposition publications, but despite the conflict with the authorities, they seem to self-censored their content, as the editor of Echo Alexey Venedictov is known for his connection with President’s press-secretary , they continue to provide a liberal agenda within “the unspoken boundaries”.

Some of these media outlets have a few practices in common; they are one of the few media outlets who conduct journalistic investigations of high quality in the context of electoral authoritarianism with all its restrictions. Repnikova (2018) adds that mostly, the journalists from some of the above media outlets associate themselves with opposition and propagate freedom of speech. Some of these outlets can address issues sensitive to the elite, such as government corruption, state violence in Chechnya, and other societal and political issues in Russia (Repnikova 2018).

The investigation of journalist Ivan Golunov from Meduza about a Moscow mortuary business led to great public resonance connected with the arrest of Golunov in 2019. He was charged for drug trafficking immediately after the publication of the investigation. This case led to mass protests in major Russian cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg and support from the Russian celebrities, opposition politicians and the media itself. The phrase “We are Ivan Golunov” became a symbol of fighting for the freedom of the press and Golunov’s release specifically; it was even unprecedentedly printed on the covers of several mainstream media outlets in Russia. Golunov was released later thanks to the social and political pressure voiced in the absence of a crime (Bennetts 2019). It is one of the few cases in Russia when the editorial and its stance could influence public opinion to save the journalist.

Cases such as Golunov’s are intermittent in the weak Russian media environment. From one side, they prove the existence of quality watchdog journalism in Russia and its capacity to discredit the current elite. The hotbeds of quality journalism apart from investigative projects mentioned before also exist in modern Russia. Testament to it is the rise of quality foreign editions in Russian, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the heyday of small niche projects, which are specialised on particular segments of Russian life (e.g. educational online project and radio Arzamas) (Meduza 2017a). Furthermore, the rise of the regional press is observed, which can compete with federal outlets along with the transformation of non-government organisations to become respected and popular media organisations (Meduza 2017a). From the other side, critical journalists and

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media outlets in Russia are subjected to physical, financial, and legal risks to conduct those investigations which prevent it from further development. Navalny is forced to operate in this media environment and accepts the risks of harassment in order to seek public support for his political projects using digital instruments and platforms to communicate his messages4.

3.3 THE “SOVEREIGN INTERNET” AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN RUSSIA

This section explores the particular characteristics of RuNet and Russian social media. The recent restriction over RuNet let international NGO Freedom House (2018) evaluate Freedom on the Net in Russia as “not free”. Apart from a brief historical overview of the Russian Internet, I investigate what the major political milestones and turning points of its development are. I explore the government strategy towards the Internet and the key players of this segment.

3.3.1 The Internet in Russia At the beginning of the 1990s, during the political and economic crisis, Russia had no or minimal infrastructure to support the immediate growth of the Internet (Perfiliev, 2002). The growth of Internet penetration in Russia started only in the 2000s, compared to the US, where it had been widely spread during the 1990s (Alexanyan 2013). However, in 1999-2000 Russia was ahead of China in the proliferation of media technology: telephones and Internet hosts (Marcus 2004). The Russian “Internet lag” was caused by political and financial crisis after the disassembly of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the process of privatisation, in which telecommunication companies, business and government bodies were involved.

In the 2000s, Internet penetration started to grow; however, at the beginning it was below the world average (Marcus 2004). As can be seen from Figure 3.2, Internet penetration is still growing and reached 76.4 per cent in May 2017 (Internet World Stats 2010; Freedom House 2018). From the beginning, RuNet was under the patronage of the Federal Security Service (FSB). The example of what can be an

4 At the moment of the submission of the thesis, Alexey Navalny was allegedly poisoned in one of the Russian regions, he felt ill on the plane and was transported to the local hospital. He was later transported to the German clinic where doctors and experts concluded that he had been poisoned by the nerve agent also known as “Novichok” (Schwirtz & Eddy 2020). The Russian authorities deny its involvement in the poisoning. The physical attacks of Navalny are not limited to the mentioned above.

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government well understood these trends as a potential threat to the regime, and from 2012 Russia has started to change strategy and ideology towards the Internet.

3.3.2 “Sovereign Internet” and social media in Russia The term “Sovereign Internet” was created by the media and was widely discussed after Putin’s statements in 2014 that the Internet was created as the US Central Intelligence Agency project and the US had a monopoly on it. He proposed that servers of the sizeable national Internet resources should be located inside of Russia to protect its national interests (ITAR-TASS 2014). This echoes with the concept of “Sovereign democracy”, which was widely used by officials in Russia as a description of the Russian political regime.

Vladislav Surkov introduced the term “Sovereign Democracy” when he was the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia (Plyais 2008). Surkov defined it as a regime where the only carrier of the sovereignty and the source of power is the Russian multinational people, and nobody can appropriate their power (Surkov 2006). The term had disputable connotations in Russian context and contradictions in the works and statements of Surkov himself (Plyais 2008). Despite this, it can be interpreted as a concept that nobody except Russians can interfere in Russian domestic policy and dictate how democracy should be built there (Plyais 2008, 31). The “Sovereign Democracy” concept was applied to RuNet, at the new restrictions appeared towards the cyberspace, mostly as a means of its internal control and to lesser degree protection from the foreign interference.

3.3.3 Social media and threats of blocking in Russia As Alexanyan (2009) mentioned, Russian blogging started at the beginning of the 2000s with the introduction of LiveJournal, which combines features of blogs and Social Network Sites (SNS). In 2006 popular SNS Odnoklassniki and VKontakte were created, mostly as copycats of Classmates and Facebook respectively (Alexanyan 2009). In 2010 and 2011, Facebook and Twitter became available for Russians in .

Significant components of “Sovereign Internet” towards social media involved the activity of a regulatory body, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), which implemented the blocking of LinkedIn and threats to block foreign social media.

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Roskomnadzor was one of the first agencies that started to act according to the new strategy. In 2012 the Service started to administer a list of websites with banned content, including websites with child pornography, advocacy of drug abuse, suicide advocacy, what was also known as “A single register of banned websites” (Nocetti 2015). Among victims of Roskomnandzor in different periods were some of the webpages of new and social media: Wikipedia, Facebook, LiveJournal, VKontakte, YouTube, and Vimeo (Turovskii 2015).

In 2016, Roskomnadsor implemented the largest blocking in the history of social networking sites in Russia, targeting LinkedIn. The reason for the blocking of LinkedIn in 2016 was the refusal of the SNS and its representatives to store data about its users on Russian servers (TASS 2017a). This requirement was a part of the “Law about personal data” was adopted in 2015, in which the spirit of the “Sovereign Internet” ideology. It obliged foreign and Russian companies to store the personal data of Russians on servers located within the country (TASS 2017a). LinkedIn was blocked to show other US-based social media companies that they too might face such a fate (BBC Russian Service 2016). Other threats to block large SNS such as Facebook, Twitter; Instant Messaging Apps, e.g. Messenger; video hosting services YouTube and Vimeo were never fully implemented.

Another important milestone in the development of Sovereign Internet in Russia is the so-called “Yarovaya Law”, a “package” of two laws, which were proposed by a group of State Duma’s deputies, including Irina Yarovaya, and adopted in 2016. These anti-terrorism laws tightened the Criminal Code of Russia and penalties for extremism and terrorism activities. It required mobile operators to store data with phone calls, messages and Internet traffic of users for six months and the metadata about it for three years; the laws impute the responsibility for the use of uncertificated data encryption tools for transmitting messages on the Internet; and the transfer of encrypting keys from Internet Services with the data exchange to FSB on request (Meduza 2017b). The first iteration of the laws was criticised for being impractical and prohibitively expensive to implement (Meduza 2016). However, the laws were not withdrawn, and its façade was mostly needed to tighten Internet control under the pretence of providing security inside of the country.

Another target for blocking was instant messenger Telegram, founded by a Russian entrepreneur and programmer Pavel Durov. Durov was one of the founders of

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Russian SNS VKontakte. Durov was forced to leave VKontakte in 2014 and under the pressure of FSB and other stakeholders he sold his shares of VKontakte to pro- government media mogul and businessman Alisher Usmanov (Moscow Times 2014). Instead, Durov created international instant messenger Telegram, which in 2016 exceeded the number of 100 million users globally, and in Russia alone, the number of users reached 6 million in 2017 (Ser’gina 2017). Durov remembering his Russian experience dealing with FSB, imagined Telegram as “a safe means of communication … that promise varying degrees of security” (Hakim 2014).

The Agora report on the freedom of the Russian cyberspace states that in 2017, 244 webpages in the RuNet were blocked every day, every six days users were harassed or threatened, and every eight days Russian courts sentenced someone to prison in relation to Internet-related issues (Meduza 2018a). According to the report, Russia expands the list of grounds for blocking and further restrictions, for example, the use of encryption and anonymisers introduced in 2017 (Meduza 2018a). FSB and law enforcement agencies are recognised as the main regulators and simple users as the main victims of Internet restrictions (Kornya 2018, Meduza 2018a).

The webpages, groups in social media and websites of political activist Alexey Navalny were also blocked due to his organising protests activity (Turovskii 2015). The list of occasions in which the censorship bodies and other possessors of hard power in Russia have blocked Navalny’s resources is constantly expanding. The resonant blocking cases included:

• In 2017, Navalny released an investigation on YouTube and his personal website on the corruption of former Russian Prime Minister Medvedev entitled “He is not Dimon to you”. The Moscow court ordered to delete the video and investigation from digital resources (TASS 2017b). The investigation was deleted partly from the online resources associated with Navalny’s NGO Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) websites and social media pages. However, in 2020, a new criminal case against director of ACF was instituted, as the video was not deleted from Navalny’s personal website and YouTube and was still accessible to the audience.5

5 At the moment of the thesis submission, June 2020, this criminal case was still in process in the court.

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• In 2018, Moscow court blocked Navalny’s website “” used for to unite their votes in support of a particular (anti-establishment) candidate ( 2018)

• In 2018 Navalny released an investigation on the corruption of Russian businessman Deripaska and high-ranking officials on YouTube and his personal website. Roskomnadzor through the court ordered to delete the video and the investigation from all possible resources. Navalny complied with the request to delete the video from his personal website (Filipenok & Ageeva 2018). However, Google, as the owner of YouTube, refused to delete the video (Meduza 2018b) and the video is still accessible to users.

The list of this blockings is not limited to the described cases above, but these cases show that YouTube as Navalny himself are not fully complying with the censorship dictated by the Russian establishment. This contributes to the preservation and spread of anti-establishment narratives in the Russian digital sphere and beyond, which will be described further in Chapter 7. Considering the restricted conditions of media and Internet freedom in Russia, Navalny’s resistance in the form of communication project is highly unique in the Russian political environment.

3.4 ALEXEY NAVALNY IN RUSSIAN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

As per the introductory words of this thesis, Alexey Navalny is the main object of this research project. He is a representative of non-systemic opposition, which is forced to operate from a “ghetto”, which uses modern digital practices for spreading his rhetoric as well as employing populist communication strategies to attract the electorate. Despite being an outsider of systemic politics, his popularity continues to grow thanks to digital instruments available to the activist. At the beginning of 2020, his personal vlog on YouTube had more than three million subscribers. He was one of the few activists in Russia of the 2010s who could organise and hold mass protests despite the government restrictions on freedom of association and gatherings and freedom of speech. Since 2011-2012, he held multiple protests in Russian megapolises; the most well-attended of them took place in 2017 after his release from the investigation against Russian PM Medvedev. For his activities, he was arrested and detained for 474 days in total from 2011-2019 (BBC Russian Service, 2019a). These arrests were multiple, but short-term — meaning that the government is taking him

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seriously, but at the same time does not rush to put him in jail for more extended periods to avoid significant public resonance and reasons for the contestation of the regime.

Navalny is a famous politician. According to analytical survey centre Levada, in 2017, 55 per cent of Russians knew who Navalny is, compared to six per cent of citizens in 2011 (Levada 2017). However, people differ in their evaluations of Navalny’s activities, according to the same survey. In 2017, after organising mass anti- corruption protests, 30 per cent of respondents thought that Navalny did so for the interests of “the West”, while 28 per cent thought that it was election campaigning, and 21 per cent assumed he acted in the interests of some groups of the elite (Levada 2017). While there are many conspiracy theories existing in the Russian public sphere around the genuine motives and patrons of Navalny; one cannot deny that the public interest in his persona is continuing to grow and his communication capacities are strong enough to mobilise people to participate in anti-establishment protests. In this project, I am interested in what communication strategies allow him to achieve success in being a popular politician and being able to contest the current Russian regime.

Three key explanations could be put forward to explain Navalny’s communication phenomenon. The first factor that I attributed to his success as a non- systemic opposition project is the combination of three political communication roles. He is an active citizen fighting against corruption; a journalist (a YouTube channel host) producing investigative journalistic content; and a politician entering the political system by participating in the elections — all of the roles require and enable him to create different narratives for the content he disseminates on social media.

The first manifest narrative relates to Navalny and his NGO’s anti-corruption activities. The ACF describes itself as “the only Russia-based NGO that investigates, exposes and fights corruption among high-ranking Russian government officials” (Anti-corruption Foundation n.d.). Claiming to represent civil society and relying on the donations, the NGO ran several campaigns and projects against government corruption. Since 2015, the NGO has been focusing on online activity in the form of YouTube videos. The NGO has produced investigation documentaries about Russian General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika in 2015, then-PM Dmitry Medvedev in 2017 and other high-ranking officials.

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Navalny also plays a role in Russia’s political context as a journalist. He often initiates investigations and production of videos in journalistic formats. He situates himself as the narrator of these videos, explaining and outlining the corrupt schemes of officials in detail. Moreover, in 2017, Navalny and his colleagues created a YouTube channel called Navalny LIVE, where they discuss political news as experts and journalists. Navalny LIVE, together with the investigative videos of the ACF, constitute the most significant alternative media content producers in Russia (Glazunova 2018). Opposed to the mainstream media outlets, sponsored by the government or affiliated business structures, Navalny’s media is crowdfunded but also consists mostly of non-professionals, precisely lawyers and managers who work on these investigative projects (Glazunova 2018). These are typical characteristics of alternative journalism as described by Atton and Hamilton (2008) as well as Harcup (2012). The alternative media format allows for the communication of different agendas, as well as reflecting on the state of “truth” in the public sphere in Russia. The organisational description of Navalny LIVE (n.d.) portrays itself as the only channel in Russia telling the “truth”, as opposed to Russian state television.

Third, Navalny has also tried to enter a formal opposition role in Russia’s system, participating in elections, including contesting for a position in the State Duma (2011), the mayoral elections of Moscow (2013) and the presidential election (2018). All his attempts to enter the political arena by being elected and act as an opposition figure inside Russia’s political system have failed. His nomination as a presidential candidate was revoked on the grounds of his criminal records; however, this did little to hamper his popularity, which continued to grow despite the official ban. Gel’man (2013, 10) suggested that even after the failure of the opposition to change the system, the civil society-based opposition would still have a chance to “benefit from spreading anti-systemic sentiments to the peripheral electorate, enlarging potential social base”. This became a core task for Navalny and his proponents in the following years.

Navalny, as a representative of a non-systemic opposition, together with other activists, demanded changes to the system, but also, he and his supporters provided grounds for “cooperation by various groups of critics of the regime” (Gel’man 2015, 5). Navalny gained popularity due to his political and blogger activity which he had sustained for years. However, through the years he was unable to become a credible, systemic opposition leader due to the political regime’s “twisting the nuts” — to

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borrow a Russian expression — towards authoritarianism. The absence of a viable political alternative in Russia’s federal elections and the permanent pressure on Navalny and the so-called “Fifth Column” indicate the opposition’s limited access to Russia’s formal political arena. Knowing this, Navalny maintains his online activities, acting as an alternative to the incumbents of the Russian regime. Symbols of opposition broadcasted to Navalny supporters online continued to maintain the illusion of a real opposition force, which sometimes leads to offline actions such as protests or alternative voting patterns.

The second explanation of Navalny’s phenomenon is the earlier mentioned use of populist strategies in his rhetoric. Since 2011, Navalny has used the same populist strategy to attract more supporters. Navalny’s populist “going to the people” online is similar in some ways with the purposes of Narodniks’ movement. One of his anti-Putin protests and videos on YouTube was even entitled “He is not the tsar”, meaning the autocracy and non-removability of the Russian leader. To promote anti-establishment and anti-corruption sentiments in the contemporary era, instead of physical “going”, he releases a video on his YouTube channel with similar rhetoric. Being a charismatic leader, he employs ideological populist content and uses elements of political performance, adapting his message to the needs of the platform. This strategy allows him to attract more viewers and subscribers to his channel as well as to gather support offline, in the protests.

The last but not least explanation for the uniqueness of Navalny’s project is the skilful use of the digital instruments to communicate his message to the peripheral electorate. YouTube is not the only platform that the activist and his team use for communication. He is well represented on LiveJournal, VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram. However, YouTube stands one of the few relatively free platforms that have a broad audience in Russia and gives possibilities to the contestation of the regime. Knowing what the audience likes on YouTube, Navalny can apply these parameters to his message to get higher virality of his videos.

Overall, in the next sections, I will explore how Navalny communicates his populist discourse on YouTube with the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods such as frame mapping, content analysis applied to texts and visual elements contained in his videos.

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Chapter 4: Research Design and Methodology

4.1 MEASURING POPULISM

This project analyses the populist communication of Alexey Navalny as a case study using methods such as mixed-methods content analysis and frame mapping. Content analysis historically was used for the analysis of media texts, or “yield inferences from all kinds of verbal, pictorial, symbolic, and communication data” (Krippendorff 2004, 17). As I work with Navalny’s communication and conversational data, namely videos and deriving texts and images from it that require rearticulating or reinterpretation of the messages to understand Navalny’s phenomenon better, content analysis as a major method of this research seems the best suited research technique for this research. Though, the majority of attempts to measure populism were mostly quantitative and applied to texts; however, this project suggests a mixed- methods approach to analyse populism due to ambiguity of the populist phenomenon, but also due to distinctive political context that frames Navalny’s communication. Previous attempts to measure populism consisted of works such as Jagers and Walgrave’s (2007), who tried to measure it in discourses of Belgian party-political broadcasts using quantitative content analysis. Evaluating “thin populism”, they (Jagers & Walgrave 2007) measured the proportion, share in characters, including interspacing, referred to the people, and the intensity of mentioning “the people” in texts. To explore “thick populism” in the anti-establishment passages of Belgian parties’ discourses, they counted the number of anti-profiling excerpts and its scaled intensity together with the exclusivity-index or negative, neutral, positive evaluation of specific population categories. The study of Jagers and Walgrave (2007) has several theoretical and practical implications for this project. Firstly, it offers a systematic, quantitative way of evaluation of populism in texts, based on which I can develop similar categories for coding of Navalny’s texts and use the same principles to measure populism. Secondly, the authors conclude that the Belgian opposition party Vlaams Blok, deeply populist in its communication, was excluded from participation in any decision making in Belgium. The same can be applied to Navalny, as he leads a non-systemic political

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movement which mostly does not have access to the electoral processes. Though their work had numerous limitations, for example, the authors do not deal with the reliability of the content analysis, in this project, their approach is used as a starting point for the content analysis of Navalny’s communication. The scholarly research suggests the connection between the populist style and the populist ideology, which is developed in the investigations of Bracciale and Martella (2017). These authors, using a multiple correspondence analysis, found that the aggressive (negative) communication mode of tweets of Italian politicians (as a part of political style) coincided with the main populist elements (sovereignty of the people; attacking the elite; and ostracising others) on a factorial plane of their analysis. This means that these ideological elements were mainly used in communication that had the purpose of discrediting or attacking their opponents. It will be shown in this work that they are also used to attack and discredit Putin’s elite in Navalny’s YouTube videos. The work of Bracciale and Martella (2017) also reveals that populism is less connected to the right/left political cleavage, but instead is the result of “a varied combination of gradations that mix different individual aspects of the leader’s political style” (Bracciale & Martella 2017, 1324). This finding is applicable to Navalny’s case, as in the beginning of the 2010’s Navalny was considered in media as a far-right, nationalist politician (The Question 2017); however, with close examination of the texts of his videos, this rhetoric was less if no prominent in his recent YouTube videos. Experts connect it with the fact that Navalny was testing different audiences in the early 2010s, including nationalistic groups (The Question 2017), however, now he seems to tone down the nationalistic rhetoric or eliminate it completely turning mostly to left ideas, promoting anti-oligarchic and anti-corruption values. Therefore, the ideological analysis, except for populist ideological content, will be excluded from this research methodology as Navalny seems to use nationalism, for example, earlier than the taken period of analysis as a tool of attracting different audiences. The inconsistency in political views does not prevent a politician to use populist argumentative structures, as Mudde suggested (2004). Pauwels (2011) described the major drawbacks of measuring populism with content analysis. They include high labour intensity, coder subjectivity, and unreliability (2011, 98). He suggested measuring populism by using quantitative text analysis based on the specially developed dictionaries. For example, to indicate

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“corrupt elite” within populism, Pauwels (2011) includes in a dictionary such words as “elite”, “establishment”, “corruption”, or “particracy”. This list of words cannot be exhaustive for the Russian context. Navalny, for example, often uses atypical phrases, such as slang, to describe corrupt elites. Additionally, words can take up to several meanings in the Russian language, which complicates the usage of a dictionary-based approach. Aslanidis (2018) summarised and compared existing quantitative research on populism. He criticised (2018, 1245-47) the dictionary-based approach for measuring populism, stating that scholars disagree on how many terms should be used in the dictionaries, and the quality of dictionaries is hard to establish. The common problem in the quantitative analysis of populism is a struggle to establish the validity and reliability of the results (Aslanidis 2018). Aslanidis (2018, 1251) offers to analyse populist texts through clause-based semantic text analysis, which uses semantic grammar and reformulates texts into a set of semantic triplets comprised of subject, verb and object. He argues that through the use of semantic triplets the reliability of the analysis can increase. However, it creates limitations in applying this method to Navalny’s texts. In the Russian language, it is more common to use the passive voice in texts compared to English. The syntactic structure of the sentence in Russian is not as rigid as in English. Verbs and nouns (objects and subjects) can be missing in the sentences, but the meaning is still understandable for a Russian reader. This approach creates time-consuming work for coders to reformulate sentences into semantic triplets, considering the size of the sample and volume of texts. Typical critiques towards the attempts to measure populism is the inability to establish a high level of validity and reliability of the results. Besides, as was stated earlier, there is no common consensus on what the other actual categories of populism are. Except for “people-centrism” and “anti-elitism” indexes, scholars also tried to measure “exclusivity index” (Jagers & Walgrave 2007) or “claim for democracy index” (Reungoat 2010), “popular sovereignty index” (Bernhard et al. 2015) and other populist categories. The variety of these categories derives from the ambiguity and the complexity of populism phenomenon. In Sections 2.3.2 and 2.3.3, I already tried to distinguish between ideological and stylistic components of populism; they will form a basis for the following analysis. Given the limitations above and definition of populist communication provided in Section 2.3.1, this project requires a thorough methodological approach to

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measuring populism. The analysis involves mixed-method content analysis, as the previous critique showed that quantitative methods are not trustable in the reliability and validity of the results. Qualitative content analysis can bring context, contribute to the creation of inductive categories of analysis, and bring the meaning to the data for a more in-depth understanding of populist communication in the modern world. Content analysis will also involve the work of an extra Russian-speaking coder to reach the inter-coder agreement to increase the reliability of the analysis. As I explore both textual and visual representations of populism, I will require different sets of data, including text excerpts and images. The project will also adhere to a case study approach, exploring the non-systemic opposition leader’s communication. As I explained in Section 3.4, the case of Navalny appears as a unique case to the Russian public sphere. Navalny operates as one of the few opposition forces in the Russian autocratic environment, he is popular online and is also able to organise and hold protests due to restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of gatherings. The research design will consist of several stages which will involve use of different methods (in some part of the analysis, the elements of frame mapping and close reading will be involved), different datasets, and different samples. Each of these stages will be described in the following section.

4.2 METHODS

4.2.1 Case study approach The project uses a case study approach as it suits the research design strategy aimed at exploring opposition leader’s communication. In this study, I seek to investigate how populism is communicated in particular political settings of the Russian regime. The case study helps to observe the contemporary phenomena in a real-life context (Yin 1981), which correspond to the purposes of my research: to study political communication phenomenon in everyday politics.

One of the main contributors to the case study research, Robert Yin, defined the term based on these principles (Yin 2003, 13-14): “A case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not evident.” It is important to mention that in this project case study will be perceived as an approach or a strategy,

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and not a method itself, as Stake noticed (2000, 435): “Case study is not a methodological choice but a choice of what is to be studied. By whatever methods, we choose to study the case”. Using a case study approach, I will employ different methods such as mixed-method content-analysis and frame mapping, as well as use various sampling techniques and collection data methods.

For the research, one case study was chosen for the analysis. On the broad level, I explored the case of anti-government populist communication of non-systemic opposition in Russia, specifically, the case of YouTube communication of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Political communication in Russia is a complex, unique and dynamic phenomenon. As it was shown in Chapter 3, the electoral institutions, media system and the Internet are subject of further “autocratisation” driven by the desire of the elite to keep the power. The case of Navalny, as it was stated in Chapter 3, is unique to this political environment; he is one of the few activists who can challenge incumbents and their monopoly of political power through protests and other offline and online activities. His example can be inspiring for other activists who can borrow his communication strategies to attract the protesting electorate in Russia and what was already seen in the cases of Moscow protests in 2019 surrounding the Moscow municipal election.

According to Seawright and Gering’s (2008) typology, Navalny’s case fell into an influential case study model. Their typology consists of a typical case, diverse cases, an extreme case, a deviant case, an influential case, most similar cases, and most different cases. The diverse, most similar and most different scenario presupposes an exploration of two or more than two cases (Seawright & Gerring 2008). The typical case scenario presupposes representativeness of the case, which Navalny’s example cannot be due to the uniqueness of his phenomena in his particular political setting. The extreme and deviant scenarios presuppose the exploration in a comparative perspective with a larger sample of cases (Seawright & Gerring 2008), which I cannot fulfil due to practical reasons, caused by three-year continuity of this PhD project. While the purpose of the influential case selection is “to explore cases that may be influential vis-à-vis some larger cross-case theory, not to propose new theoretical formulations (though this may be the unintended by-product of an influential case analysis)” (Seawright & Gerring 2008, 303).

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YouTube is not the only platform used by Navalny in his communication. He is active on almost all major social media platforms, including VKontakte, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and others. The preference for YouTube, in this project, was given due to it being the most popular social media platform in Russia (Statista 2019a) and to its ability to intensely spread massively the anti-government discourses in autocratic Russia. As a Google subsidiary, YouTube is less subjected to a frequent content removal requested by Roskomnadzor as was explained in the previous chapter, which means that its data are more accessible for the researcher and it still can be influential for Russian audiences. Secondly, as was mentioned in Section 2.3.4, there is particular interest to study the YouTube potential for disseminating populist communication, compared to relatively well-studied Facebook and Twitter.

Overall, the case study approach is taken as a primary approach due to the uniqueness of Navalny’s case in Russian political communication. The case study will contain several stages of analysis implemented through a set of research methods, starting with the frame mapping stage of analysis.

4.2.2 Frame mapping The first part of the research is exploratory, where I identify the main thematic categories of Navalny’s discourse as communicated in his YouTube videos and visualise it in the form of the map. This part of the research is needed to answer one of the sub-questions for this project, what themes, symbols, and ideological elements inform Navalny’s communication? Through frame mapping method, I plan to explore main themes and symbols of Navalny’s communication, ideological elements will be analysed through content analysis later. I used frame mapping visualisation implemented with the help of computational software Leximancer, best suited to this part of the analysis.

Frame mapping method helps through the word frequencies and word co- occurrences to map the “semantic field of related words, which specify the meaning constructed about the issue” (van der Meer & Verhoeven 2013, 230). Such method helps to identify words that appear jointly within the text with the help of cluster algorithms (Matthes & Kohring 2008). For these purposes, qualitative software for content analysis, Leximancer, was used. Leximancer performs conceptual and relational analyses measuring the presence of concepts together with the measuring

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relationships between them (Leximancer 2018, 8). The visual representation of this relationship was implemented in the form of a concept map.

This stage also draws from critical thematic analysis which can be among other applications in qualitative analysis can be expressed via a combination of criteria repetitiveness, recurrence, forcefulness (Owen 1984). Owen distinguishes between recurrence and repetition notions. He explains recurrence by salience when meaning is reiterated in texts, not necessarily using the same words. Repetition is described as the reappearance of keywords or concepts. Forcefulness refers to the importance that participants assign to their language through tone, volume, and inflection (Owen 1984). Repetition of concepts can be seen through Leximancer, as it analyses the relation of concepts, repeatedly occurring in texts and travelling together. Recurrence can be evaluated through additional contextual analysis to texts to see what patterns occurring systematically throughout texts. However, forcefulness cannot be evaluated through Leximancer software and requires extensive analysis of other elements of video such as audio and video representations. Some elements of forcefulness will be observed in the analysis of populist content of Navalny, where he appealing to the people using imperative and motivating tone.

The process of working with texts in Leximancer constitutes identifying concepts or collections of words travelling together within the text (Leximancer 2018). Then concepts that appear together in the same pieces of text are clustered into higher-level themes (Leximancer 2018). Later, through the process of contextual analysis and interpretation of the themes is described through a context specific to Russian political system. Frame mapping helps to identify words that appear jointly within the text with the help of cluster algorithms (Matthes & Kohring 2008). Leximancer performs conceptual and relational analyses measuring the presence of concepts together with the measuring relationships between them (Leximancer 2018, 8), visualised in the form of a concept map. On the map, Leximancer (2018, 12) shows “concepts that appear together often in the same pieces of text attract one another strongly, and so tend to settle near one another in the map space. The themes aid interpretation by grouping the clusters of concepts and are shown as coloured circles on the map”. Moreover, “each theme takes its name from the most connected concept within that circle” (Leximancer 2018, 15). The following

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process of interpretation brings the meaning and the context for the concept map, highlighting the main thematic categories of the acts of Navalny’s communication.

4.2.3 Content analysis method. Qualitative and quantitative dimensions The content analysis method was employed as the main method of this research. Mayring (2002) and Titscher et al. (2000) noted that using of content analysis by academics is closely connected with the development of mass media, started from the beginning of the 20th century. Krippendorff (2012, 24) described content analysis broadly as “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the context of their use”. The content analysis of Navalny’s texts will help to understand deeper the style and content of his communication. It addresses questions like What, How Often, and partly Why Navalny uses elements of investigative journalism, digital activism, and populism in his communication.

Content analysis is one of various methods to study populism, but as mentioned in Section 4.1, there are limitations in applying only quantitative content analysis to studying populism. Therefore, in this project, I adhere to Krippendorff’s (2012) position, which casts doubt on the dichotomy of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. He notes that “all reading of texts is qualitative by nature” and using computers to analyse them is not making them any less qualitative (Krippendorff 2012, 22). In this research, I used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure populism. The context and interpretations are crucial to understanding the ambiguous phenomenon of populism, where there are still debates on what populism actually is. The project required a systematic and thorough approach to categorisation using qualitative techniques and reliability processes to address these issues.

The research design of this project involved two major components of the analysis such as quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The components for its part consisted of several research stages, where data, sampling, procedural analytical techniques and software varied depending on the research question and richness of the data. As I explored the phenomenon of Navalny through mixed-method approach, each research stage could combine both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. The research stages were chronological and consecutive. Before proceeding to the actual research components and stages, the main principles and procedures of quantitative and qualitative content analysis should be explored.

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Quantitative content analysis The quantitative content analysis contains several procedural elements among which are procedures of unitising, sampling, recording/coding, reducing data to manageable representations, abductive inferring contextual phenomena, and narrating the answer to the research question (Krippendorff 2012, 84). The purpose of each component can be seen in Appendix A. Below, the major procedures of these stages of quantitative content analysis are summarised, and their applicability to the analysis of Navalny’s communication is assessed. In the actual analysis, they might be mixed with qualitative procedures of content analysis depending on the stage of the research and the research questions that will be described further. However, in the analysis, quantitative procedures were often preceding qualitative parts as they gave insights into “what”, “how much”, and “how often”, whereas qualitative procedures give the meaning and the context to the populist phenomenon of Navalny.

The quantitative content analysis starts with unitising which helps to differentiate the units of the analysis in the research (Krippendorff 2004). There is a difference between sampling unit, coding unit, and context in unit in content analysis according to Krippendorff (2004, 2013):

Sampling units are units of selection and may provide an analyst with a basis for judging statistical representativeness of data. Recording units are units of description that collectively bear the information that content analysis process and provide the basis for statistical accounts. Context units are units that delineate the scope of information that coders need to consult in characterizing the recording units.

The content units for this project were YouTube videos of Navalny, primarily text transcripts and screenshots of the videos that determined the recording and sampling units for different research stages. The description of the context unit is provided in Section 4.3. The videos were different in length, time, and amount of text to code; therefore, they were divided into different sampling units. The sampling units always coincided with coding units at all stages of the research project; which gave more certainty to the coder on what units to code. However, they varied from stage to stage, depending on the research question. To reach homogeneity of the data, I subdivided full-text transcripts into text excerpts, which were shorter in length and have the same meaning. The narration of Navalny in the video was often sprinkled with video insertions with other actors. These factors were taken into consideration

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during the unitising process. The procedures of the subdivision of sampling units are described in Section 4.3. Each research stage describes what sampling/recording units are analysed.

Then, after unitising, the data was subject to sampling procedures which produced manageable samples for the research representations of the material. Different sampling techniques exist, such as random, systematic, stratified, cluster, snowball, and other types of sampling. Mostly, in this research, I employed probability random sampling and relevance (purposive) sampling as they answered the quantitative and qualitative nature of the research, respectively. Nevertheless, sometimes they could be mixed during the stages of the research. Probability random sampling ensured that “all sampling units have the same chance to be included in the sample” (Krippendorff 2004, 114). The researcher should numerate all of the sampling units using a special randomisation device and determined the units for the analysis (Krippendorff 2004, 114).

In some cases, I used purposive sampling, which excluded the pieces of the text that did not possess relevant information to the explored phenomenon. Sometimes sampling procedures could be mixed during the research stages. Each research stage outlined the sampling procedures used.

Sampling was followed by recording and coding procedures. This element of content analysis included transcription, categorizing, and coding procedures that were implemented during different stages of the research. Videos of Navalny did not contain ready for the analysis text transcripts; mostly, it was automated texts extracted from YouTube. The procedures of transcription involved specific procedures and rules outlined in Section 4.3. The formation of categories for coding and consequent analysis was involved in the different research stages. The basis for the categorisation was a theoretical exploration provided in Chapter 2. However, depending on the material and context information, they needed the adaption at the particular research stage. There were two coders for this research. Coder 1 was the author of this research. Coder 2 was needed for reaching an inter-coder agreement for the reproducibility of the results. Both needed to speak native Russian and possess the knowledge of the political system in Russia needed for this research.

Inter-coder agreement is the form of a reliability test which provides the certainty that particular research results can be duplicated by the other researcher/coder. One of

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the forms of the inter-coder agreement is calculating a-agreement for coding. This project required a work of two coders working with binary data. The standards for data reliability according to Krippendorff (2004) are that between a = 0.667 to a = 0.800 is considered as a substantial agreement, and a above 0.800 is a perfect agreement. Considering that I explored the ambiguous phenomenon of populism which had many interpretations, I aimed at reaching a = 0.750. The software that helped to count Krippendorff’s a for this research was statistical software SPSS which had embedded function of counting the indicator of inter-coder agreement, in my case agreement between two coders with binary data. The results of the reliability test are in Section 4.4.1.

The analytical procedures involved in this project included mostly tabulations, “a number of words in each category occurring in text” and cross-tabulations, which explored “the frequencies of co-occurrences of values of categories in text” (Krippendorff 2004, 192-195). I used computational software for content analysis such as Leximancer and NVivo for these purposes. The benefit of computational content analysis is “the symbiosis of the human ability to understand and interpret written documents and the computer’s ability to scan large volumes of text systematically and reliably” (Krippendorff 2004, 14). Navalny’s videos together build a digital dataset which can be analysed both through human work and technology-based applications.

The software Leximancer (n.d.) identified in texts “the high-level concepts, delivering the key ideas and actionable insights you need with powerful interactive visualisations and data exports”. It helped to understand the main plots of Navalny’s communication through text search and word co-occurrences. NVivo (n.d.) is “mixed- method data analysis software” which helped both to analyse textual and visual materials, categorise, code, and implement analytical procedures of quantitative content analysis. After major procedural steps, the data was a subject to interpretation considering the context of Navalny’s phenomenon and the results of the analysis.

Overall, Krippendorff’s model of quantitative content analysis was foundational in the analysis, however, it was mixed with analytical procedures of qualitative parts of content analysis outlined by Mayring (2014).

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Qualitative content analysis Qualitative dimension of content analysis is sometimes called “interpretive” (Krippendorff 2004, 17). Through close reading of “relatively small amounts of textual matter” (Krippendorff 2004, 17), interpretation of texts into new narratives, and culturally conditioned understandings it leads to drawing new inferences of the text and perhaps new meanings depending on the theoretical lens. Mayring (2014, 10) described qualitative analysis as a mixed-methods approach: the “assignment of categories to the text as a qualitative step, working through many text passages and analysis of frequencies of categories as a quantitative step”. This project continued the logic of mixed-method content analysis; however, the process and stages of the content analysis should be explained in detail. The procedure of the mixed content-analysis was understood as follows (Mayring 2014, 66):

The first step is deductive. A list of themes is developed in advance, coming from theory, previous studies, from the interview agenda or sections of the data collection procedure. A coding guideline has to be developed, following deductive category assignment. The material is coded with those categories. The second step is to extract all coded material per category and to summarise this material per category. If there is a huge amount of material per category, then inductive category formation is more adapted.

As with quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis consisted of several stages; according to Mayring (2014), some of them reflect Krippendorff’s (2012) stages of quantitative analysis, therefore they were not described in detail, as it was done above. The procedural model of qualitative analysis consisted of several stages (Mayring 2014), as Figure 4.1 shows. Some of the procedures were applied throughout different stages of this research, sometimes mixed with quantitative procedural steps.

The analysis started from the material definition, analysis of the situation of origin and formal characteristics of the material. The definition of the material and formal characteristics of the material is provided in Section 4.3 and partly during the description of stages of the research in Section 4.5. Analysis of the situation of origin was provided earlier, in Chapter 3, where I explored the place of Navalny in Russian political communication system. Theoretical differentiation of the sub-components was partly provided in theoretical Sections 2.3.2 and 2.3.3, where I subdivided categories of populism into “appeal to the people” and “discrediting the elite” but also

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matched with the theoretical material provided in Chapter 2 to help interpret the results and to answer research questions. The reliability of the results was provided in the quantitative part of the research, as I analysed the same categories in the text in the quantitative and qualitative components of the research design. Overall, the qualitative component of this research allowed for the triangulation of the data through several procedural stages described above. The next section provides characteristics of the material analysed in this project.

4.3 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OVERALL SAMPLE OF NAVALNY’S YOUTUBE VIDEOS

This project explored YouTube communication of Alexey Navalny; therefore, the main data consisted of YouTube videos of the opposition leader from his YouTube Channel Aleksey Navalny (n.d.). The channel has existed since July 6, 2013 (Navalny n.d.); however, I was interested in more recent communications of the activist, connected primarily to the electoral period, where he announced his electoral campaign for the presidential election in 2018 in Russia. Usually, the electoral period contains the maximum concentration of the populist messages, as it helps to gain support during the elections. It also contained the major investigations of Navalny into Russian officials’ corruption with the highest users’ views on the channel which attracted both attention of domestic and international audience. These were videos “He is not Dimon to you” investigating corruption of then-Russian PM Medvedev; “Yachts, oligarchs, girls: The huntress for men exposes a briber” investigating corruption of businessman Deripaska and Deputy PM Prihod’ko; “Apartments, a summer house () and an Italian villa of Vladimir

Solovyev” investigating corruption of journalist Solovyev, and others. These investigations were conducted through journalist practices and some of them even led to major protests in Russia which have relevance to this research project and Navalny’s communication the most. Therefore, this period can be considered as the overall sample for the project.

The period of Navalny’s electoral campaigning started from the moment when he announced his participation in the 2018 Russian Presidential election on December 13, 2016, till the moment of the inauguration of the elected President Vladimir Putin on May 7, 2018. This was the time of active Navalny’s communication during the electoral race. During this period, Navalny posted on his YouTube 150 videos of

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different length with a different number of user views. The overall mean number of views of these videos was 1,954,422, while the median was 1,600,0006.

In this sample, the documentary about the corruption of then-PM Medvedev “He is not Dimon to you” got the highest number of views, 27,000,0007. The lowest number of views was 227,000 on the video “The video channel of Alexey Navalny in 2016”8. Given that the sample consisted of very short and very long videos, there was a big difference between the most viewed and the least viewed video on his channel. So, in order to make the sample homogenous in at least one parameter, I had purposefully subsampled what I called “the most viewed videos on his channel”, the videos that were above the median of 1,600,000 views in his channel. “The most viewed videos” were also important for the purposes of the research, as many views presuppose higher popularity among users, meant that they attracted the attention of the audience the most and; therefore, potentially could influence their political participation. As with the video mentioned above about Medvedev’s corruption, having 27 million views, it led to two consequent mass protests in Russia. A total number of videos, 77, was selected for the sample (see Appendix C).

All of the 77 videos were narrated in the Russian language. They had different lengths. In some of them Navalny appeared as the host, but in some of them, he did not. Some had an English transcript attached to the video (as a special function of YouTube), but some did not. All these differences were mentioned in the form of metadata in Appendix C.

Navalny’s narration in the videos was not homogenous either. The direct narrations of Navalny were prevalent in the videos; however, often his production team sprinkled content from other people’s speeches into the narrative structure. Other people’s speeches could be any conversation, including interviews, public speeches, formal orations, several people having a group discussion, covertly recorded conversations and other speeches. These speeches were inserted video parts in the direct narrative of Navalny. Direct narrations and inserted speeches of other people have a different meaning for the viewers. These insertions perform a supportive role

6 As of May 2018 7 As of May 2018 8 As of May 2018

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for the narration. Often, they illustrate or support the main arguments of the narrator. They also assist the audience to follow the long narrations of the host, by breaking the main ideas into smaller excerpts and help to maintain the attention of the viewer throughout the whole video. For purposes of this research, the excerpts that contain direct speech (narration) of Navalny will be called “main excerpts”. Secondary excerpts, in this project, are the inserted elements in the video which contain inserted speeches of other people such as politicians (e.g. Vladimir Putin), journalists (e.g. Vladimir Solovyev), religious figures (e.g. Patriarch Kirill) etc. Secondary excerpts can contain the speeches of more than one person, dialogues and discussions.

In this project, I was interested in two components of videos that could help to answer the research questions in Section 2.4, the text and visual representations of YouTube videos. Text representations (transcripts) could be found in a function open transcript on YouTube videos. The transcripts to Navalny’s videos could be automated or manual, added from YouTube community or creators of the content particularly. In most of the cases, Russian transcripts were automated text transcripts, text without punctuation, capital letters, sometimes misspelled words. While English transcripts had a clear Grammar structure, there were not too many videos with English transcripts in the chosen sample, as can be seen from Appendix C.

Both English and Russian transcripts were involved in this analysis; however, the automated Russian transcripts were hard to analyse in computer software analysis like NVivo or Leximancer, due to the absence of grammar structure. These transcripts were collected from the videos and then manually edited by Coder 1 using the version of “clean read or smooth verbatim transcript”, where (Mayring, 2014, 45):

The transcription is done word for word, but all utterances like uhms or ahs, decorating words like, right, you know, yeah are left out. A coherent text, simple to understand but representing the original wording and grammatical structure is produced. Short cut articulation and dialect are translated into standard language (c’mon = come on).

For the purposes of the research, during transcription process that took place during watching Navalny’s videos the coders followed a special explanatory note which can be seen in Appendix D. According to it, in transcripts, main and secondary excerpts were highlighted with special symbols, so in the following computer software analysis, the coder could distinguish between these types of excerpts. While

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transcribing, written names or positions of people whose speeches were used in the secondary excerpts were marked too. All of the other procedures of transcriptions were outlined in Appendix D.

For the analysis of the visual representation of populism in Navalny’s videos, I used screenshots of the first seconds of the videos. The visual representation of Navalny’s video is often standard. Navalny sits in front of the camera with a particular studio background. Apart from the secondary excerpts, which are not the part of the visual content-analysis, his look, background, and position represented on a single screenshot from a video can evidence the populist elements that I am exploring. These were stage, body, and colour representations as outlined in Section 2.3.3. Therefore, 77 screenshots of the first second when Navalny appeared on the video were scraped manually for the purposes of the analysis.

Overall, the sample for this project consisted of 77 videos of Alexey Navalny from his personal video blog on YouTube. The video referred to the period of his electoral campaigning for the presidential election in 2018 in Russia. Namely, for the research, I used text transcripts of the videos (automated and manually transcribed, Russian and English) as well as screenshots (images) of first seconds of the videos where Navalny was seen performing his narration. Different stages of research involved different sets of subsamples, as can be seen in the next sections.

4.4 RESEARCH STAGES

This section provides an overview of the research stages of this project with outlining main procedures of data collection, data sampling, analysis, and other methodological procedures suitable for the purposes of the research. Previously, I summarised the theoretical background of the methodology and justification towards the theoretical choice. This section contains “applicable” parameters of the methodology to Navalny’s case, which also involved some new methodological solutions needed to answer the research questions. In total, the research analysis consisted of two major components: quantitative (Chapter 5) and qualitative (Chapter 6, 7). Each component was divided into research stages, which could differ in methods, data samples, sampling methods, analytical procedures, and software to analyse the data. Two components, along with eight research stages, are described further.

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4.4.1 Quantitative component of research analysis I started my research from the analysis consisting both of frame mapping and content analysis methods aimed at exploring “what” and “how much/how often” in Navalny’s populist phenomenon. For these purposes, three research stages (RS) were developed, helping to answer those questions. This stage of research was more exploratory as it gave the first impression on what is Navalny’s communication was about, followed by the in-depth qualitative evaluation in the next component of the research.

RS1. Frame mapping of Navalny’s communication 9 The first stage of the research was exploratory. It did not yet give in-depth explanations on Navalny’s communication phenomenon; instead, it explored at first, what Navalny’s was talking about; what narratives, themes drove his communication. For this stage, I used English transcripts from the overall sample that were ready for the computational software for content analysis like Leximancer and NVivo and could give an overview of Navalny’s key messages. The procedures of analysis are explained as follows.

Sampling and extraction

The data for this stage of analysis were the YouTube text transcripts of Navalny’s videos as the primary source of his discourses. To reduce the sample of videos, I chose the videos with views above the median and videos that contain English text transcripts. Out of 150 videos, 52 met these criteria.

Language reliability

There were both strengths and weaknesses in using the English instead of the Russian transcripts. Relying on English translations could potentially cause a loss of meaningful words and connections between words due to the linguistic difference. However, it still allowed identifying whether the arrays of concepts in English and Russian were close in mentioning and remaining primary concepts in texts. This

9 Some of the fragments presented in this thesis section are published as: Glazunova, S. 2020. “Mediating populist discourse in Russia via YouTube: The case of Alexey Navalny.” In 30 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, edited by Akimov, A. and Kazakevitch, G, 191-213. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-0317-7

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process I called “language reliability”. The advantage of using English texts in this research was determined by the manual transcripts of the text, which could be analysed through content analysis software, unlike the automated Russian YouTube transcripts.

To establish language reliability, I compared the most frequent words in Russian and English texts, using computer software for automated content analysis, Leximancer and NVivo. The number of Russian words was not close to its equivalent in English in many cases. This can be caused by the inaccuracies within the automated speech recognition system of YouTube. Moreover, it was caused by the linguistic difference between the two languages. For instance, in the Russian language, nouns have different endings (cases). If in English one would solely use the word “president”, in Russian, the word can have up to six variations with different endings depending on cases (e.g. in Russian transliteration “presidentu”, “presidenta”, “presidentom”, “presidente”). In addition, the plural form of the word “president” can also take up to six different variations depending on cases in Russian.

As mentioned before, automated content analysis software NVivo and Leximancer were deployed to compare the most frequently mentioned words/concepts in Russian and English transcripts. After grouping the 100 most mentioned words, these were subsequently turned into 79 words/groups. Most of the concepts were close in the number of mentions in both Russian and English, except for such words as “people”, “Putin”, “Russia”, “government”, “per cent”, and “thousand”. Some of them, however, were not matching in numbers. This is due to several meanings with the translation from Russian to English and vice versa. In English, the Russian word “vlast’ ” (Rus. власть) can mean “power”, “authorities”, “government”. In turn, the English word “state” can mean “gosudarstvo” (Rus. государство) or “strana” (Rus. страна) and other words in Russian. So, these and other similar cases were grouped according to their meaning. The words “Putin”, “Russia”, and “people” were crucial for understanding Navalny’s narratives. Despite the significant difference in some mentioning, they were still among the most mentioned words in both languages, and to reach the language reliability, this was deemed sufficient. Overall, the most mentioned concepts in Russian and English matched in 79 cases out of 100 chosen, which was 79 per cent of language reliability, which meant that for this part of the analysis, English transcripts could be used instead of Russian transcripts.

Analytical procedures and software

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For this stage, I used the computer software for qualitative content analysis Leximancer (2018), which is based on statistic-based algorithms, extracts semantic and relational information from the text. Leximancer (2018) tools for content analysis include concept maps; a thesaurus of concepts; quartile plot, which shows which concepts belong to different categories; and sentiment analysis. Leximancer works with several languages including both English and Russian.

Leximancer created concept maps, a type of the clustering technique, “which forms perceptual wholes from things that are connected, belong together, or have common meanings while separating them from things whose relationship seem accidental” (Krippendorff 2012, 205). Textual concepts are “induced word co- occurrence categories” (Smith & Humphreys 2006, 263). The concept maps in Leximancer (2018) help to “illuminate presence and frequency of words, co- occurrences of words which make it as a concept, identify explicit and implicit concepts and finally reveal the relationships between concepts”. This process coincided with frame mapping outlined in Section 4.2.2, with the difference being, that later themes and symbols were subject of interpretation of coders depending on the context of the case.

I used the method of frame mapping and Leximancer to analyse 52 of Navalny’s English YouTube transcripts. Leximancer could run an automated process of concept mapping; however, manual adjustments were needed so that “stop words” would be excluded from the analysis. Some of the concepts were merged if they were a singular or plural form of one word (e.g. election, elections) or different forms of a name (e.g. Putin and Vladimir Putin) as well as other adjustments. The software then identified the main themes, concepts (words) within the themes, as explained in Section 4.2.2 with the following interpretation of a coder described by Mayring (2014, 88): “The basic idea behind explication as a qualitative content-analytical method is that it precisely defines which additional material is permissible to explain a certain point in the text.” The interpretation of themes in Leximancer is based on a broad-context analysis which involves additional providing of a context material relevant to the cases. Leximancer not only provides words that travel together and cluster them but also identifies pieces of the text within the data volume that contains those concepts. A coder’s interpretation was based on these excerpts of texts with highlighted co- travelling words in them was based on the political knowledge and media context

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around particular concepts/events that do not make sense to an ordinary reader provided additional information for better understanding of the phenomenon.

The results of frame mapping analysis and its following interpretation are shown in Section 5.1.

RS2. Analysis of secondary excerpts of Navalny’s videos This stage of the research helps to understand the meaning of the secondary excerpts in Navalny’s video narrations. Whereas the previous stage answered what Navalny is talking about, this stage answers whom Navalny is talking about. The main question of this part of the analysis is to whom Navalny refers the most among Russian political communication actors in his secondary excerpts of populist style YouTube videos. As was mentioned in Section 4.3.1, secondary excerpts consisted of speeches of other people, PC actors in Russia and abroad. These actors could be classified based on the characteristics of Russia’s political system and actors involved in populist communication. This part of content analysis was mostly quantitative. The reason for not using qualitative analysis was that current research is mostly the analysis of Navalny’s direct narratives on the presence of populism in them. The secondary excerpts did not contain Navalny’s direct narratives and were more the supplement to the actual Navalny’s speech. The qualitative elements of content analysis on this stage were only used to identify the attitude of citizens on the secondary excerpts towards Putin or Navalny. As was mentioned in Section 4.3.1, previously, the coder distinguished between main and secondary excerpts in texts, as well as mentioned all the actors speaking in the secondary excerpts. This data became a subject to a following categorisation and analysis in the computer software for content analysis NVivo. Sampling Within a whole sample of 77 videos, 344 secondary excerpts were identified in analytical software NVivo. They became data for the analysis of this stage of the research and the categorisation of actors mentioned in these excerpts. Categories for analysis The Russian Constitution (1993) established the separation between executive, legislative, and judicial power in Russia and the General Prosecutor’s office, which was independent of these three branches, though technically it is described in the Judicial branch in the Constitution. Each of the branches was represented by different

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organs of state power, public offices as well as people who were holders of that public offices or employees maintaining the functioning of the organs. Except for federal representatives of executive power, there were also representatives of the executive power in the subjects of the Russian Federation (federal subjects). These were governors, ministers of the federal subjects, and employees of its’ governments. Considering the restrictive nature of political power in Russia, all the actors belonging to these branches could constitute Putin’s elite in populist terms. Despite the fact that the Constitution claimed the democratic nature of power in Russia, de-facto the practices of democracy were often neglected, and the main political power was concentrated in the hands of a clique associated with Putin’s inner circle. For the identification of actors on the excerpts, I used the abovementioned separation of powers to categorise the main actors belonging to Putin’s elite. The main representatives of the executive power in Russia on the federal level were the President, the Presidential administration staff, the PM, who was the Chairman of the Government, different federal ministers and Deputy PMs of the Government and its employees, representatives of Federal Agencies, and Federal Services. The President held extended powers such as the right to dissolve the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Federal Assembly); to appoint the Chairman of the Government; to nominate the General Prosecutor, the Chairman of the Federal Council (higher chamber of the Federal Assembly) and judges of the federal courts (the Constitution of the Russian Federation 1993)10. Since 2000 (except for 2008-2012), the President of Russia has been Vladimir Putin. These extensive powers outlined in the Constitution make him independent from the rest of the power branches and allow implementation of unilateral authority for several terms of office in the country. From 2012-2020, Dmitry Medvedev had been the PM of Russia, stepping down in January 2020; he was also a former President of Russia between 2008-2012. In the coding procedures of content analysis, both the President and PM were associated with particular people – Putin and Medvedev, as they remained in power for long terms in Russia and were usually the main targets of Navalny’s critique.

10 At the moment of completing this thesis, in 2020, President Vladimir Putin in his annual addressing to the Parliament suggested amendments to the Russian Constitution which will change the configuration of the separation of powers in Russia if the amendments are approved, including the right of the Parliament to appoint PM (not the President as previously). The above mentioned in text configurations of the political regime are fair for the explored period of time of December 2016 – May 2018.

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The legislative power comprised the deputies of the State Duma (lower chamber), including its Chairman and the senators of the Federal Council (higher chamber) of the Federal Assembly of Russia (the Federal Parliament). The federal subjects in Russia also had their parliaments, usually unilateral, which were represented by the regional deputies. Judicial power consisted of judges of courts of different levels. On the federal level, these were the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of Arbitration of the Russian Federation. There were also district courts, regional, and appellate courts in Russia in federal subjects. Apart from that, there was an extensive body of different structures which possessed the “hard power”. This category of actors fell under what is was previously entitled “repressive state apparatus”. The term derived from a Marxist theory, where different bodies that possessed hard power, or in other words could use violence against its citizens including the state, army, police, courts, and other possessors of hard power in the society (Althusser 1971). French philosopher Althusser (1971) extended this term to “ideological state apparatus”, where it functions by means of “soft power” including ideological influence on the society. Russia inherited the extensive structure of repressive bodies from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Committee for State Security (KGB) and continued to develop it till these days. I borrowed the name of the Marxist concept to create a category for the analysis applied to the Russian current realities. In the category “repressive state apparatus”, I included the General Prosecutor of Russia and its office, prosecutors of federal subjects, the police, the Russian Army, the representatives of the Federal Security Service in Russia, the representatives of other military organisations in Russia such as the , kazaks, and other semi-military organisations. Moreover, I added to this category the representatives of the censorship body in Russia, Roskomnandzor, which had soft power to censor the information in the media and the Internet. Roskomnadzor is known for censoring political information on websites, social media, and media outlets, usually if it is sensitive for the Putin’s elite. Roskomnadzor was involved in blocking Navalny’s content repeatedly, including resonant investigations and the content on his website www.navalny.com. These actors of the Russian political system outlined in the Constitution could be included in Putin’s elite. Jagers and Walgrave (2007) classified other categories of

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elites that can be criticised by populists. These were the media, the economic powers, and intellectuals. One of the main objects of Navalny’s critique was the state-owned media, affiliated with the government or pro-government business companies that were biased and lied to the Russian people. Usually, Navalny referred to the materials from the mainstream federal media such as television channels First Channel or Russia-1 and other pro-government media, or particular journalists that openly supported the government and created the content of a propagandist character. Navalny often criticised the economic powers in Russia, mostly businesspeople, owners of big companies or “oligarchs” who were affiliated with the government and involved in the corruption schemes, according to him. The economic powers in Russia comprised the State corporations, the organisations that had a special status in Russia and created separately under federal law. They had extended economic rights compared to other companies in Russia. There were seven state corporations in Russia, including Roskosmos, Rostec, Rosatom, and others. The last categories associated with elites included intellectuals linked to the elites, such as university staff, professors, and writers. The priesthood of the Orthodox Church in Russia was also a separate group of actors in the classification that often supports Putin’s elite and his decisions. Apart from the elites, Navalny could use the conversations of “the people” in his secondary excerpts. However, as later chapters show, he was not only addressing the ordinary people but also criticising some of the groups supporting the elite. The homogeneity of the category of “the people” in Navalny’s view could be questioned as he expresses different sentiments towards them. However, in Western populism, it is often easy to reveal the out-groups accused by the populist politicians. Donald Trump often demonised and discredited South American immigrants to the United States, primarily Mexicans, in his speeches (Béland 2019), threating to close the US- Mexican border or build a “wall”. Australian senator Pauline Hanson (since 2016) accused Muslims in her discourses; she once wore a burqa to the Parliament proposing to “ban the religious garment, citing national security concerns” (Murphy 2017). By contrast, Navalny was not famous for an open critique of any particular group across ordinary citizens in the late 2010s, his critique was more of a general character, and it often targeted people who supported Putin’s regime. However, in early 2010s, as was described in section 4.1, he was known for his nationalist views and demonising immigrants from Post-Soviet Central Asia (e.g. Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) and

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Caucasus regions (Lassila 2013). These days, his critique of out-groups has become more diffused and generalised, perhaps, because, in order to attract more supporters and voters to his side, he avoided an open critique and specification of out-groups.

Based on these facts, “the people” category was split into two general categories: citizens linked to Putin’s elite and citizens not linked to Putin’s elite. The first group of citizens express positive sentiments in their speeches towards Putin’s elite. It can also express a negative attitude towards Navalny. Furthermore, the second category represents a neutral or negative attitude towards the elite and support Navalny and his activities.

Besides the monopoly of the pro-government media on the media market, there were still some media outlets that keep and maintain their editorial independence. Moreover, there were still some opposition politicians both from inside as outside of the political system who openly criticise Putin’s elite. Navalny often referred to their opinions or materials in the secondary excerpts.

Navalny often used his video materials to refer to his earlier statements. These were videos from his blog on YouTube and YouTube channel Navalny LIVE. Navalny, Navalny LIVE, and ACF’s materials were coded as a separate group of actors connected with the opposition leader.

Finally, there were categories coded with not specified actors in the excerpts. These excerpts did not contain a speech, or meaningful conversation; there were also entertainment elements used by Navalny from movies, video clips, video memes and others that do not contain speeches of PC actors. All these excerpts did not represent political communication actors. However, they had an essential role in his discourse of mediatising the content to the YouTube platform in order to attract more viewers.

Overall, I classified 15 possible categories of actors that can appear on the secondary excerpts and be involved in conversations there with a sub-classification of 37 actors (both individual and groups) as per Appendix E.

Analytical procedures. Software for the analysis

Three hundred and thirty-one main excerpts were coded, categorised and analysed in content analysis software NVivo. The results of the analysis can be seen in Section 5.1.2.

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RS3. Content analysis of ideological categories of populism in Navalny’s texts RS3 is continuation of quantitative part of the analysis which explored the elements of populist content combined with qualitative elements of category formation. It had answered the question of what made Navalny’s narration populist based on theoretical assumptions from Section 2.3.2, which formed a basis for the categories developed in this section.

Sampling

Navalny’s discourse was the main object of the research and, therefore, all main excerpts were chosen as the primary data for this section, as they contained his direct narration. The excerpts where Navalny did not appear as a host, and where he was instead replaced by his colleagues were excluded as they do not help to answer the research question. Within “the most viewed” 77 videos, 331 main excerpts were identified and coded in NVivo.

Categories for coding. Ideological elements of populism

Even though, the literature gave a clear indication of populist content elements and what constitutes people-centrism and anti-elitism in populist narration, however, the prior formation of definition of these elements/categories in the Russian context was not intuitive. Due to specific Russian context, and Navalny’s politics particularly the formation of populist categories happened after reading of transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos. I followed the procedural model of Mayring (2014, 82-83):

I1: Research question 1. I1.1 Formulate a clear research question (not only a topic)! 2. I1.2 Describe the theoretical background (theoretical position, previous studies)! 3. I1.3 The research question must fit an inductive logic, that means it must be explorative or descriptive in its nature. I2: Category definition and level of abstraction 1. I2.1The category definition serves as selection criterion to determine the relevant material from the texts; it has to be an explicit definition, theoretical references can be useful. 2. I2.2 The level of abstraction defines, how specific or general the categories have to be formulated. Both rules (category definition and level of abstraction) are

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central for inductive category formation. They have to be defined in advance and can be altered within the pilot phase. I3: Coding the text 1. I3.1 Read the material from the beginning, line by line, and check if material occurs that is related to the category definition! All other material is ignored within this procedure. 2. I3.2 Formulate a category near to the text at the level of abstraction! 3. I3.3 If the next passage fits the category definition, check if it can be subsumed to the first category or if a new category has to be formulated, and so on! I4: Revision 1. I4.1 A revision in the sense of a pilot loop is necessary, when the category system seems to become stable (only few new categories). 2. I4.2 Check if the category system fits the research question! If not, a revision of the category definition would be necessary. 3. I4.3 Check if the degree of generalization is sufficient! If you have formulated only few categories, maybe the level of abstraction is too general. If you have formulated a huge amount of categories maybe the level of abstraction is too specific. 4. I4.4 If you have changed the category definition and/or the level of abstraction, you have to start the analysis from the beginning of the material! I5: Final coding I5.1 The whole material has to be worked through with the same rules (category definition and level of abstraction). I6: Main categories 1. I6.1 At the end of this process you have a list of categories. You can group them and build main categories, if useful for answering the research question. 2. I6.2 Follow the rules of summarizing qualitative content analysis (see book chapter 6.2) for this step! I7: Intra-/intercoder check 1. I7.1 Start coding from the beginning of the material and compare the results (intra-coder agreement) (see book chapter 7 for this step)! 2. I7.2 Give the material (or parts of it) to a second coder and compare the results. If the explorative character of the study is predominant, give him or her only the text. If the frequency distribution of the categories should be tested, give him or her your categories as well.

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3. I7.3 You should discuss the results and decide which coding is adequate (following the rules). Only if the second coding is held as better coding, this is counted as disagreement. 4. I7.4 If you change the better coding for analysis you can enhance reliability (not always possible). I8: Results 1. I8.1 The result (of course after checking quality criteria like inter-coder agreement) is at first the list of categories and maybe main categories. 2. I8.2 If categories had been found in respect to several text passages (many subsumptions) a frequency analysis of the category occurrences could be useful. 3. I8.3 The category system and eventually the frequencies have to be interpreted in the direction of the research question.

Based on the research question of how digital activism and investigative journalism are combined in populist messages of Navalny, I looked at their indication in texts. Coming from the populist notions of people-centrism and anti-elitism, I also looked at the indication of journalistic work and calls to digital activism. Two main categories for coding “appeal to the people” and “discrediting the elites” were found as was expected in Section 2.3.2 and were subdivided into two categories each.

An “appeal to the people” was sub-categorised based on the way of appealing to “the people” and the level of radicalisation of the populist call. Two forms of appealing were distinguished: a “simple addressing” to “the people” and a “call to action”. This distinction allowed me to examine the level of radicalisation of Navalny’s narration. The category “Discrediting the elites” was split to “empty discrediting” and “discrediting with evidence” to explore the level of journalistic investigation that Navalny uses to discredit the elites. Therefore, four respective categories were coded in the excerpts. These were:

• Simple addressing is addressing of a politician (Navalny specifically) who is merely talking to people and invites them to a conversation through the video. He addresses them to associate himself with the audience. In this case, he does not invite them to a political or another form of action. He uses simple addressing as a part of the narration.

• Call to action is a radical form of appealing to people from a politician (Navalny specifically) which provides an invitation to political participation (e.g. come to a protest, boycott election). The excerpts containing a “call to

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action”, contain “simple addressing” too. As calling people to action, a communicator using different forms of simple addressing. It presupposes the subsequent action that populist communicator expects from the audience.

• Empty discrediting is the act of an attempt to discredit the elites by a populist whose allegation is not supported by any piece of evidence and consists more of accusations and denigrations of those elite. In this project, discrediting is defined as “to cause people to stop respecting someone or

believing an idea or person.” (Cambridge Dictionary n.d.) .

• Discrediting with evidence is the attempt to discredit the elite through claims that are supported by the evidence base of journalistic format, including materials from social media, websites, official documents of the government and related structures, independent organisations (commercial, non- commercial, think tanks), and judicial documents. Navalny or his colleagues refer to these documents in the text of the videos11, which presupposes that every citizen can check them by him/herself. “Discrediting with evidence” a priori contains the category “empty discrediting”, as Navalny uses the words denigrating the elite providing the evidence collected with journalistic practices.

These four categories with classification principles are shown in Figure 4.2.

The attacks of the elite of Navalny were rarely impersonal. He accused and discredited particular politicians, businesspeople, media outlets, and journalists, government bodies by labelling them as “crooks and thieves” and “liars”, among other pejoratives. Usually, Navalny introduced the actors in his narration by using their name and job description or social identifier, although sometimes they were identified through other means, such as nicknames or pronouns referring to the previous mentions of those actors in texts.

11 Navalny can show that evidence in the video; however, I consider only the evidence that is mentioned in the speech. Nevertheless, usually, if Navalny shows them, he introduces this evidence to the audience verbally.

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• Repressive state apparatus

• Other organs of federal power

• Other actors

These ten categories were coded in 331 excerpts. If the excerpt contained at least one mentioning of the representative of the category, it was assigned a “1”-value in the respective column in the Excel sheet. In other words, I did not count the overall number of mentions, but rather the number of excerpts that contained at least one reference to a category.

Four categories of ideological content of populism along with 10 categories of Putin’s elite were categorised and coded in NVivo. However, special procedures were applied for coding of sub-categories of populism at this stage of research to increase the reliability of the research.

Coding and coders

The coding process required work from two coders: the author of this PhD project (Coder 1) and a native Russian speaker with knowledge of the Russian political system (someone who previously/currently has a knowledge of Russian political system), Coder 2. The latter was required for the coder to be able to understand the context of Russian politics and Navalny’s videos. The preference towards only one coder and not several coders is explained by the ambiguity of the populist phenomenon which can create vagueness of the description of the populist elements and further confusion among coders. In this project, I followed a more qualitative approach for the coding instructions, which involved the creation of a thorough and hugely descriptive guidelines, which could be easily followed by a coder. I developed a special instruction for coders, which both coders could follow while coding categories in NVivo. The instruction was available in English and Russian language, as the second coder coded documents in Russian language. It consisted of the description of the project, the main categories for coding, with words- markers and examples from the texts as can be seen in Appendix G. The instruction consisted only of four categories of ideological content of populism developed earlier and not the elite’s categorisation, as they were the most crucial categories for exploring the populist phenomenon based on theoretical explanations of populism. Therefore, at this stage of the research, I tried to reach the agreement on main ideological

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components of populism with the help of another coder according to the procedures outlined by Krippendorff (2012). The inter-coder agreement

Firstly, Coder 1, using the Instruction from Appendix G coded and analysed 331 main excerpts transcripts in content analysis software NVivo. Main excerpts were coded as “cases” in NVivo, whereas four categories were coded as “nodes”. Each case was explored to identify the core ideological elements of populism; the results of the analysis were exported to an Excel document. Then, to reach reliability, Coder 2 should have been coding the same excerpts. However, to reach an inter-coder agreement, Coder 2 did not need a full sample of the excerpts; it could be reached through a representative sub-sample calculated via a specific formula. I used the formula of Riffe et al. (2014, 111), as shown in Figure 4.3.

(� − 1)(��)! + ��� � = (� − 1)(��)! + ��

n – the size of sub-sample N – total number of the whole sample P – desirable level of agreement SE – standard error Q = 1–P Figure 4-3: The formula for the calculation of sub-sample for reproducibility test

The formula depended on three key factors of inter-coder agreement: the total number of text components (units) to be coded, the desired level of agreement and the confidence level desired for the test. N – for this research stage is 331, SE – 0,03 determined by the level of significance (0.95) and the z-score associated (using the one-tailed version) is 1.64. The desirable level of agreement was 0.7, with the level of confidence was 0.8. The calculated sub-sample with these parameters was 89. Therefore, 89 main excerpts out of 331 were chosen randomly through online research randomiser www.randomizer.org and given to Coder 2 for coding.

The level of agreement was measured for each category of ideological populist content. The results of Coder 1 and Coder 2 were transferred to SPSS statistics which can calculate Krippendorff’s alpha. The results of the first inter-coder agreement are presented in Table 4.1.

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Table 4-1: Level of inter-coder agreement in coding ideological components of populism in Navalny’s main excerpts

Krippendorff’s Simple Call to action Empty Discrediting alpha/Categories addressing discrediting with evidence

Value 0.7943 0.8825 0.7802 0.7700

According to the table, all values were above 0.75, which confirms the high level of agreement between coders. The presence of detailed instruction helped to identify the main categories of populism despite the ambiguities in the theory of populism. Later these categories were counted and analysed in NVivo as demonstrated in analytical Section 5.3.

Having four variables (categories) for the analysis, I anticipated the formation of four combinations of categories of populism, such as:

• Empty discrediting + simple addressing

• Empty discrediting + call to action

• Discrediting with evidence + simple addressing

• Discrediting with evidence + call to action

These combinations were named accordingly in Section 5.3 as superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy populism. Knowing the names and combinations of categories in the main excerpts, I could then proceed to the analysis of the location of these excerpts in the video labelled as a particular type of “populism”.

RS4. Analysis of the structure of Navalny’s videos This was the short research stage, which mostly consisted of matching type of populism (superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy) with a particular place in Navalny’s video narration and visualisation of this location. This stage explored in what parts of the video narration Navalny used different variations of populism.

Sampling

I analysed 77 videos and 331 main excerpts in it. I excluded from the sample nine videos and respective main excerpts where Navalny did not appear as a host, as mostly his co-hosts performed in those videos.

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Coding

Each video from the overall sample (n=77) was coded on a numeral scale from 1 to 77. After I excluded nine videos, the numeral values did not change. Videos contained main excerpts (direct narrations of Navalny interrupted by secondary excerpts) with four types of populism, excerpts with no populist content and one sub- category of populism13. They were coded on a numerical scale, according to the number of videos and their position in the text. So, based on their order in text main excerpts in video #1 could be coded as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and so on. The data with codes of the videos and coded excerpts were transferred to an Excel document. Different types of populism were assigned different colours in the table, which allowed the researcher to visualise and determine the location of “populisms” in Navalny’s narration. The results of the analysis can be found in Section 5.4.

RS5. The density of themes in Navalny’s main excerpts The data from RS1, precisely, themes that Navalny uses in his communication, was used in conjunction with results from RS3, variations of populism in his narration, to explore what themes of Navalny’s YouTube communication correlate the most with the types of populist narration. However, the methodology for this stage differed from traditional quantitative content-analysis. It required modifications to the method by creating thematic dictionaries and measuring the density of the words from these dictionaries in the main excerpts. Further, I provide the in-detail explanation of those methodological procedures for this stage.

Sampling

The intensive nature of the quantitative analysis, as well as new modifications to the method of content analysis, made it impractical to analyse all of the 331 main excerpts. The sampling procedures were based on the results of the analysis of RS3 summarised in Section 5.3. There, I determined four types of populism, based on the combination of four populist categories that appeared in the same main excerpt. These were such types as superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy populism. Each type of populism appeared in a different number of excerpts. I pre-defined the size of the sample for the qualitative analysis as can be seen in Table 4.2. The smallest number

13 Sub-categories of populism are: “simple addressing”, “call to action”, “empty discrediting”, and“discrediting with evidence”.

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of excerpts in a category of advocacy populism was 11 excerpts, I analysed ten excerpts from this sample. The sample for radical and investigative populism consisted of ten excerpts too, as it had a high level of representativeness, 17 and 21 per cent accordingly. With the increasing number of excerpts, the sample was expanded, as in the case of superficial populism, where a large number of excerpts required a bigger sample for the representativeness of the sample. The excerpts were chosen through random sampling using the web-tool www.randomizer.org.

Table 4-2: Sampling for the four types of populist excerpts in Navalny’s communication

Type of populism Number of excerpts Sample superficial 102 20 radical 57 10 investigative 47 10 advocacy 11 10 Density

I analysed the sub-sample of the excerpts determined in Table 4.2 on a subject of a density of the themes; in other words, how often concepts of the particular themes appeared in these excerpts. To measure the density, I used the modified form of the quantitative content analysis method. It counted how many times particular concepts were used in texts; however, it also involved the procedure of adding new words to the analysis to “frame dictionaries”, as I describe further.

In Section 5.1, it was revealed that there are four themes of Navalny’s communication: corruption industry, Russian political system, elections, and truth and ways to communicate it; each of them consisted of a particular set of words/concepts, interpreted in the same section.

Density of themes, therefore, measured the average percentage of the thematic concepts’ appearance on average within the suggested sample of populist excerpts. The maximum number for the density in this regard could be 100 (as 100 per cent). The formula of the thematic density is shown in Fig 4.4.

In RS1, I analysed only 100 the most commonly appearing words within Navalny’s texts to indicate the main themes; however, the preliminary analysis of the density showed that more words could be matched with the themes based on their interpretations. This meant that during the analysis, the coder needed not only to count the number of words from the existent theme but also add new words to a theme,

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f t å(W 1/W 1 *100) df = Ne

df – average density of the theme Ne – number of excerpts f W 1 – number of words (concepts) from the theme in the excerpt t W 2 – total number of words (concepts) in the excerpt

Figure 4-4: The formula of the thematic density in Navalny’s texts creating so-called “thematic dictionaries”. Thematic dictionaries, consisting of concepts under one theme, therefore, were built during two stages of analysis. The first one was the analysis of 100 most occurred words throughout Navalny’s texts via Leximancer cluster, analysed at RS1, with the results provided in Section 5.1. The second stage was a manual search of words in the excerpts, based on the similarity of characteristics of the frame. Below, the summaries of these themes are provided.

Corruption industry • Nepotism of elites (through the words son, brother, mother)

• Financial-fiscal items or items of property, symbols of wealth and luxury

• Symbols connected with the investigation into the corruption of then Russian PM Medvedev “He is not Dimon”

Russian political system • Actors of the elite14

• Non-political actors representing “the people”15

• Symbols representing means, places, tactics where citizens can exercise their rights (citizen activism)

Elections • Symbols of the institution of elections in Russia

• Special attributes of the elections in the national context (e.g. school, police)

14 These words only represent nouns; the pronouns are not considered as they already were considered as populist when identifying the types of populist excerpts (e.g. they/them). 15 These words only represent nouns; the pronouns are not considered as they already were considered as populist when identifying the types of populist excerpts (e.g. we, us).

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Truth and ways of communicating it • The symbols of channels, instruments, formats, genres and other means of communication that are or are not available to Navalny and his team to express his “truth”

• The symbols of investigative journalism practices (e.g. investigation, documents as a piece of evidence)

If Coder 1 met the words in the text that could be attributed to any of the above- described characteristics, he/she added these new words to thematic dictionaries. Depending on the number of excerpts, the dictionaries were constantly expanding until all the excerpts were analysed. The example of thematic dictionaries for this project can be seen in Appendix H. The results of the analysis can be found in Section 5.5.

Limitations

This part of the analysis was ad hoc and developed by the author. It was acknowledged that thematic dictionaries did not represent the whole number of words throughout Navalny’s videos. They represented what was found in 50 excerpts. However, the similar results in the density of dominant themes showed that these results could be fair for the rest of the video excerpts. Although I was looking for the most dominant themes, I also took into consideration the ranking of the other three themes to see the correlation and avoid bias. The ranking of the non-dominant themes could have varied depending on the sample; however, even this small analysis showed quite a stable result across the excerpts.

4.4.2 Qualitative component of the research analysis After establishing the reliability of quantitative results of RS3 and analysis of those results in the respective section, I proceed to qualitative interpretation of those results through the qualitative part of content analysis outlined by Mayring (2014).

RS6. Qualitative content analysis of populist excerpts of Navalny’s videos containing ideological elements of populism At this stage, the qualitative procedures of content analysis, precisely summarising techniques were applied to video excerpts. This stage aimed to answer the research question of how Navalny combined practices of investigative journalism and digital activism in his populist communication on YouTube. During RS3, I identified which main excerpts of his videos contain combinations of four sub-

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categories of populism: “simple addressing”, “call to action”, “empty discrediting”, and “discrediting with evidence”. At this stage, I summarised and explained these categories in detail, showing how Navalny communicated each of them and what these categories meant precisely in his communication. I looked at how Navalny addresses “the people”, what he was calling people to do, how he discredited the elite, and what evidence he used to discredit them.

Sampling

For this stage, I used the same 50 main excerpts that were used in RS5. The qualitative nature of the analysis made it impractical to analyse all of the excerpts containing populist discourse. However, using a sub-sample of the video excerpts, a general image of the types of populism could be formed, summarising the features of previously coded sub-categories.

Summarising procedures

Summarising procedures referred only to four sub-categories of populism coded above and information referred to them. Therefore, it did not require additional testing reliability of the data, as I explored the same categories but in-detail. Coder 1, exploring the excerpts was looking for examples of mentioning those sub-categories in text and summarising the information which could answer the questions from Table 4.3.

Table 4-3: The sub-categories of populism and the questions for the qualitative summaries of the video excerpts for the coder

Sub-category Questions for coder

Simple addressing How does Navalny refer to people? What forms of addressing does he use to associate himself with the people? Call to action What does Navalny call people to do? Empty discrediting How does Navalny discredit Putin’s elite? What names, nouns, words does he use to discredit them? Does he attack the elite in general or individually? Discrediting with evidence What types of evidence does Navalny use to discredit the elite?

Analysing procedures

The summaries of the information related to the sub-categories of populism and questions were used to develop a deeper understanding of Navalny’s populist narrative through the concise summaries of a subsample of Navalny excerpts. The summarising

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procedures were implemented through the procedures developed by Mayring (2014) in an MS Word document. The crucial information referring to the description of categories was summarised and outlined in comments in MS Word, and after this, comments from MS Word formed a new document and were categorised according to the types of populism they were mentioned in (superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy). The summaries of the excerpts with reference to sub-categories and their meaning for the narration are presented in Sections 6.1-6.5.

RS7. The analysis of visual representations of populism This stage explored what visual representations Navalny used for his populist performance on YouTube. In Section 2.3.3, it was determined that stage, body politics (clothing style), and colour were crucial elements of populist leader performance which could help to the leader to associate himself/herself with the audience. These elements could be found in the screenshots of Navalny’s videos.

Sampling

The data for this research stage consisted of screenshots of Navalny’s videos. These screenshots were taken during the extraction of the overall sample of the most viewed 77 videos in Navalny’s blog; the screenshots were taken on the first second of Navalny’s appearance in the video. During the extraction, it was noticed that Navalny mostly did not change his position or a background in the shot while narrating the text, so other screenshots would not make meaning to an overall context of the populist leader communication. The screenshots for the sample answered several criteria. Firstly, they should have contained an image of Navalny, as the main object of the investigation. Secondly, the videos that did not contain Navalny’s narration, but instead of his co-hosts or other footage without Navalny; these screenshots were not taken into consideration. Considering all these factors, 70 screenshots out of 77 videos answered the criteria mentioned above and were taken as a sample for the analysis.

Categories

In the screenshots, I was looking for the three main categories for the analysis. The stage, the clothing style of Navalny and colour representations. Below the description of these categories is provided.

• Stage refers to visual representations of the surroundings in which Navalny performs on his video. The description comes down to the outlining of the

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background where Navalny presents, how the scene is staged, and what symbols are used to strengthen the populist message.

• Clothing refers to the clothing style of Navalny, which he uses on his YouTube videos. The description of the category should consist of the description of the style of clothing (casual, official), the pieces of clothes he is wearing and its relevance to the occasions.

• Colour refers to the colour representations that Navalny uses in his performance. Mostly refers to Navalny’s clothing as the stage and the film settings do not change as the preliminary analysis of screenshots showed.

Because of the relatively small sample and its homogeneity, the descriptions of the categories were analysed and summarised. The results of the analysis can be found in Section 7.2.

RS8. The analysis of YouTube features mentioned and used by Navalny in his communication During this research stage, I explored how Navalny adapts his message to the needs of the platform. Particularly, I was interested in what YouTube features he referred to the most and how he adapted his messages according to these features to make the videos popular and viral. For these purposes, I used qualitative content analysis to find and summarise all the videos where he referred to YouTube functions and features, as well as specific YouTube genres which were popular among YouTube audiences.

Sampling, analytical procedures, and software

To identify the excerpts, videos, which contain information about YouTube features mentioned by Navalny, I used automated search NVivo for word “YouTube” and other related to the platform words (“share”, “link”, “like”, and others) in Russian. Navalny mentioned YouTube 18 times in the overall sample of 77 videos. In the analytical part, I explored the context where he used these words to talk about the platform. In addition, earlier, at RS6, exploring radical populism excerpts, I found out that Navalny calls people to action through online practices. So-called online “call to action” was used by Navalny to invite people to political participation. These excerpts were also used to see how YouTube instruments helped to engage people in political action. The results of the analysis can be found in Section 7.3.

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Overall, consisting of two research components and eight research stages, this project was using an innovative approach to research populism, using quantitative and qualitative dimensions of content analysis respectively. The stages, components and procedural characteristics are summarised and described in Table 4.4.

4.5 ETHICS AND LIMITATIONS

This project interacted with publicly available YouTube data of a public persona, politician Alexey Navalny, which was created specifically in a news media-style format for widespread distribution. It was confirmed that there were no special ethical considerations for the research analysis of the data.

4.6 SUMMARY

Overall, this project involved a case study of populist communication of Alexey Navalny on YouTube explored by the methods of content analysis and frame mapping. The data for this project mostly consisted of the text transcripts and screenshots of Navalny’s videos, with some cross examination of the videos themselves. The project compounded two major components of research analysis (qualitative and quantitative) and involved eight research stages. Each research stage involved different sampling, coding, categorising, and analytical procedures. In the following Chapters 5, 6, and 7, the results of the research analysis are presented.

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Chapter 5: Themes, symbols, and ideological content of Navalny’s communication

This chapter is a quantitative exploration of Navalny’s YouTube communication which aims to answer a sub-research question outlined in Section 2.4, precisely: Q1.1 What themes, symbols, and ideological elements inform his communication?

I start from Section 5.1, where I explore the themes and symbols of Navalny’s communication as they help give an overview what the main narratives of Navalny on YouTube are, and what is his message about. I continue with Section 5.2, the analysis of the secondary excerpts from text transcripts of Navalny’s videos, to understand who the main target of his populist attacks is. Section 5.3 proceeds with an analysis of what makes Navalny’s communication populist, what ideological elements of populism combined with IJ and digital activism practices can be found in his communication. It introduces the differentiation between parts of his populist narrations. Section 5.4 looks at the structure of Navalny’s videos, whereas Section 5.5 sheds light on which themes of Navalny’s YouTube communication correlate the most with the types of his populist narration. Overall, using mostly quantitative content analysis of text transcripts of Navalny’s videos, this chapter provides in-depth overview of different aspects of his communication on YouTube.

5.1 THEMES OF NAVALNY’S COMMUNICATION16

5.1.1 Introduction The success of Navalny as a member of a non-systemic opposition despite the restrictions on political freedom inherent in Russia has led me to the investigation of the content of Navalny’s discourse online. As Chapter 2 indicated, Navalny uses a

16 Some of the results presented in this thesis chapter are published in a book chapter: Glazunova, S. 2020. “Mediating populist discourse in Russia via YouTube: The case of Alexey Navalny.” In 30 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, edited by Akimov, A. and Kazakevitch, G, 191-213. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-0317-7

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populist content and style that gives him an advantage compared to his opponents to garner support online and offline. However, it is unclear what themes and symbols are framed under the populist style “umbrella” and how they are compatible with populism itself. In this chapter, I explore what the main themes and symbols of Navalny’s discourse on YouTube are. The difference between these elements is outlined in Section 4.2.2. Themes and symbols can lead to the triggering of particular emotions of citizens which can possibly turn into political participation. Using frame mapping as a method, with procedures outlined in RS1, Section 4.4.1, I undertook an investigation of the English transcripts of YouTube videos emanating from Navalny’s video blog. The main themes of Navalny’s videos included “corruption industry”, “elections”, “Russian political system”, as well as an idea of “truth and ways in which to communicate it”.

5.1.2 The analysis of concepts and themes As per Figure 5.1 and 5.2, five main themes were identified through the analysis of text in Leximancer (see RS1, Section 4.4.1 for more detailed procedures); these include themes: “house”, “rubles”, “Russia”, “truth”, and “elections”. The full list of the concepts and themes can be seen in Table 5.1. Leximancer’s facilities enable themes to be heat-mapped to indicate importance of the theme (Leximancer 2018, 12). Hot colours such as red, orange, and yellow represent the most significant themes; while cold colours (green, blue, purple) – less politically important themes. The following section will provide a detailed analysis of the themes and concepts and its interpretation.

Table 5-1: Main themes and concepts of 52 English transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos

Theme Concepts rubles rubles, million, money, Medvedev, official, company, billion, bought, pay, taxes, yacht, apartment, prime, oligarch, secret, Usmanov, budget, offshore, foundation, bribes, vineyards, family, dacha (village house), property, son, business, oil, wife, head, income, accounts Russia Russia, people, Putin, corruption, country, rallies, government, city, support, friends, lies, citizens, streets, power, Kremlin, law, anti-corruption, rich, president, United Russia, fight, mayor, regime, party, salary, governor, protest, residents, crooks truth truth, video, investigation, TV, palaces, Navalny, information, media, assets, authorities, court, children, film, internet, criminal, documents, national, Anti- corruption Foundation, jail house house, land, estate, villa, sq (square), purchase, building, owner, residence, expensive, price, Italian, private, car elections elections, campaign, vote, political, system, public, school, police

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Figure 5-2: Detailed concept map in Leximancer of 52 English transcripts of Navalny’s YouTube videos

Note: Configuration of the map in Leximancer: theme size – 57 per cent; visible concepts – 100 per cent

5.1.3 Interpretation of concepts and themes of Navalny’s YouTube videos Elections “Elections” is one of the four central topics of Navalny’s discourse, however, less meaningful than themes “Russia” and “rubles” according to the colour mapping in Figures 5.2 and 5.3. Partly, references to this topic in his narration can be explained by the period of the taken sample, the electoral race anticipating presidential elections

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in 2018, where Navalny was running as a candidate. Of the words from the row “elections” in Table 5.1, some had political meaning that is specific to the Russian context. Among them are the words school, police as well as political and system, which all require interpretation if they are to be understood fully by those outside the contemporary Russian milieu.

Schools in Russia usually serve as voting stations during the elections. Teachers from these schools are observants or sometimes chairpersons of the polling station commission. Often, they are accused by citizens or opposition forces of falsifying the results of the elections due to pressure of local or regional authorities (Rybina 2012). The title and topic of one of Navalny’s videos is “Dear teachers, don’t do that!” (Navalny 2018a) which directly points at the importance of the social and to some extent political institution such as school in Russia.

Police are mentioned by Navalny as one of the forces that sabotaged his participation in elections. During the electoral period Navalny was arrested by police during a Moscow rally in support of a presidential election boycott (BBC 2018). Using co-occurrence search of words elections and police from Leximancer, an example of this linkage is evident in the following fragment: “Because of this, I’d like to make a small announcement about our plans for all of you, as well as for the members of Putin’s administration, central election commission, police, FSB and others who would like to sabotage my nomination” (Navalny 2017a).

In broad terms, the word elections in relation to the words system and political can mean an institution as a part of the political system, which after the dissolution of the Soviet Union has become important to many Russian citizens. In democracies, elections are one of the ways to change the political system, leadership and policies legally, but in Russia, they are more of a referendum of approval due to the non- removability of elites in Russian political system. In his videos, Navalny (2017d) often refers to the Russian political system as “sick” and “rotten”, admitting its rigidity in regard to electoral processes: “The greater the number of strong candidates, the better. But from the very first moment of his nomination, the whole system, from the Central Election Commission to the local authorities, has been explaining to us, why he will have a very hard time taking part in the elections.”

One of the examples of this systemic rigidity was the fact that, in 2018, Vladimir Putin got 76.69 per cent of votes at the presidential elections with a 67.5 per cent voter

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turnout (Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation 2018). These numbers were unprecedented in the history of his presidential re-election, the fourth in 18 years. Navalny’s addresses attempt to remind the people of the importance of this institution as well as articulate his ambitions about entering the system as formal opposition actor.

House This block of words (see row “house” in Table 5.1) is related to the expensive real estate that Russian officials possess, according to Navalny’s investigations. Following extensive research by his investigative team, Navalny accuses high-ranking Russian officials of buying luxurious estates, expensive cars, and other luxury items through corrupt schemes or with funds gained through corrupt schemes (Navalny 2018b):

So, the house we labelled as “uninteresting” and “unimpressive” a year ago turned out to be literally one of the most expensive objects we’ve ever filmed. So, we make a fairly obvious conclusion that oligarch Prokhorov bought a villa from a government official for such colossal money because this wasn’t a purchase of real estate, but a legalized and disguised transfer of money to the deputy prime minister of our country.

Expensive houses, villas and cars are embedded in the anti-corruption discourse described by Navalny in his documentary films. They symbolise the items of luxury which officials possess by stealing money from ordinary citizens. These symbols can cause emotional reactions from citizens, particularly given the great economic disparity between rich and poor people in Russia. According to a European Parliament report “Russia has more billionaires relative to the size of its economy than any other large country” as well as “huge wealth (estimated at up to 75 per cent of Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)) hidden in offshore accounts”, while in 2016, 13.8 per cent of Russians (20 million people) lived below the poverty line (European Parliament 2018). According to the framing map in Figure 4.2, these are not the only symbols of an anti-corruption industry mentioned in the texts, as the next theme shows.

Rubles Another group of words was united under the theme “rubles” (see respective row in Table 5.1). According to the Leximancer map, this is the most important topic in Navalny’s communication, which is indicated by red colouring of the word-cluster as

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per Figure 5.1. The words represent different aspects of the anti-corruption industry in Russia, as adapted by Alexey Navalny. I divided them into several groups. The first group represents the financial-fiscal attributes of the anti-corruption industry such as rubles, million, money, billion, bought, pay, taxes, budget, offshore, income, assets, and accounts. These words are an essential part of the anti-corruption industry. The second group of concepts are connected with the investigation documentary “He is not Dimon to you” about the corruption of former Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev. “He is not Dimon to you” has reached 27 million of views in May 2018, the largest number of views of his video channel. It also provoked two large anti-corruption protests in March and June of 2017. From the first words of the YouTube video, it can be seen, how Navalny set up the tone of the investigation around the former Russian PM, using the words from the cluster (Navalny 2017b):

You would never take this man for some kind of a villain or an underground billionaire. He’s a smartphone and gadget enthusiast, a ridiculous simpleton, who falls asleep during important events. The internet calls him Dimon. But after you watch this video by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, you’ll realize how wrong you were. Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister and former president of Russia, is crazy about money and elite real estate, not gadgets like we all thought. Palaces, residences and ancestral estates. Yachts and vineyards in Russia and abroad. We will show you Medvedev’s real property and you’ll see for yourself that he’s one of our country’s richest people and one of its most corrupted officials.

As per Figure 5.3, the concepts of the cluster include words Medvedev, official, company, yacht, prime, oligarch, secret, Usmanov, foundation, bribes, vineyards, and dacha.

This YouTube documentary film describes the corruption schemes organised by the PM, including the work of charity organisations and businessmen helping him to maintain his industry. Navalny mentions the luxury items, which, according to him, the PM supposedly possesses yachts, vineyards, dacha (country houses), etc. (Navalny 2017b):

One episode with a country estate and a gift worth 5 billion rubles is enough to send both Usmanov and Medvedev to the felon’s dock, but we’ll continue digging. This is far from all. How Medvedev built himself a secret dacha in the mountains. OK, so

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supplier of “truth” as opposed to information from corrupted elites and television channels that support them. “Think about it, and subscribe to our channel, because we tell the truth here, unlike your own deceitful and unconstructive TV” (Navalny 2017c). Part of this cluster is associated with ways to communicate truth in the conditions of the electoral authoritarian regime, where the mass media is under government control. Previous discussion noted how Navalny circumvents such controls by using the formats of alternative journalism, however, the word “truth” opens a broader perspective.

The symbols of “truthful” communication are illuminated through discussions of channels, instruments, formats, genres, and other means of communication that are or are not available to Navalny and his team to express his “truth”. These are words like video, investigation, information, media, TV, film, Internet, and documents. In almost every video, Navalny repeats the same phrase at the end, such as “Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here.” Navalny uses the symbols of “truth” to support his claim that his way of communication is the most trustworthy in Russia as opposed to the information provided by mass media and ruling elites (Navalny2017e): “Hi there, it’s Navalny. I am recording this video, because they’ve already exposed me on the state-owned TV channels, and there’s no way I can weasel out of this.” The antagonism of his claims together with the contraposition of mainstream and biased mainstream media to new journalistic formats fits his populist paradigm and style of communication.

The rest of the words had little obvious connectivity under this topic; these include palaces, assets, authorities, children, criminal, national, Anti-corruption Foundation, and jail. So, in order to investigate the theme more in detail, I changed the configuration of the map in Leximancer, switching to the Concept Cloud view, which shows more accurate results of connectivity between words as per Figure 5.4. From this Figure we can see that the words palaces, assets and Anti-Corruption Foundation are connected to the group of words under the themes of corruption industry, as described above. The words national, authorities, children, jail, and film are more connected with the theme Russia and people. So, I excluded those words from the “truth” cluster, the main theme of this cluster, and added the word film which is also connected to ways of communicating one's truth.

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Another group of words can be merged as the representation of civic identity, which refers to the ordinary citizens to whom Navalny appeals to (to support him as a candidate, to vote, to protest, to fight corruption, etc.). This theme also includes the ways and places to participate in civic life. These are words such as people, rallies, support, cities, citizens, streets, fight, protest, residents, and children. Children constitute a specific group inside this theme, as it is argued that during some of the protests children and school students were one of the influential groups of Navalny’s supporters during his protests (Human Rights Watch 2017). Navalny even made a separate video for them called “To schoolchildren and students!” (Navalny 2017e). In the following piece, which contains many words from the cluster, Navalny (2018k) is talking on the elite’s attempts to impact schoolchildren’s participation in politics:

That’s why these countries are rich: when the government works poorly there, people go out on the streets and express their opinion, and the government tries to improve. And when everyone keeps silent, when everything is forbidden, when schoolchildren and students are told: “don’t come to the protest, obey, believe in lies and repeat them”, instead of the development of Russia, we get the postal drone for 1,2 million rubles17.

Also, the word friends can be related to this group. Often Navalny calls his audience “friends”, but at the same time, the words are also used to show the nepotism of Russian elites as in the case containing the words family, son, and wife from a corruption-industry theme. National identity is represented in texts by the words Russia, country and national.

In sum, in this cluster of concepts, we can see the main elements of the Russian political system: civil society and, associated with it, symbols but also political actors and governmental institutions, which Navalny criticises and opposes to. The use of emotionally-coloured words such as lies, crooks, and rich in the same group only confirms this fact and related to the populist style of communication. Navalny appeals to “the people” and their civic identity to fight and hold accountable the corrupted elite.

17 Navalny refers to the event, when The Post of Russia, a state company, bought an expensive drone and it crashed with the first flight (Krutov 2018).

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5.1.4 The main themes of Navalny’s communication Overall, after interpreting the themes and its symbols, I distinguish four main thematic categories of Navalny’s YouTube communication. These are elections, corruption industry, Russian political system, and truth and ways of communicating, all of which are mentioned in Table 5.2.

Table 5-2: Main themes and words/concepts from 52 English transcripts of Navalny's videos

Themes Themes in Words/concepts Leximancer Elections “Elections” elections, campaign, vote, political, system, public, school, police

Corruption industry “House” rubles, million, money, Medvedev, official, company, “Rubles” billion, bought, pay, taxes, yacht, apartment, prime, oligarch, secret, Usmanov, budget, offshore, foundation, bribes, vineyards, family, dacha, property, son, business, oil, wife, head, income, accounts, house, land, estate, villa, sq, purchase, building, owner, residence, expensive, price, Italian, private, car, palaces, assets, Anti-corruption foundation, salary

Russian political “Russia” Russia, people, Putin, corruption, country, rallies, system government, city, support, friends, lies, citizens, streets, power, Kremlin, law, anti-corruption, rich, president, United Russia, fight, mayor, regime, party, governor, protest, residents, crooks, national, authorities, children, jail

Truth and ways of “Truth” truth, video, investigation, TV, Navalny, information, communicating media, court, film, internet, documents

The elections theme reflects Navalny's pretentions for political power in the conditions of electoral authoritarianism. Legally, he is not able to “hold” power due to a monopoly of power of the current Russian political elite; however, this does not prevent him from communicating these pretentions verbally through digital instruments.

The corruption industry theme consists of symbols of wealth that, according to Navalny, Russian authorities possess; these can be financial-fiscal items or items of property. Corruption and anti-corruption discourses play a significant role in the global and national policies and comprise an industry in Sampson’s (2010) terms. In 2018, Transparency International (2018), an international anti-corruption organisation, ranked Russia as 138th out of 180 countries, where 180 is the highest level of corruption. Navalny’s ACF aims at fighting corruption and fits this anti-corruption logic neatly, being an NGO led by an activist, Navalny, not only fights corruption but

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also produces the content and symbols of anti-corruptionism in Russia. In the Russian context, this discourse is also connected with the nepotism of elites, when friends and families of officials earn political rent from the regime, where bribes or other support of politicians leads to greater benefits than the cost much lower than the value of the political favours that are gained. The cornerstone of the corruption industry in Navalny’s discourse was the investigation of the corruption of then-PM Dmitry Medvedev. The fixation of corruption items together with its embodiment in the high- ranking politician was a resonance case in the Russian corruption industry.

The Russian political system theme includes different political and non-political actors operating inside of the country. The words also indicate the appeal of Navalny to the people, their civic identity and political rights. In this discourse, Navalny opposes himself to a corrupt elite and the monopoly of political power specific to Russian society.

Finally, the ways of communication the truth maps the ways in which Navalny can communicate his “truth” in Russia. These include channels, formats, and genres such as investigations, documents, video, film, and the Internet. These are crucial digital instruments including YouTube with its instruments that are helping to create or disseminate “truth” available to the activist in the absence of mass media freedom in Russia.

5.1.5 Summary Navalny actively uses digital media, namely YouTube, to communicate his criticism towards the establishment, develop his anti-corruption industry as well as to gain support from voters during elections. Being an active citizen, a journalist, and a politician rolled into one, he uses different narratives and symbols to attract more users and attention to his persona across the political arena. For these purposes, he uses a populist content described in Section 2.3.1, involving an appeal to “the people” as opposed to the corrupt Putin’s elite, allowing him to unite several themes consonant with each other. As this research shows, these are the topics of Russian political system, corruption industry, elections, and also ways to communicate one’s “truth”, mostly Navalny’s “truth”. All these themes contain antagonism of ordinary people towards officials (elections, Russian political system), corruptioners (corruption industry), and mass media (ways of communicating the truth).

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These themes set the discourse of Navalny, they fit the picture of corruption and system crisis, where the political system is “sick” and “rotten” and the mass media are lying, while Navalny presents himself as an alternative to this apocalyptic background. All of these give him different thematical categories to disseminate in his mediated content, full of different symbols which can attract more supporters. While this section explored what Navalny is talking about, the next section investigates whom Navalny is talking about.

5.2 TARGETING EXECUTIVE AND ECONOMIC POWERS IN RUSSIA

5.2.1 Introduction This section analyses the secondary excerpts of Navalny’s videos and their integration into the populist character of Navalny’s communication. Secondary excerpts, as outlined in Section 4.3, are the inserted elements on the video which do not consist of Navalny’s direct narrations and other hosts; they contain speeches of other actors and references to the earlier videos of Navalny inserted in the documentary-style video. Sometimes they can serve as evidence itself in a form of the video with discredited actors in it. The secondary excerpts that do not contain actors’ speech are considered as not meaningful for this research and marked as “not specified”. These can be the sounds of a laugh, songs, and different video transitions. However, in general, all secondary excerpts break direct narrations of Navalny or other hosts in the video and helps Navalny in the video to proceed to the next idea in his narration accompanied by the change of image. Being a necessary part of the video production process, secondary excerpts fulfil a practical purpose of the transition of one piece of narration to another. They can also be inserted to provide the factual evidence supporting a direct narrative of Navalny, being of what can be called as “video-citations”. Lastly, secondary excerpts can be used for entertaining purposes, consisting of scenes from the movies, video clips, to attract more views and user’s attention to the issues discussed in the videos. Secondary excerpts always contain speech or conversations of different actors of political communication (except for not specified excerpts and entertaining secondary excerpts). The actor, in this regard, is a person involved in political communication, an author of a speech on secondary excerpts. Employing the method of quantitative analysis, outlined in RS2, Section 4.4.1, I used the classification of

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populist actors and characteristics of the Russian political system to categorise main actors to whom Navalny refers in his videos.

5.2.2 Pro-Putin and pro-people camps: the content analysis of PC actors’ categories The selected sample consisted of 344 secondary excerpts. Fifty secondary excerpts were coded under the category “not specified”, 36 excerpts were coded as entertainment elements such as scenes from the movies, video clips, talk shows, and video memes without actors of PC. The remaining 258 excerpts contained a reference to one or more actors of political communication. The number of references to the categories of actors can be seen in Table 5.3, and in the visual format in Figure 5.5. The most referred category of actors in secondary excerpts of Navalny’s videos was executive power. This category contains the biggest number of actors – nine – compared to the other groups. It also comprises two high-ranking politicians, mostly criticised by Navalny, such as President Putin and former PM Medvedev. The second most referred actors constitute mainstream pro-government media whom Navalny also opposes to as an alternative source of the truthful information in Russia, as he claims in his YouTube resources. The representatives of economic powers in Russia appeared 35 times in secondary excerpts, which is half a number of executive power references. The sub-category of “the people”, who are neutral or not linked to Putin’s elite is the fourth most mentioned category on the secondary excerpts. Among the least represented categories of actors in secondary excerpts are judicial power, opposition politicians, intellectuals, Orthodox Church, and repressive state apparatus. The low appearance of non-systemic oppositional politicians who can resist effectively to the incumbent elite in secondary excerpts can be described through their small numbers in Russia. The clergy of the Orthodox Church often provides support to the existing elite; however, this mostly happens during the election periods. However, zero references to judicial power and a few references to repressive state apparatus require further explanation and analysis. These two categories of actors should presumably be highly represented in Navalny’s videos. Navalny is often arrested by the police and other possessors of hard power in Russia Navalny. In addition, his online content is blocked by the court decisions, Navalny, in his turn, often appeals to European and international courts and sometimes wins cases there. The reasons for the low appearance of these two categories of actors in secondary

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excerpts can be the public closeness of these organisations. Compared to other categories of actors, they might not use media resources often to inform about their activities.

Table 5-3: Number of references and sources (videos) consisting of references to the category of actors in Navalny’s videos

# Name of the category Number of Number of Relative total total frequency of references sources the number of to the (videos) sources category with containing a reference(s) reference to the to a category category towards the number of selected videos 1. Executive power 75 25 0.32 2. Mainstream media 54 16 0.21 3. Not specified 50 - - 4. Entertainment elements 36 - - 5. Economic powers 35 9 0.12 6. Citizens not linked to Putin's elite 25 18 0.23 7. Navalny, ACF, Navalny LIVE 24 17 0.22 8. Citizens linked to Putin's elite 21 11 0.14 9. Legislative power 9 8 0.10 10. Media not aligned with Putin's elite 7 4 0.05 11. Repressive state apparatus 4 4 0.05 12. Orthodox Church 2 1 0.01 13. Intellectuals 1 1 0.01 14. Opposition politicians 1 1 0.01 15. Judicial power 0 0 0.00

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For example, the activities of the army, or Federal Security Service, or different courts are often not open to the public. Navalny cannot have access to these resources either. However, it can also be personal or political reasons why Navalny does not use or only uses a minimum of the speeches and conversations of these actors in his discourses. He might be simply avoiding further harassment and arrests. With the existent data on the number of references to the categories, it can be also calculated how many actors in secondary excerpts belong to pro-Putin or pro- people “camps” according to Navalny. The first camp consists of members of Putin’s elite including ordinary people who express a positive attitude towards the elite. Sometimes they can express anti-Navalny views. Another “camp” consists of “the people”, Navalny himself, independent media and politicians who express neutral or negative opinion towards Putin’s elite and are associated with “the people”. The judicial power category was excluded from the analysis due to an absence of references. The visual representation of the distribution of the references between the two camps can be seen in Figure 5.6. As Figure 5.6 demonstrates, Navalny uses the discourses of pro-Putin actors the most: in 201 (78 per cent) references as opposed to 57 (23 per cent) of references to pro-people actors. Based on this, it can be concluded that Navalny uses secondary excerpts to stress the anti-establishment sentiments and provide supporting speeches and conversations to his narratives to discredit the elite and, linked to them, citizens. NVivo allows counting of how many sources (videos) contain reference to the category of actors on secondary excerpts. The software can determine the frequency of appearance the categories in a selected sample of 77 videos. The distribution of references to categories of actors on secondary excerpts throughout the videos is shown in Figure 5.7. As Figure 5.7 shows, the executive power references are distributed the most among the selected sample of videos. In other words, 25 out of 77 videos contain at least one reference to executive power. However, despite the low number of references to people not linked to the elite, they have a high number of appearances throughout the 77 videos. Eighteen videos contain references to them. This is the second most distributed category of actors in secondary excerpts; and as the chart from Figure 5.7 shows, executive power and citizens not linked to Putin’s elite categories of actors are distributed almost equally across the videos.

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5.2.3 Main actors appeared in secondary excerpts Based on the previous results, this section will explore in-detail which actors were referred to the most in secondary excerpts. The results are shown in Figure 5.8.18 The figure indicates that the most referred actor on secondary excerpts is Vladimir Putin. Navalny uses the excerpts containing fragments of Putin’s speeches, press conferences, and interviews to supplement general critique towards the President. Considering Putin’s leading role as well as authoritarian and monopolistic nature of his power, Navalny would have been using the secondary excerpts to criticise Putin mainly. Among the most referred actors of the pro-Putin “camp” are also pro- government journalists such as Vladimir Solovyov (Rossiya 1) and Dmitry Kiselyov (Rossiya 1), mainstream media outlets, businessmen, Prime Minister Medvedev, and citizens linked to Putin’s elite. Citizens not linked to the elite, ACF, and Navalny himself, were mentioned the most within the pro-people “camp”. Judges from different courts, most of the actors from the repressive state apparatus category such as General Prosecutor, regional prosecutors, Roskomnadzor, Russian army, and other employees of military organisations do not appear in secondary excerpts at all. The same is true of federal subjects’ ministers and Federal Services representatives in Russia. In line with the distribution analysis in the previous section, the distribution of actors on all of the videos was calculated, as shown in Figure 5.9. The chart from Figure 5.9 indicates that Navalny equally uses secondary excerpts with Putin and ordinary citizens throughout the videos to stress their importance. These two actors represent the main populist entities: “the elite” and “the people”. Putin as a leader of the elite is shown by Navalny as the main actor responsible for the political crisis in Russia; whereas Navalny equally uses the voice of the people on secondary excerpts who are not supporting the elite and to whom he can still appeal. The secondary excerpts compound of entertainment elements was excluded from the analysis, as they do not answer the criteria for the sampling and do not contain speeches of political communication actors. In total, these are 36 secondary excerpts with scenes from various movies and video clips distributed across 21 videos (out of 77). This is a significant number of references given the number of references to

18 Actors not mentioned at all in the secondary excerpts were excluded from the diagram.

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other actors and categories. Entertainment elements help to mediatise Navalny’s content to the YouTube platform.

5.2.4 Summary Overall, the analysis of secondary excerpts showed that the most referred actors were representatives of executive power in Russia, economic powers and the pro- government media. These categories of actors constitute the core of Navalny’s critique in secondary excerpts. In more detail, among the most referred actors in secondary excerpts were mostly mentioned President Putin, former PM Medvedev, pro- government journalists and media outlets, and businesspeople. Navalny uses secondary excerpts to strengthen and personalise his critique in the main excerpts. Among the pro-people actors were Navalny himself, his organisations, and ordinary citizens. Despite the significant prevalence of the total number of references to pro- Putin actors compared to pro-people actors in secondary excerpts, their distribution throughout the videos is almost the same. Considering that they are the main populist entities in Navalny’s view, this is another factor of adding to the populist fleur of Navalny’s communication.

5.3 DISCREDITING THE ELITE AND APPEALING TO “THE PEOPLE”

This section analyses the ideological content of Navalny’s YouTube videos through content analysis. The content dimension constitutes of an appeal to “the people” and “discrediting the elites”, as was described in Section 2.3.2. This section identifies and quantifies these populist categories in Navalny’s text through computational content analysis of the main excerpts of Navalny’s videos’ text transcripts. Main excerpts its parts of Navalny’s narration which contain his uninterrupted direct speech in the video and its respective text. Using the methodological procedures outlined in RS3, Section 4.4.2, I distinguished four types of populism that Navalny uses in his narration discrediting Putin’s elite and appealing to “the people”.

5.3.1 Different “populisms” For this part of the analysis, 331 main excerpts were coded and analysed in computational content analysis software NVivo. Main excerpts were labelled in the software as “cases” and the categories for coding as “nodes”. The coder coded four ideological content components of populism (call to action, simple addressing, empty

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discrediting, and discrediting with evidence) as stated earlier and ten categories of the elite (see Appendix F). Then, matrix coding or cross-tabulation procedures, were applied to see the co-occurrences of categories in main excerpts. Among 331 cases, 301 (90 per cent) cases contain at least one of the four sub- categories of populist ideological content. This evidences a rich and highly populist nature of Navalny’s discourse. The majority of cases (217 cases, 66 per cent), could be classified as “fully populist” excerpts, as they contain both of the core components of populist ideology within one excerpt: an “appeal to the people” and “discrediting the elite”. Further 54 (16 per cent) cases contain only the “discrediting the elite” component. Another 30 (9 per cent) cases contain only “appeal to the people”. Within 217 cases of “fully populist” excerpts, there are different combinations of subcategories that could occur as per Table 5.4. Each of these types of combinations will be described below respectively (with more detailed analysis following in Chapter 6).

Table 5-4: Content analysis of the combination of sub-categories of populism in Navalny’s YouTube communication

Combination of sub-categories Number of appearances Empty discrediting + simple addressing 102 Empty discrediting + call to action 57 Discrediting with evidence + simple addressing 47 Discrediting with evidence + call to action19 11

Superficial (passive) populism These are the excerpts that contain categories “empty discrediting” and “simple addressing” within one excerpt. This is the most frequent category of populism appearing within Navalny’s main excerpts and was seen in 102 out of 217 cases. These excerpts do not contain a radical invitation to action, and neither do they contain evidence of the corruption investigations, collected by Navalny and his colleagues. Navalny in these excerpts is merely addressing “the people” to associate himself with the audience, that he is the part of the people’s entity. Furthermore, in these excerpts, he denigrates the elites with empty accusations, creating a negative Aureole around

19 Note that “Call to action”, according to previous descriptions contains “simple addressing”; while “discrediting with evidence” contains “empty discrediting”. This means that the excerpt containing “empty discrediting” and “call to action” will contain simple addressing too; while the excerpts containing “discrediting with evidence” and “simple addressing” will also contain empty discrediting. The type “Discrediting with evidence” and “call to action” will contain all four distinguished elements of populism. For the simplification of the categorisation of populism, these details were omitted.

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them, using negative emotional wording than real evidence or facts of their corruption crimes or misconduct. This type of populism here and later will be dubbed “superficial populism”, as it does not envisage any form of political action from the people and it is not created by the canons of the investigative journalism based on facts and pieces of evidence. It represents a conversational form of populism which does not require action from the audience and extra effort from the narrator.

Investigative populism

This type of populism is observed in the excerpts that contain sub-categories “discrediting with evidence” and “simple addressing” (47 excerpts out of 217). Unlike “radical populist” excerpts, here Navalny provides here evidence based on his investigations, material from social media, official documents, and analytics from different sources that confirm corruption crimes of the elites. He uses them to support his journalistic investigations and persuade “the people” about the elite’s inability to govern. At the same time, he uses simple forms of addressing and appealing to people to underline the journalistic and factual nature of his communication.

Radical (participative) populism

The excerpts that contain sub-categories “empty discrediting” and “call to action”. This is the second most frequent category appearing within excerpts (57 out of 217 cases). Navalny does not provide any details of the elite’s crimes; he is merely denigrating them. The main emphasis in these excerpts is on calling people to participate in politics actively. Navalny invites people to vote for him, subscribe to his YouTube channel, boycott the elections, and other forms of political action. These excerpts presuppose pro-active position from citizens or the audience.

Advocacy populism

This type of excerpts appears the least number of times among Navalny’s narrations, 11 cases out of 217. It contains both a “call to action” and “discrediting with evidence” categories within one excerpt. These are the “active” ideological components of populism; the first one presupposes the action from the audience; the latter involves great investigative journalistic work and preparation from producers of his content. The prevalence of “superficial” excerpts can explain the lower number of these excerpts in Navalny’s speeches. It can also be explained through the equally

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important roles of Navalny as a journalist (creating journalistic investigations) and a politician (inviting to political action). The clear distinction between these two roles is confirmed by the approximately equal number of excerpts containing “investigative” and “radical” populism. However, further conclusions need more qualitative investigations into the content of these excerpts.

5.3.2 Main targets of the discrediting The methodological procedures for this analysis are outlined in RS3, Section 4.4.1. The results of the content analysis are in Table 5.5.

Table 5-5: Categories of the elites targeted by Navalny in his YouTube excerpts

Name of the category Number of excerpts with the reference to a category Executive power 145 Economic powers 87 Mainstream pro-government media 33 Repressive state apparatus 24 Legislative power 19 Judicial power 8 Other actors of the elite excluding out groups 6 Other organs of federal power 6 Intellectuals 2 Orthodox Church 0

The category that was most frequently mentioned in the excerpts was executive power. This category refers to high-ranking officials like President Putin, then-PM Medvedev, the staff of the Presidential Administration, and the Russian Government. Together with the category economic powers, these are the most frequent categories mentioned throughout main excerpts. Navalny often accuses businesspeople, owners of big industries in Russia in corruption machinations of their connections to executive powers. However, he also creates separate investigations into the activities and properties of these businesspeople, for example, against businessmen Alisher Usmanov or the tycoon brothers, Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. This multiplies the number of references to this category.

Additionally, the specificities of the Russian regime imply a particular elite structure that is built on the existence of several economic clans or cliques centred around a politician or politicians. These clans support political power of a politician

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by providing him officially/unofficially financial support and obtain political rent. The members of the cliques represent major economic industries in Russia, such as oil and gas companies, defence industry, and other big businesses. Russian political science expert Minchenko authored an analytical report entitled Politburo 2.0 (Communication Group Minchenko Consulting 2019), where he lists the members of Putin’s inner circle and their balance of power. Five out of nine listed members of Putin’s inner circle are businessmen, which confirms their importance in the Russian political arena. Navalny, knowing that balance of power, targets these elite members consistently in his videos.

In addition to executive power and economic powers, mainstream media, repressive state apparatus, and legislative power form the core of the elite, discredited by Navalny the most. Representatives of judicial power, intellectuals, other organs of federal power, and other actors of the elite were the least mentioned categories in Navalny’s excerpts. Orthodox Church was not mentioned at all and therefore excluded from the following analysis. Other organs of federal power discredited by Navalny were, for example, the Central Electoral Commission, and the Central Bank.

The category other actors of the elite, which does not include out-groups was introduced to identify the actors that were not classified by the coder previously. This category after close analysis included six references, among them, references to the dominant party United Russia (5) and Pension Fund of Russia (1). The frequent mentioning of the dominant party in Russia led to the creation of another category of elite actors such as United Russia. Pension Fund does not relate to any other categories within a selected range, is not frequently mentioned and not significant for the sample; therefore, it will remain in the other actors' category. The results of the secondary excerpts analysis from Section 5.2 are consonant with the results of the analysis of main excerpts. There, executive power, mainstream media, economic powers, and legislative power were the most mentioned categories of the elite. In Figure 5.10, I analysed the mentioning of the actors of the elite in both secondary and main excerpts of Navalny’s text transcripts of the videos.20

20 In this comparison, I did not include pro-people actors as they were not analysed in main excerpts.

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As Figure 5.10. shows, the core categories of actors in main and secondary excerpts stay the same. Secondary excerpts can serve a complimentary function to main excerpts, where Navalny provides the examples, direct speeches and conversations of actors mentioned in the main excerpts, moreover, providing evidence of officials’ misconduct. In secondary excerpts, there are significantly fewer references to repressive state apparatus; this, as was explained previously, is an evidence of the public closeness of the military, defence forces, and other possessors of hard power in Russia. The communication of the representatives of repressive state apparatus in Russia mainly takes place through official channels and their press services, which makes this communication rigid and, perhaps, not interesting to the audience in the view of Navalny.

5.3.3 Summary

To sum up, through the quantitative content analysis of the ideological components of populism, four types of populism were revealed in Navalny’s communication as per Table 5.6.

Table 5-6: Types of populisms in Navalny’s narration based on the combination of sub-categories of populism

Discrediting the elite/appeal to the Simple addressing Call to action people Empty discrediting Superficial populism Radical populism Discrediting with evidence Investigative populism Advocacy populism

Superficial populism was prevalent in Navalny’s excerpts; it simply addresses the people and denigrates the elites without further evidence of their crimes. The second most frequent populism was radical populism, the populism that is calling people to action, and simply discredits the main actors of the elites. Investigative populism was used fewer times than radical in the excerpts. This type of populism

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involves journalistic practices, as it investigates the facts of corruption of the elites with further evidence of their crimes. The least popular populism in Navalny’s YouTube excerpts was advocacy populism, which has two main denominators: it calls people to action and gives evidence for the investigation of corruption within the same excerpt. The distinction between these populisms further emphasised the separation of two main roles of Navalny: as a politician and a journalist. Among the main categories of the elite that Navalny attempts to discredit, five constitute the core; these are: executive, legislative, economic powers, mainstream media, and the repressive apparatus. Except for the repressive state apparatus, Navalny discredits them in the main and secondary excerpts the most and provides additional video material to contain their speeches in the secondary excerpts to strengthen his narrative. Often, he disproves or criticises of what is being said in secondary excerpts by these elite actors in the main excerpts. Navalny uses journalistic investigations to denigrate mostly members of executive and economic powers in Russia. The first as the monopolists of political power in Russia, the latter as the most significant recipients of political rent in Russia. Section 5.1 analysed what Navalny talks about in his videos, Section 5.2 and 5.3.2 analysed whom is he talking about in his videos and Section 5.3.1 analysed what makes his communication populist. The next section looks at the structural elements of his communication, in other words, how Navalny’s YouTube narration is organised.

5.4 STRUCTURE OF NAVALNY’S POPULIST NARRATION

Knowing that Navalny uses four different types of populism in his narration, such as superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy, I can determine their place in the video to better understand the video structure. The methodological procedures for this stage of analyses are summarised in RS4, Section 4.4.1. Each video consisted of different types of populist excerpts located in different places as shown in Figure 5.11. Except for four types of populism, I also had excerpts which contained no populist content or only one sub-category of populism; all of these types were included in the analysis of the structure.

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The numbers in the cells represent the number of coded main excerpts which are located on the map according to their appearance in the video chronologically. The colours are explained in the Figure’s 5.11 legend. According to Figure 5.11, superficial populism excerpts are used by Navalny, mostly at the beginning and the middle of the videos. Navalny might use them to introduce the topic to the audience and the heroes of his populist attacks using simple forms of appealing and generalising the overall critique of the elite. He also uses them in the middle of the videos to maintain his populist narration. Rarely, he uses them in the end. Radical populism is mostly used by Navalny to finish his videos by calling people to political action. He does this in the end by finishing his message with a strong call that might be remembered by people. Seven videos from the sample consist of only one main excerpt – radical. In them, Navalny uses the same structure of the video: introduction of the topic, main narration, and conclusion. However, if this excerpt (video) contains at least one “call to action”, it is still considered as a radical excerpt. Investigative populism, as seen from Figure 5.11, is primarily used in the middle of the videos. In six cases, it is used as the introduction of the videos, where Navalny provides evidence of the elite’s crimes right at the beginning. Advocacy populism is predominantly used at the end of the videos on a par with radical populism. As with the case of radical excerpts, some advocacy excerpts are sole videos of Navalny. Navalny might use advocacy excerpts to strengthen the effect from his investigations by calling people to action and providing evidence of the investigation within the same excerpt. The excerpts with one sub-category of populism are mostly used in the beginning or in the middle of the videos. As with the case of superficial populism, they might serve the role of transition passages of speech between investigative and radical populism. Overall, Navalny uses different types of populist excerpts in different parts of the videos. Mostly he uses superficial populism in the beginning and the middle of the video, investigative excerpts in the middle and radical populist excerpts in the end to strengthen his overall message. The in-detail analysis of the meaning of these excerpts for his narration will be explored in Chapter 6. In the next section, the content of four types of populist excerpts will be investigated on a subject of compatibility with themes of Navalny’s communication.

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Table 5-7: Ranking of themes in types of populisms in Navalny’s communication

Type of populism/ Theme 1 density Theme 2 density Theme 3 density Theme 4 density ranking of themes superficial Russian political Corruption truth (1.8) elections (0.8) system (5.5) industry (2.1) radical Russian political elections (3.9) Corruption truth system (5.7) industry (3.1) investigative Corruption Russian political truth (1.9) elections (0) industry (7.3) system (2.5) advocacy Corruption Russian political truth (0.9) elections (0.3) industry (8.8) system (2.8)

Interpretation The analysis of the dominance of the themes in four types of populism of Navalny’s narration has shown the prevalence of two main themes across four types of populist excerpts; these are Russian political system and corruption industry themes which mostly have a higher density than other themes in Navalny’s videos (Figure 5.12). The overall populist context can explain the dominance of the Russian political system theme which consist of the main antagonistic entities operation involved in political process in Russia. The Russian political system theme constitutes a broader perception than populism, which include not only the particular populist actors, like government or the people but also among other things different ways how citizens can exercise their rights. Words such as streets, fight, corruption, protest, manifestations, strike, and movement situated in this theme can be attributed to the notion of citizen activism and protest activities to which Navalny’s often calls his audience. This theme sets discourse and agenda for following populist and gives the overview of how different actors operate in the Russian political regime. This explains the prevalence of this theme in radical populism excerpts, as the call to action can contain these words, connected with citizen activism. Navalny openly invites people to participate in protests and other political activities having the anti-establishment meaning. It also explains the dominance of the theme in superficial populism excerpts; perhaps, not calling to action, but Navalny mentions the main populist actors in these universal excerpts across his narration. The dominance of a corruption industry theme is seen in two types of populism: investigative and advocacy. As the analysis of themes in Section 5.1 showed, the theme corruption industry was the most significant in Navalny’s narration. This explains its

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higher density across almost all the types of populist excerpts in Navalny’s videos. The symbols of wealth, nepotism of the elites, and the corruption activities of the Russian PM lie at the heart of Navalny’s investigations. From the passive type of populism in Navalny excerpts (superficial populism) to more sophisticated forms as advocacy populism, the density of the corruption industry theme is rising, as can be seen in Figure 5.12. The density of this theme is the highest in advocacy populism excerpts. Its extensive use can trigger more negative emotions from the audience, presented by Navalny in a contrast: a corrupt elite, possessing luxurious items as opposed to poor people experiencing hardship in modern Russia. The theme elections was not dominant in any types of populisms of Navalny’s narration. However, it was associated the most with radical populism, as seen in Figure 5.15. Interestingly, theme elections was not used in investigative populism at all, which can evidence of the separation of the roles of Navalny as a politician trying to be elected or organise protests and a journalist undertaking investigations. Navalny tends not to mix these roles and respective rhetoric, or mixes them rarely, as in advocacy populism, to maximise the participatory effect of his message for the audience with the strong prevalence of a corruption industry theme. In the same manner, the theme of truth and ways to communicate it was not dominant across excerpts; however, it was almost equally associated with three types of the excerpts: superficial, radical, and investigative. Even though Navalny does not use this theme extensively, it is employed steadily and universally. He uses evidence and journalistic practices to speak his “truth” in investigative populism excerpts. In radical excerpts, he invites people to participate in protests and elections and speak their “truth” there. He uses the phrase “Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here” consistently at the end of his narration, which is another form of an online call to action used in radical excerpts. It is noteworthy that specific themes are associated with particular people in Navalny’s narration. Putin is situated in the Russian political system theme, Medvedev in the corruption industry theme and Navalny himself in the truth theme. This evidences Navalny’s perception of these key people in the political arena, including himself. Navalny portrays himself as the “guardian of truth” in Russian political reality, and a fighter for citizens’ rights and justice; former PM Medvedev is used to symbolise the corruption in Russian establishment circles, which is why Navalny dedicated many videos to him and his corrupt activities. Putin can be portrayed more

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abstract, as the leader of the elite, which in populist terms is the embodiment of the enemy of “the people”, who led the Russian political system to crisis through his and his associates’ corruption. Overall, this section explored the dominance of the themes in types of populist excerpts of Navalny’s videos through the density. The density measures the average percentage of occurrence of the words from particular thematic categories in different types of populist excerpts (texts) in communication. Navalny’s communication includes four types of populist excerpts: superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy, as well as four dominant themes across his discourse: elections, corruption industry, Russian political system, and the notion of truth and how to communicate it. Corruption industry and Russian political system themes are equally dominant in these types of excerpts; whereas the elections theme is the most associated with radical populism; and the truth theme is almost universally applied among the majority of the excerpts.

5.6 SUMMARY

This chapter constitutes an exploration of YouTube communication of Navalny. Consisting of five research stages, I looked at what and whom Navalny is talking in his videos. In addition to what makes his communication populist and how he structurally organises his videos. I matched my newly formed research types of populism in Navalny’s narration with the most dominant themes of his communication.

Navalny uses particular communication themes consistently throughout the videos. In the theme elections, he stresses the importance of the electoral institution in Russia using special word-markers as well as show his political ambitions as a presidential candidate. In the theme Russian political system, he maps political and non-political actors in Russia, he opposes himself and “the people” to the establishment, showing the people how they can exercise their civil rights. A corruption industry theme prevails in Navalny’s communication; he uses words indicative of the elite’s wealth, nepotism, and the most resonant case of corruption of former Russian PM Medvedev. Finally, the theme truth and ways to communicate it underlines the struggle of Navalny to communicate his truth in the Russian society, demonstrating different instruments and channels that are or are not available to the activist.

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Navalny’s videos have an anti-elitist character; they target the Russian establishment more generally and individually. As the analysis of main and secondary excerpts of the videos shows, the core of the elite according to Navalny constitute representatives of executive power, economic powers, mainstream media, and the repressive state apparatus. They are mentioned or referred to the most in his videos. In the main excerpts, Navalny introduces, discredits and denigrates these and other members of Putin’s elite. In the secondary excerpts, he supports his main narratives about them showing the videos containing elite actors or provides video evidence of their misconduct by inserting these video elements in his direct narration.

Navalny’s communication is not only anti-elitist, but also people-centrist. The content analysis of main excerpts showed that he combines four sub-categories of populism which in combination create four types of populism that are mostly used in his narration. Superficial populism is mostly used at the beginning and the middle of narration, where he simply appeals to the audience and accuses elites in corruption and monopoly of power. In investigative populism excerpts, which are mostly used in the middle of narration, talking to “the people”, he provides evidence of elite’s crimes using journalistic practices and methods of the data collection. He usually finishes with radical populism, which calls people to action, inviting different forms of political activism. In rare cases, when he wants to strengthen his radical message, he provides evidence of the crimes of the elite in addition to the radical call, that was dubbed as advocacy populism in his narration.

Across four types of populism, the corruption industry theme is prevalent in Navalny’s narration. By extending and enriching the discourse by items of officials’ wealth, he can trigger negative emotions from the audience towards the elite. The theme Russian political system is associated with different actors involved in politics in Russia with a focus on particular political rights of citizens, the places and methods I which they can exercise them. Radical excerpts seem to be associated with an elections theme, as both represent different forms of political participation. The theme truth is not frequent, but equally important for Navalny in all parts of his narration.

Overall, we had a first glimpse of Navalny’s communication. The following chapter will look in detail at the types of populist narrations in Navalny’s videos, using qualitative content analysis.

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Chapter 6: Four types of populism in Navalny’s communication

This chapter explores four types of populism revealed in Navalny’s narration in detail through the qualitative content analysis. Four sections will analyse the core contents and aspects of the excerpts of each type of populism through the analytical procedure of qualitative content analysis described by Mayring (2014). The methodological procedures for this chapter are summarised in RS6, Section 4.4.2. The chapter will look closely at the main characteristics of these populist excerpts, including their meaning, topics, and structure, in order to define what each type of populism means in Navalny’s narration.

6.1 SUPERFICIAL POPULISM

Formal characteristics of the excerpts In Section 5.3, 102 excerpts fell under the category superficial populism containing the populist sub-categories simple addressing and empty discrediting. These excerpts do not contain strong indicators of practices of investigative journalism and civic activism used by Navalny. Instead, they highlight the pure populist nature of these parts of his narration and serve as smooth transitions between other parts of the video. The following sections will look closer at the content of these excerpts. Twenty excerpts chosen for the analysis by random sampling are short in length, on average, 197 words each. The longest excerpt within the sample is 738 words, whereas the shortest is 35 words long.

Summary of the excerpts: Main characteristics The excerpts in this category have a general character and do not have a dominant theme across them. They can equally cover corruption, protests, and election topics; they can be parts of populist attack over the elites or can be of specific YouTube genre, for example, the “unboxing” video, a video that “features the unpacking of commercial products” (Marsh 2015, 369). This stresses their universal character and applicability through different parts of the narration. Mostly these excerpts are located in the middle and the beginning of the narration, as Section 5.4 showed. In this sample, excerpts do not have a clear introduction or conclusion and serve as a continuation of

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the narrator’s thought. In two cases in the sample are the excerpts the introductions of the videos, where Navalny introduces himself and a topic of his video, as in the following excerpt (Navalny 2018l):

Hi, it’s Navalny. So, let’s discuss what we’ve achieved in the 15 months since the moment I announced I would participate in these elections. Putin got scared and didn’t allow me to the elections, after which we called for a voter strike and a boycott of these elections. The elections took place two days ago, and yesterday almost all the ballots were counted. So, we have the numbers now. And the number one question is: was the voters strike effective? My answer, is yes, of course. You’ll ask me now: how so, Alexey? The turnout was 65% at the last elections, and now it’s 67.5%, so it increased. How can you call this a success? Let me explain. First of all. Our strike was successful because it became more important than the elections themselves. This was the main political struggle. Not Putin competing with those marionettes he hand- picked, nobody cared about that at all. We predicted the result of the elections to the accuracy of 1% many months in advance, it couldn’t be any different.

In these parts of the narration, Navalny discredits many actors of the elite from different categories that I identified in Section 5.3. These are President Putin, former PM Medvedev, businesspeople, Deputy PMs, Presidential Administration staff, heads of the State Corporations, governors, pro-government journalists, and pro-government media outlets. In most of the excerpts, the populist attack is personalised; however, it is also diffused across actors, which further confirms my earlier statement about the general character of these excerpts. Navalny discredits actors of the elite with different accusations mentioning their crimes and misconduct. The list of accusations includes giving bribes, electoral manipulations, the absence of reaction from authorities to corruption investigations, arrests and raids of peaceful protesters, the hypocrisy of the officials in the local tragedy, lies on television, personal and physical attacks on Navalny, and others. For example, describing the luxurious properties of pro-government journalist Solovyev, he uses one of those accusations (Navalny 2017n):

He sets himself apart within this conglomerate of liars, and most of them try to stay away from Solovyov. But the state loves and values him so much

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that he has occupied all the political programs on TV and radio. Rightfully so — where else would you find a person who’s bold-faced enough to call everyone who came to the anti-corruption rallies “the children of bribetakers”.

However, in these excerpts, he did not provide the results of his investigations or in other words, evidence of Putin’s elite’s crimes. Appealing to “the people”, Navalny uses mostly words we, us, and our meaning him and “the people”. He applies this association of him and “the people” to different contexts. For instance, he stresses that success in protests or boycott of the elections is the result of the collective effort. He calls authorities to answer people’s questions and to comply with their demands and promises to protect their interests as in the following excerpt (Navalny 2017o):

And I can promise to all of you that for everyone, across Russia, who will be arrested and unlawfully held accountable for our rallies on March 26, I will compile a petition to the European court, even if there are hundreds of such people. Even if there are thousands. And we’ll win each case hearing, and everyone will get a compensation. Second. How can they forbid me to hold a peaceful rally in Moscow? Here’s the city center. You mean to tell me it has not a single square, where people with questions about corruption could congregate? I mean, I took part in the elections of the mayor of Moscow, and even though it was a fraudulent election, I received 30% of the vote. So, I know for sure that I represent the interests of millions of Moscow residents.

He is also merely narrating to and addressing “the people”, describing the corruption crimes of the elite or his strategy of fighting with corruption. This represents an entry- level of communication of populists with citizens which does not motivate them to any political action and can be communicated in a few words.

Summary Overall, superficial populism is located at “the surface” of Navalny’s narration. It does not require a lot of effort from him as a narrator and an investigator; he does not provide evidence of elite crimes as well as not motivating people to activism through radical appeals. In some way, it can also be entitled as passive populism, which does not require actions from either the narrator or the audience. These excerpts can link other parts of narration or serve as the introduction to the investigations or radical appeals. The themes of these excerpts are also diffused and cover topics from

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corruption to elections. The elite’s critique has personalised and diffused nature; it targets many different actors of the elite. Whereas simple levels of association of Navalny with “the people” through the words we, us, and our can indicate Navalny’s intention to build one collective identity opposed to the elite. These principles lay at the core of populist ideology, and they can explain the dominance of these excerpts in Navalny’s populist narration (102 excerpts out 299). Although there are a large number of cases, this reflects the fact that this populism may be communicated in as little as one or several words, calling someone a “thief”, a “liar” or saying “we” and “us”. This is in contrast to investigative populism, which requires time at two levels — time to do the investigation, and time to present a body of evidence arising from the investigation. However, as the following analysis shows, these effort-consuming and more sophisticated populist excerpts are also present in Navalny’s communication.

6.2 INVESTIGATIVE POPULISM

Formal characteristics of the excerpts From 47 investigative populism excerpts revealed in Section 5.3, the sub-sample of ten excerpts was chosen for the qualitative analysis. The investigative populism category contains two sub-categories of populism, such as discrediting with evidence and simple addressing. Discrediting the elite with evidence is a strong indicator of investigative journalism, a practice which Navalny uses extensively in his videos. The following qualitative content analysis will look closely at the content of these excerpts. Investigative populism excerpts are of medium length: the shortest excerpt is 116 words, whereas the longest excerpt is 733 words. The average investigative populism excerpt in the sample is 316 words long. As with the case of radical populism, medium excerpts can provide more material for the qualitative analysis and, therefore, do not need the extension of the sample.

Summary of the excerpts: Main characteristics All of the chosen excerpts are parts of the major investigations into the elite’s corruption that Navalny conducted and published on YouTube. In the sample, these are the excerpts from investigations into the corruption of President Putin (3), former PM Medvedev (1), journalist Solovyev (2), Deputy PMs Prihodko (2) and Shuvalov (1), and Deputy Slutsky (1). These texts consist of the evidence of elite crimes and misconduct which Navalny provides in his videos. They also point to the particular

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representatives of the elite who are guilty of corruption, in Navalny’s view. Navalny performs to his audience as an amateur journalist with an alternative agenda. His investigations oppose to the Soviet-style media logic (Lowrey & Erzikova 2013), being more Westernised and opening paths to a pluralism of ideas arising from criticism of the establishment through investigations into elite corruption.

The anti-corruption theme is at the heart of these excerpts. The expensive properties, nepotism of the elite, and corruption crimes of the officials instigate Navalny to hold the investigations. Navalny mentions the following luxurious items that Russian officials supposedly possess palace, yacht, land, luxurious apartment, expensive house, villa, manors, and others. He mentions cases of nepotism when close friends of Putin and Medvedev possess expensive properties are involved in their corruption schemes. He describes several corruption crimes such as when Deputy PM of Russia sailed on a yacht of the oligarch or PM received a big manor from an oligarch as a gift. All of these items and facts are enriching the anti-corruption “industry” (Sampson 2010) described by Navalny.

Section 5.4 showed investigative populism mostly located in the middle of Navalny’s narration. Most of the excerpts from this sample do not have a clear introduction either. The excerpts do not introduce the topic or the main “suspects” of the corruption investigations; instead they start by listing the pieces of evidence straightaway. Only in one excerpt from the sample Navalny introduced himself, the topic and the reason for the investigation. All of the selected excerpts seem not to completely finish with listing the evidence, and most likely are followed by other excerpts in the narration. Evidently, most of these excerpts are used in the middle of Navalny’s speech, which requires further investigation of the whole sample.

As per Section 2.2.3, in these excerpts Navalny can be considered as a fully- fledged journalist due to the journalist roles that he practices in these parts of narration (drawing from Hanitzsch & Vos 2017). From a normative point of view, he represents an opposing style to mainstream journalism in Russia, which mostly is concentrated on public relations accompaniment of the current elite. Navalny confronts this notion by showing unseen facts, schemes of corruption, combining with innovative digital practices of journalism as will be shown later. In a cognitive sense, Navalny has not been socialised into journalistic culture due to a different origin of his profession, as a lawyer, and this is associated with him using more emotionally-coloured language and

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choosing genres, formats, channels for his investigations without looking back on the editorial office or other mainstream media outlets. Those elements also make his project distinctive in a media-controlled environment. His performative role is shown the most in these excerpts, as Navalny presents the most substantive results of his investigations set out in the form of different facts, evidence, and inferences based on this evidence. Below is one of the investigative excerpts from Navalny’s documentaries on YouTube into mainstream media journalist Vladimir Solovyev (Navalny 2017n):

But don’t think he’s a simpleton. Lying is a very profitable business in Russia. Let’s see what sort of lifestyle this character can now afford thanks to his full lack of conscience and his loose tongue. The story of Solovyov’s miraculous enrichment started earlier than you think. He wasn’t a lap dog of Putin only, but also, of anyone who was ready to support a poor journalist financially. In 2004, for instance, he used to love Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov quite a lot. Then he went to the city administration and said: “I love you so much, but I have such a small apartment”. And the officials were grateful. By Luzhkov’s personal request he was given a four-room apartment in the center of Moscow, in one of the new elite houses. This one. On Dolgorukovskaya Street. Moscow administration managed to find a 160 m2 apartment, had it evaluated by three different methods and sold it to Solovyov for the lowest of the estimated prices – 2,5 million rubles. Now hold on a second. Something’s not right here. Why, of course! The average price of residential space in central Moscow in the month of the deal was $2600/m2. And in such an elite new building it must have been higher — let’s modestly suppose that it was $3000. If we multiply this by the size of the apartment, it turns out that the real MARKET value of Solovyov’s apartment was over 13 million rubles. Let me remind you, this was 12 years ago. 13 million is still a large sum of money, and back then it was simply huge. So, with mayor’s aid, Solovyov purchased an apartment for 5 times less that it was actually worth. And the difference was paid by us. The apartment still belongs to him. And it’s worth much more now. According to the prices of other apartments in this house, about 91 million rubles. After that, our boy continued to lie on TV and earn quite lot of money from it.

The investigative journalism genre presupposes the presence of the evidence that in Navalny’s case can confirm the corruption crimes of the ruling elite. It is vital to

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look at the nature of the evidence that Navalny provides for his YouTube audience. Within the sample, Navalny is based on such evidence as:

• Drone footage (4)21

• Social media data (3)

• Photo evidence (1)

• Investigation of commercial (non-governmental) media (1)

• Interview (1)

• Publicly available CV of the person (1)

• database22 (1)

The most popular form of evidence for Navalny’s investigations is the use of drone video footage. Video is one of the trustable forms of evidence for investigative journalism (Ettema & Glasser 1984). Drone footage specifically can be one of the most accessible journalistic instruments available to Navalny and his team. As investigative reporting requires more preparation and effort from journalists to collect evidence, these parts of the video might require more time to prepare for Navalny and his team. Navalny seems to use drone footage often, requiring advanced skills of drone journalism and a demonstration of it in his videos (Navalny 2018с):

But today I have something new for you. Many of you, of course, remember that recently we bought a new cool quadcopter and as soon as it arrived, we started to figure out how it works, started to learn how to use it, and finally we did a test flight. We decided not to send it into a “foreign” trip or for a super difficult task, but just test it on the “old object”, which we shoot before but only on photo23.

Social media is another source of evidence for Navalny’s investigation. He often matches the posts from social media with officials’ statements or uses them to confirm the existence of the luxurious properties that officials possess due to corruption. In this

21 The number in brackets stand for the number of using this type of evidence within the sample 22 Rosreestr refers to The Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography in Russia 23 Translated by S . Glazunova from the original in Russian: “Но сегодня у меня для вас кое-что новенькое, многие из вас, конечно, помнят что недавно мы купили новый классный квадрокоптер, как только он к нам приехал, но мы сразу взялись с ним разбираться, учиться им управлять, ну и наконец дело дошло до пробного полета. Мы решили не отправлять его сразу в загранкомандировку или какой-то супер-сложное задание, а протестировать над каким-то старым объектом, который уже до этого снимали, но только на фото.” (Navalny 2018с)

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excerpt, for example, Navalny uses the evidence from Instagram (a video) for his investigation on businessman and an official in Russia (Navalny 2018m):

Never mind that, though. We have little interest in Deripaska and his adventures. An oligarch is having fun, there’s nothing illegal about it. It seemed like we could leave her Instagram alone. We’ve had our laughs, but that was it. But! The sharp eye of our investigations department caught something much more interesting than an oligarch having fun with models. I’ll show you a video now. It may seem strange and pointless, because… well, it is. The thing is, this is a report about the seduction of an oligarch that this Nastya Rybka published on her Instagram. Or rather, a list of achievements. Something like that. We didn’t edit it in any way, I’m showing it to you just as still is on her Instagram to this day.

As was mentioned in Section 2.2.2, the social media posts are a unique form of evidence that at the same time is a relatively costless and almost effortless means for journalistic gathering of evidence (Kayser-Bril 2018); it can also serve as a counterweight to official data sources and its interpretation. The collection of social media data often does not require special skills for the journalist (for instance, drone journalism does), and instead all citizens can be an investigator themselves if they can also access publicly available social media posts and verify investigators’ words (unless the owners of the social media profile have not deleted or restricted the access to their posts).

This can have two serious implications for the investigators. Firstly, journalist ethics, where the journalists should have formal permission to use these materials from the owners of social media profiles used in these investigations. If they do not, they may face legal problems with the owners of the content. Second is manipulation of social media content, where non-verified information of social media can easily manipulate or mislead investigators (Hanh & Stalph 2018). The manipulation of visual content, which Navalny uses in his investigations, is also connected to the latter problem.

Navalny does not use standard ethics protocols for his work. He uses public social media posts of officials or other heroes of investigations and shows them as snapshots with a username on it, which partly justifies the usage of personal data of these people. The problem of verification of social media evidence has caught Navalny

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in a “trap” recently. In his investigation about the supply of school meals in a Moscow school (Navalny LIVE 2019), published on YouTube, Navalny and his colleagues mistakenly used a photograph which did not have relevance to the case and was taken years earlier (BBC Russian Service 2019b). Navalny and another investigator Lyubov’ Sobol’ (2019) acknowledged that the photograph was used by mistake and it should not have appeared in the video and deleted it from the video later. However, this can be an illustration of insufficient verification of social media data by Navalny and his investigation team which can undermine the quality of his evidence in general.

The above described case does not relate to the explored timeframe and videos within the sample; however, this is the threat that can possibly undermine the trust in all of Navalny’s investigations. Other than that, social media data and visual data such as photographs can serve as one of the most accessible and diverse sources of evidence for Navalny and his team. Photographs, texts, and videos are not the exclusive forms of social media content that can be used by investigators. They can also employ geolocations, comments, polls, and other options available to social media users across different platforms. This sample does not necessarily include every social media instrument or type of data that Navalny used in his investigations, but it provides an indicative representation of his overall approach.

Apart from using modern digital practices of investigative journalism, Navalny resorted to traditional journalistic data such as interviews and public databases such as Rosreestr. Rosreestr is a Federal government database where journalists can find relevant information about properties and land in Russia. An interview is a traditional tool of any journalist to verify the facts or get the opinion of unbiased respondents, the witness of the described events. Navalny rarely uses interviews in this sample, but he still has it in his arsenal of journalistic tools.

Another non-traditional journalistic tool that Navalny uses is the analysis of publicly available CVs. This is one of the steps of typical corruption according to Patrucic (2018). In Russia, there are different headhunter’s websites where people publish their CVs to find a job, such as HeadHunter.ru. Navalny, in his investigation, used one of the publicly visible CVs of an engineer to identify a construction site belonging to an official. This can be one of the innovative and less typical sources of evidence for modern investigators in Russia.

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The populist nature of these excerpts is represented by discrediting the elites using investigative journalistic practices and simple addressing of the people, whom he wants to persuade about the elites’ crimes. The attack of the elite, supported by the evidence of their crimes, is mostly personalised in these excerpts. Navalny describes and mentions particular people, whom he declares to be guilty of corruption, from different branches of power: executive, economic, legislative as well as from the news media serving the interests of those branches. Talking to “the people”, Navalny does not use radical appeals in these excerpts; instead, he addresses them as a simple narrator. He addresses them with “you”, associates with them as “we” and “us” and presents himself as speaking on their behalf in his questioning of the legitimacy of the incumbent elite.

Summary In sum, in these excerpts, Navalny uses investigative journalistic tools to discredit the elite, providing evidence of their crimes in the form of journalistic investigations. Investigative populism excerpts indicate that the opposition activist practices most of the roles prescribed to journalists (Hanitzsch and Vos 2017), presenting the results of thorough journalistic work. However, he does not follow the framework typical of a Russian pro-government mainstream media journalist, which is propagating the establishment agenda. Instead he criticises them, for example journalists such as Solovyev and Kiselyev, and creating new rules of journalistic performance.

Among other things, Navalny employs the anti-corruption theme as the reason for his investigations. He uses many symbols of corruption industry, including luxurious properties and items that he claims officials possess. He provides examples of corruption crimes and nepotism of the elites, supporting his claims with a substantial base of evidence. These facts are not normally shown in the mainstream Russian media. He employs social media data, drone video footage, photos, interviews, people’s CVs, and many other forms of journalistic evidence. Collecting, working and presenting the data for his investigation in investigative populism excerpts may require significantly more time and work for Navalny and his team. Unlike superficial populism, investigative populism can be an example of serious analytical work as a part of overall watchdog reporting.

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Even with this small sample, I can say that Navalny usually uses modern and digital technologies when investigating the elites’ purported crimes. The reason behind this can be their effectiveness, comparatively low cost, as well as relevance to the medium, which is YouTube. Being not able to perform fully-fledged journalism due to limited press freedom in the country, he is using these tools to spread his own “truth” about corruption in Russia. However, not often he can use the evidence of high quality. These days the trustworthiness of digital resources can be questioned, as it happened to be with “fake news” materials. Nevertheless, data such as drone video is one of the trustable resources for investigators like Navalny, besides this footage aligns with the content of YouTube, namely, videos. The simplicity of addressing “the people” in these excerpts presupposes associating the narrator with the audience without radical calls. By contrast, the discrediting attacks of the elite have a personalised character and target particular people in the elite.

6.3 RADICAL POPULISM

Formal characteristics of the excerpts As revealed in Section 5.3, there are 57 excerpts labelled as radical populism. Through the method of random sampling, I chose ten excerpts for the closer qualitative analysis of the content of these excerpts. Radical populism excerpts contain coded sub-categories of populism, empty discrediting and call to action, where a call to action is the strongest indicator of citizen activism represented by Navalny. With qualitative content analysis, I will investigate more closely the nature of his claims. Radical populism excerpts greatly vary in their text length within the sample: from 89 words to 1000 words. The longest excerpt is a full video, which does not consist of any secondary excerpt and is a long uninterrupted narration of Navalny. This only strengthens the sample, as it both consists of long and short parts of Navalny’s videos coded under the same category. The approximate average length of the excerpts is 400 words.

Summary of the excerpts: Main characteristics The excerpts were summarised according to the content analysis procedures as per Section 4.6.1. The majority of them (7 out of 10) were connected with elections, which, according to Navalny, are discredited by mass falsifications in Russia. He describes mass electoral machinations and fraud, calls for boycotting elections (after

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he was barred from participation in December 2017), asks people to vote for him or nominate him as a candidate for the presidential election. Different reasons can explain the dominance of the elections’ theme.

First, the overall sample of Navalny’s videos for this project was chosen in the period of the electoral campaign for 2018’s presidential election in Russia, which partly explains “election bias”. However, precisely in this period he published his most famous investigations as described in the previous Section 6.2. Second, Navalny employs “unfair elections” topic since 2011, when he was one of the most visible activists in the protests “for fair elections”. He still uses the same narratives till these days. Moreover, third, Navalny employs a call to action that can be directly connected with the most popular and distinct form of political participation – participation in the elections.

Two other excerpts were connected with the participation of people in protests, which can be another form of political participation. One excerpt also contained a significant investigation into official’s corruption, namely the Russian PM. The nature of Navalny’s calls to action in these and previous excerpts require further investigation.

Summarising all the calls to action, I divided them into two big groups: offline and online. “Offline” calls to action invite people to participate in real-world events such as elections, protests in Russia; whereas “online” is connected with digital actions with political meaning, enabled by YouTube capacities and overall Internet facilities available to Russian citizens.

In his “offline” call, Navalny invites people to:

• Boycott the elections (4)24 • Go to the peaceful protests (3) • Become an observer at the elections (2) • Spread his ideas (1) • Vote for Navalny (1) • Put a signature for Navalny’s nomination to the presidential elections (2) • Donate money for his presidential campaign (1)

24 Using brackets, the number of repetitions throughout the sample is indicated

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The majority of his “offline” calls within the sample were connected with any form of participation in the 2018 presidential election, in which he was a candidate. I can also follow the chronological order of these electoral calls from his pre-electoral campaign. At first, he was asking people to put a signature down for his nomination, vote for him and donate money to his campaign. Subsequently, where he was barred from the elections by the Central Electoral Commission and Russian judicial system, he invited people to boycott the elections, to become an observer at the electoral stations, and sometimes go to protests. The following excerpt lists some of these electoral “calls” (Navalny 2017p):

The country isn’t going to develop in any way with these people at power. You won’t be able to study or work properly, nor will you be able to get a decent salary. What are we even talking about — look at who’s in charge at this school for gifted children where this wonderful dialogue took place. Sergey Roldugin. Vladimir Putin’s childhood friend, he is a cellist, a musician. He couldn’t have earned any huge amounts of money throughout his life, but nevertheless 2 billion dollars were transited through the accounts of his offshore companies in Panama. Let’s be honest here: he and Vladimir Putin simply stole this money or received it as bribes. This was uncovered during an international investigation — and what happened then? Nothing happened then. So, for any development to occur, we need to fight these people by all means. From rallies to elections. From videos to leaflets. Only once we chase these thieves and liars out of Kremlin will we have any prospects for the future. You can help me by leaving a signature in support of my nomination. Support my campaign by a donation. Or simply help share this video. Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here.

An election is one of the most important political institutions in regimes like Russia; it serves as a source of legitimacy and can often be contested (Ekman 2009). The Russian political regime is also known as “electoral authoritarianism” (Golosov 2011), where both the incumbent elite and the non-systemic opposition try to influence this political institution. The authorities take elections seriously in hybrid regimes, whereas the non-systemic opposition regard elections as one of the legitimate processes in modern Russia. However, the electoral practices in Russia are far from ideal. “Taking elections seriously” by the authorities can also mean that more and more electoral schemes and machinations are introduced to maintain the high level of the

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elite’s re-election across the country as was briefly mentioned in Section 3.1. Navalny in these excerpts lists falsifications and fraudulent schemes that, in his view, authorities use. Furthermore, he suggests measures to help to return the legitimacy of the elections and discredit the elite.

At first glance, his list of offline actions seems contradictory: he initially appealed for voting and nominated Navalny to the presidential election but later called for a full boycott of the elections. These contradictions are understandable for those knowing political context of the presidential election of 2018, where Navalny was barred from participation in the middle of his campaign. However, they do not reflect his stable and consistent attitude towards the election as a democratic institution. He asks citizens to participate in the elections fully but only when he is there as one of the contestants. He calls for people to turn their active participation to a passive observance at the electoral stations, which evidences the personalised character of his claims and his ambitions to contest for political power in Russia.

“Online” call to action in this sample of excerpts is associated with a number of digital actions available to YouTube users. These are actions such as:

• Subscribing to his YouTube channel (4)

• Sharing the video (4)

• Taking selfie with a hashtag and sharing on Facebook (1)

• Putting down a signature for Navalny’s nomination via a link (1)

For example, one of the creative calls to take selfie with a hashtag was used to mobilise people for rallies against the corruption of then-PM Medvedev (Navalny 2017q):

We need as many people as possible at those rallies. We need that all residents of your city to know that this rally was held, that there were a lot of people and that people fairly demand answers from the authorities. And everybody will support that rally. Make a selfie with your friends and post it to Facebook or VKontakte with a hashtag “Dimon will answer”. We will choose the best and will give the winner this awesome thing, which you can use the next day for shooting yourself. “I want it, I want it!” So you will win it and will get it. I am not Putin or Medvedev. Everything is fair here.

The majority of “online” calls are enabled by YouTube capacities. Navalny does not ask people to engage in sophisticated actions online; he often provides all the

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resources within one video and points them to online resources, which creates both simplicity and convenience for users and conduces online activism. YouTube provides these affordances for its users. A user can subscribe to his channel, click the link in the description of the video, and share the video with one click. This does not require much effort and does not create a security threat to a citizen of an electoral authoritarian regime that often persecutes or harasses people engaged in anti-systemic activism as was described in Section 3.3.

In Russia, following the 2011-2012 protest activities, penalties for both offline and online activism are gradually increasing. If not-pre-arranged with the authorities, citizen participation such as protests and rallies are legally persecuted, and protesters can be subject to fines, arrests, and criminal persecution. Furthermore, the number of penalties for shares and reposts of social media users increased in 2017-2018, according to the Freedom House report (2018) and Agora (2018) International Human Rights Group. The recent introduction of a law which punishes abuse or critique of the authorities in social media has further confirmed the tendency to online censorship and regulation in RuNet (Nechepurenko 2019). In these conditions, simple forms as subscribing and sharing the videos can be the ones that are still available and “safe” to Russian users. This explains the high shareability of the videos and popularity of Navalny’s video channel in general.

The call to action either online or offline is often placed at the end of the excerpt, providing a logical conclusion to Navalny’s narration. In addition, as was found in Section 5.4, radical excerpts itself are mostly finishing Navalny’s narration. After this call, no narration or more new ideas are communicated, thus Navalny finishes with a strong message to emphasise his intention to engage more people in politics. The analysed excerpts do not have a distinct introduction, where he could introduce the topic, or a problem discussed on the video. Only one excerpt has both the introduction and the conclusion with a radical call, it is also the longest excerpt within the sample, as it is a sole video.

Radical appeal to “the people” in these excerpts is often combined with accusations towards the ruling elite, which was previously dubbed as “empty discrediting”. In almost every excerpt, Navalny mentions Putin as his main rival in the elections. Navalny accuses him of corruption and falsification of the elections, as well as portraying him as the reason of the political crisis in Russia. Less often in these

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excerpts, Navalny refers to Russian PM Medvedev, Presidential Press Secretary Peskov, United Russia, and other representatives of executive power in Russia. However, even though they are not mentioned often in this context, as was mentioned previously, the PM, the Press Secretary, and others were featured in major video investigations. In addition, Navalny often generalises the elite in these excerpts calling them – “they”, “them”, “thieves”, and “crooks”. The “protrusion” of Putin’s profile as the head of the corrupt elite can be a supportive argument of Navalny’s electoral rhetoric, where Putin is his primary opponent. However, no substantial evidence of Putin’s or his elite’s crimes are provided in these parts of narration.

Summary In sum, radical populist excerpts demonstrated the characteristics of citizen activism propagated by Navalny. They seem to be located at the end of his narration, emphasising the strong message or an appeal directed to the people. Most of the excerpts within the chosen sample are connected with the topic of elections. Elections are a crucial political institution in Russia, which both the ruling elite and anti-systemic opposition “take seriously”. However, in Navalny’s interpretation, elections can be mostly connected with his personal ambitions to possess political power, as he changes his claims around elections radically based on his participation in them. Within the same electoral period, he invites people first to participate and vote in elections and then to boycott them, with both ironically intending to safeguard the democratic meaning of this institution. The radical populism excerpts also contain different forms of “offline” and “online” calls to action or inviting people to participate in politics. The first one is mostly associated with political participation in elections and protests; the latter is an every-day form of digital actions with political meaning which users can exercise not being afraid of political persecution typical for the Russian regime. Navalny portrays Putin as his main rival in the election, criticising him; however, he does not provide any substantial evidence of his crimes in these excerpts, and prefers to do that in separate parts of narrations, for example, investigative and advocacy excerpts.

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6.4 ADVOCACY POPULISM

Formal characteristics of the excerpts For this section, ten excerpts fell into category advocacy populism, as was identified in Section 5.3. These excerpts contain coded populist categories call to action and discrediting with evidence, two strong indicators of citizen activism and investigative journalism respectively, which together form the entity of what I called advocacy populism. In the following analysis will look closely at the content of these excerpts and their meaning for Navalny’s narration. Advocacy populism excerpts are usually lengthy (on average 1064 words each). They are long, non-interrupted with secondary excerpts parts of the video, which provide the evidence of corruption and other crimes or misconduct of Putin’s elite in Navalny’s view. Three out of ten explored excerpts are sole videos, which contain the details of the investigation and radical appeal to people in the form of a “call to action” without any interruptions. The length of these excerpts can evidence the greater effort and emphasis of Navalny and his team on these parts of narration demonstrating the outcomes of his investigations.

Summary of the excerpts: Main characteristics The majority of the excerpts in this category are parts of the significant investigations on the cases of corruption among Russian officials. These are the investigations targeting former Russian PM Medvedev and Deputy PM, the Press Secretary of the President, mayor of the city big resource-based companies in Russia, oligarchs linked to the officials. Most of these actors are representatives of executive power in Russia linked to economic powers represented by oligarchs and big companies. Four out of ten excerpts are connected with the investigation into corruption of former Russian PM Medvedev and the businesspeople associated with him. This further confirms the importance of this particular investigation in Navalny’s rhetoric and its high resonance to a broader public. In cases of direct populist attacks towards particular officials, these investigations contain evidence of possessing luxurious properties. This is fair for the excerpts about the Russian PM and Deputy PM, the Press Secretary of the President, mayor of the city, and oligarchs. It is often connected with the nepotism of the elites and looks into the properties that families or friends of these officials possess due to corruption (excerpts about PM, Deputy PM, Press Secretary, and the mayor). Anti- corruption logic containing the above-mentioned characteristics, symbols of luxury,

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and nepotism of elites, have become attractive rhetoric for many activists “highlighting integrity, trust, accountability and openness” (Sampson 2010, 17). The facts of corruption in Russian elite broadcasted by an activist in a sensational, breaking-news manner is complemented by a strong call to action, which further strengthens the radicalism of these excerpts. The populist attacks appearing in these excerpts towards the elite are both of a personal and general character. The accusations target the main heroes of the investigations in the excerpts; however, there is often a reference to the whole elite, led by Putin and his associates. Navalny’s general populist critique of Putin’s elite is also followed or combined with the description of the hardship of Russian citizens and suffering caused by the actions of the elite (Navalny 2017f)25:

This is why I began by saying that this is not a story of Peskov’s26 son, it’s a story of no prospects for the rest of us. Our country is arranged only for those like Nikolai Choles. Just ask yourself a question, how much time it will take you to earn the money for similar purchases, even if you have an excellent education and a wealth of experience? Even if you try really-really hard. I’m sorry, but most likely you will never earn enough for all of this. There is no social mobility ladder in our country that will take into account your education and strong work ethic and will then lift you up to the floor populated by wealthy people.

This further highlights the populist character of the excerpts by showing the direct effect of the elite’s action on the people’s well-being. Besides, it emphasises the antagonism of these entities within one passage or one excerpt.

In all of the cases, the excerpts end with a radical appeal, i.e. calling people to action. In these excerpts, two calls are combined such as to offline and online action. The examples of offline action communicated by Navalny can be to boycott elections, be an observer in elections, participate or organise a protest, put down a signature for Navalny’s candidature, or vote for Navalny. Online actions consist of subscribing to his channel, sharing his videos, reading information on the website, or registering online as an observer in elections. Navalny tries to multiply and strengthen the call by adding an informational or digital component to the traditional way that politicians

25 The translation of the excerpt is provided from English YouTube transcripts of the video available at the platform. 26 Dmitry Peskov is a Press Secretary from the Presidential Administration of Russia.

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spread their political appeals. Two or more actions instead of one can be a stronger trigger to users to political participation, as it happened with “He is not Dimon” video in 2017 which led to multiple mass protests in Russia (Navalny 2017b):

Everyone should fight whichever way he can. Any one of you can help us (and yourself) by sharing this video. Send a link to your friends. Tell your relatives what you saw. Yes, television is fully controlled by this mafia, and no one will ever say a word about these facts, but we can overcome censorship by passing information from person to person. I am taking part in this election. I will run for president because I don’t want the “heroes” of this and other investigations to stay in power for another ten years, while further ruining the country. Your support is very important, and I ask you to put your signature for my nomination. There’s a link in description of this video. And if you lend me your support, then in 2018 I’ll be the candidate who will tell these people in your name: we are tired of corruption and we no longer wish to tolerate it.

Additionally, digital actions are not difficult to implement, i.e. to share video is much easier for a citizen than come to a protest in the conditions of electoral authoritarianism where protest activities are often punished and persecuted by the authorities. As Faris and Meier (2013) noted, the repressive challenges to anyone that tries to “organise and act collectively” is the most significant barrier to collective action in non-democratic regimes. The simplest form of support such as subscribing to a channel, reading the website and sharing can be available to those citizens who are afraid to participate in real protests. As was mentioned previously, four excerpts in this sample are connected with an investigation about former Russian PM Medvedev “He is not Dimon to you”, which eventually led to two major multi-thousand protests in Russian megapolises. Potentially, this joint offline/online call can have a real effect on the political participation of Russian citizens. The distinction between actual political (offline) and informational (online) action in Navalny’s call can correspond to the oppositional, activist, and journalistic character of the content of his narration. When Navalny combines these elements in his speech, he implies both to increase awareness of the citizens and take actions against the elite and their corruption. In three excerpts within the chosen sample, there are examples of drone journalism, which Navalny and his colleagues use to show the luxurious properties of the officials. As Kreimer (2018, 91) states, drones allow journalists to have access “to

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previously inaccessible aerial vantage points, spaces, and perspectives” and open “new storytelling possibilities”. The absence of access to officials’ properties, which are guarded or hidden from ordinary Russian citizens, instigate Navalny to use new and inventive digital technologies to show them to people. In Kreimer’s words, images, and videos captured by drones add critical context to the narration “in the ways grounded-based visuals fall short” (2018, 92). Drone journalism has become one of the essential parts of Navalny’s investigation documentaries. Considering the audience of YouTube, for many users, it is easier to see what corrupt officials possess rather than be lost in documents, wordy explanations and other non-visual evidence collected by investigators. Drone journalism requires more time and effort from the investigators, such as Navalny and his organisation; therefore, these excerpts can be more persuasive and sensational, as people can see something rarely or never shown before on national television.

Summary Overall, advocacy populism excerpts in Navalny’s communication are based on the values of populism itself as well as advocacy journalism. Advocacy journalism is located at the intersection of citizens’ digital activism and investigative journalism (Milan & Gutiérrez 2015, 129), these two elements are consonant with the core populist elements. Investigative journalism helps to discredit the elite, whereas digital activism contains an appeal to the people, mostly in radical forms. The explored excerpts are the parts or sole investigations into officials’ corruption. They draw from the anti-corruption ideology mostly, describing luxurious properties, nepotism of the elites, and providing the evidence of elite’s corruption crimes. Navalny’s investigation into corruption as a journalistic genre presupposes a demonstration of evidence of the facts of corruption (mostly collected by investigators online) and elements of drone journalism which allows showing officials’ otherwise inaccessible properties. This further has a dramatic effect on YouTube users, who have not seen this footage on any mainstream television channels in Russia.

However, as in advocacy journalism, Navalny not only engages YouTube users in the investigation story, he wants his audience to act (Charles 2013). He motivates the people to act both online and offline in these excerpts, doubling his call at the end of the narration. Some of them were parts of major investigations, such as a documentary into Medvedev’s corruption, which became the most popular video on

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Navalny’s YouTube and has also led to mass protests in Russia. These types of investigative excerpts require more effort and time from the content producers compared to regular journalism. However, they can be the most influential parts of the videos, because the combination of evidence of corruption and calling for different forms of public actions can sometimes succeed in the latter purpose, as happened with Navalny’s documentary film about Medvedev.

6.5 THE MEANING OF NAVALNY’S POPULIST NARRATION ON YOUTUBE

This chapter analysed the content of four types of populist excerpts used by Navalny in his narration on YouTube. These types included superficial, radical, investigative, and advocacy populism excerpts. Each of them, as was revealed, has different thematic content, different length, and different dominant theme; they are located in different parts of the narration as revealed in Section 5.4. These types of populist narration can be of a passive or active character, i.e. active populism requires an action from the narrator and/or an audience. These and other differences and similarities between “populisms” were summarised in Table 6.1 with further explanation provided below. According to Table 6.1, superficial populism excerpts are located mostly at the beginning or in the middle of Navalny’s narration. They are short in length and contain two subcategories of populism such as simple addressing and empty discrediting. These excerpts do not require extra effort from the narrator in terms of investigation work or from the audience, as the narrator is simply communicating to them but not calling to any form of political action. Thus, these parts of the narration can be called “passive”. These excerpts have a universal character and can link passages between other parts of the narration. Navalny uses in them a personalised attack of the elite across many political actors in Russia along with an entry-level of populist communication with the audience through the words we, us, our, and ours. Such level of communication correlates with the dominance of Russian political system theme in these types of excerpts. These texts have a high density (5.4 per cent) of words from the Russian political system theme which symbolises different political actors including the elite versus “the people” with their identity and civic rights which they can exercise in the Russian political realm, for example, to participate in protests.

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This theme represents a broad understanding of political regime in Russia by Navalny. In sum, superficial populism excerpts can be used as a form of “pure” populism, which mostly talks about two antagonistic entities “the elite” and “the people”, can be communicated in fewer words and can be universally applied across different parts of the narration. Radical populism excerpts are of medium length and are mostly used at the end of Navalny’s narration. They represent an active form of populist discourse as they require an action from the audience, which is communicated in the form of the narrator’s call to action. Propagating citizen’s activism, Navalny invites people to implement an “online” or “offline” political action. The first one presupposes digital action from users, which can be easily fulfilled with YouTube’s capacities, the latter involves traditional forms of political participation such as engagement in elections and protests. The radical populism excerpts mostly attack President Putin as the leader and the symbol of the elite and other representatives of executive power in Russia. Radical excerpts are dominated by the Russian political system theme which includes these actors as in superficial excerpts. Nevertheless, the elections theme is associated with radical excerpts more than others. This can be connected with the propagation of citizen activism by Navalny, his encouragement to involve people to participate in elections. As Navalny was a candidate for the 2018 presidential election, in these parts of the narration, he could encourage people to vote for him or perform other forms of action connected with the election such as boycotting, be an observer, and other actions. Putin can be mentioned in these excerpts in regard to the elections as well, as Navalny considered him as the primary opponent in the electoral race. This type of narration is consonant with the idea of “cyber-populism”, introduced by Gerbaudo (2017b), which explains the creation of the space via digital media platforms, free from the state, where citizens can be gathered and mobilised for political action. Gerbaudo (2017b, 485) described these spaces as platforms for populists, like Navalny, who claims a “bottom-up recuperation and reclamation of democracy and political institutions by ordinary citizens”. Navalny offers a more authentic political participation than the ruling elite; however, it is arguable whether he is pursuing his political ambitions or uses these spaces for the democratisation of society. Investigative populism excerpts are excerpts of medium length, which mostly are situated at the middle of the overall narration. They involve an active positioning from

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the narrator and his team, resulting in the genre of journalistic investigation using a diverse set of practices. For these excerpts, Navalny and his team both resort to traditional and digital journalistic practices and data. For traditional practices, which also serve as a source of evidence, they use the interview or search in public databases. For digital practices, he uses drone journalism, and data journalism, with the ensuing use of drone footage, social media data and other forms of digital evidence. The gathering, analysis and presentation of these data require more time and effort from the investigators, which is another attribute of watchdog reporting. With these practices Navalny performs as an authentic journalist working in a limited press freedom environment, where he creates new rules, new practices, and genres of IJ. In data journalism, Navalny can also create a perception of easy verification for users, as each of them can check the provided video data in social media. However, this data can be deleted after the investigation and in some cases, can be false and mislead the audience. Investigative populism excerpts are mostly connected with the theme corruption industry, as they unveil the cases of the elite’s corruption through the symbols of luxurious properties, nepotism of the elite and particular corruption crimes of the officials. It is worth noting, that these excerpts are not associated with the theme elections at all, which evidences the absence of correlation between this theme and types of populism in Navalny’s narration. They mostly focus on the symbols of corruption, which is further confirmed by the increased density of the dominant theme. The dominant theme has a 7.3 per cent density of words in investigative populism in contrast to 5.7 per cent and 5.5 per cent in radical and superficial populism respectively. Furthermore, advocacy populism excerpts are usually large parts of the narration, which contain both practices of investigative journalism along with the propagation of citizen activism. They are located mostly at the end of the narration or are sole videos which contain both evidence of the elite’s corruption collected by Navalny and his call to action directed to “the people”. These excerpts presuppose great investigative work from the narrator and his team as well as requiring action from the audience; therefore, they represent an active form of populism. Navalny provides the evidence of elite’s corruption crimes collected by his team through the practices of investigative journalism, as per the previous paragraph. He strengthens his call to action by combining both online and offline “calls to action” in one excerpt. In line with this, he combines a general and personalised attack of the elite. Notably, these

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messages were useful targeting former PM Medvedev, whom Navalny accused of multiple corruption crimes in his famous video “He is not Dimon to you”. Several excerpts contained an attack on Medvedev and this particular investigation with the following videos about Medvedev that have caused multiple mass protests in Russia. Advocacy populism excerpts have the highest density of the words of a corruption industry theme, 8.8 per cent. It can be concluded that the density of a particular theme consonant with the type of populism is growing with the strengthening of Navalny’s message: from superficial populism containing mostly simple grammatic constructions indicating the struggle between two populist entities to advocacy populism which has the highest number of words representing corruption industry; from passive forms of populism to active forms, which involve the action from the narrator and the audience. The items of wealth, luxurious properties, the case of corruption of the Russian PM, and the nepotism of the elites which are repetitively used throughout these excerpts can trigger negative emotions in citizens and an overall dissatisfaction with the corruption of the elite and consequently lead to a real protest. The concentration of videos with advocacy excerpts occur during the major protests’ activities organised by Navalny. He published his famous investigation about former PM Medvedev on March 2, 2017, which itself consisted of two advocacy excerpts. Then, from this date until June 15, 2017 he published further five videos with advocacy excerpts. During this time period, he organised two major anti-corruption protests connected with the investigation, on March 26 and June 12 in 2017. The Western journalists claimed that these were the biggest protests since the protests for fair elections in 2011-2012 (Pinchuk & Shurmina 2017). The concentration of advocacy populism excerpts in his major investigations around the timeframe of the real protests organised by Navalny requires a further investigation into Navalny’s narration and its influence on political participation of his audience. However, potentially, a strong and substantive message in the video which contains several calls to action, general and personalised attacks of the elite, evidence of corruption crimes of the officials collected through the practice of investigative journalism could be a strong motivator for people to participate in offline politics. However, not only do texts represent the populist nature of Navalny’s communication. The next section will look closely at the performative nature of Navalny’s videos and affordances of YouTube as a platform which enables online and offline political action.

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Chapter 7: YouTube as a medium for spreading Navalny’s populist and anti-corruption sentiments

This chapter analyses the performative nature of Navalny’s populist communication on YouTube. In the absence of media freedom, YouTube remains an independent platform for spreading alternative political discourses in Russia. Navalny is seen as one of the significant contributors to the dissemination of anti-corruption discourses in the country by means of the platform. In Section 7.1, I explore the history of anti-corruption YouTube discourse in Russia, and what makes Navalny stand out from previous anti-corruption activists. Populist style is associated with a set of “performances” (Moffitt & Tormey 2014, 387), stylistic elements that makes the message attractive to “the people”. It is important how populist leaders’ “stage” themselves, what body language, clothes, and body politics, they use. The leader’s body as the source of populist representations is not yet a well-researched area of populism (Casullo 2018). Together, these elements build a bigger and more diverse picture of a populist style of communication. In Section 7.2, I explore the visual aesthetics of Navalny’s YouTube communication, based on his look in the video and the stage background while he is communicating with his YouTube audience. YouTube is a platform with its own policies and marketing strategies, which encourages its creators to adapt the message to the medium to get a higher virality for videos. Navalny is not an exception, as he is stylising his communication to the platform in order to use YouTube’s affordances to most effectively communicate with the audience and to achieve his political goals. Therefore, Section 7.3 will explore how Navalny adapts his message to the YouTube platform to be able to spread his populist communication to a wider audience. Finally, I look at what makes Navalny a typical YouTuber and what political goals he is pursuing using his online communication.

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7.1 YOUTUBE AND ANTI-CORRUPTION DISCOURSES IN RUSSIA

This section explores the nature of YouTube as a social media platform and its salient discourses in Russia, namely populism and “anti-corruptionism”, as the most popular social media platform in Russia (Statista 2019a). In 2017, Russia had the third biggest audience on YouTube, 47 million of users, after the US and Brazil (Statista 2017). It is more than a third of the Russian population estimated at 145.5 million in 2017 (worldometer 2020). In 2019, YouTube had 87 per cent of network penetration, compared to Russian social media platform VKontakte (83 per cent), WhatsApp (69 per cent), and Instagram (56 per cent) (Statista 2019a).

Statista (2019b) shows how Russian users usually engage with content on YouTube: 53 per cent of citizens watch videos, 13 per cent give likes, 12 per cent subscribe to channels, 7 per cent share videos, and 6 per cent leave comments under videos. Russia’s YouTube audience maybe not be that active on the platform preferring to be simple observers; this also can be due to the intentions of Russian users to remain anonymous in light of Russia’s restrictive Internet freedom described in Section 3.3. However, YouTube can be one of the crucial sources of information which is available to Russians in the absence of media freedom. The relative freedom of YouTube may consist of the ability of the platform to control its content independently as was partly described in the case of Navalny’s videos in Section 3.3.3. Therefore, YouTube, among many other reasons, has become an alternative medium for political news as opposed to Russian television, mostly controlled by the Russian government and affiliated companies.

Previously, research showed that in 2009-2010, the most powerful discourse on YouTube linked to the Russian blogosphere was the anti-corruption discourse (Etling et al. 2010). At the beginning of the 2010s, there were first precedents of disseminating popular content by Russian anti-corruption activists through YouTube. This content was broadcasted in a rather non-strategic, fragmented way; later on, YouTube has consequently become the main digital platform for public debates on corruption in the country (Etling et al. 2010).

The “bottom-up” discussion on corruption on YouTube was not well received by the Russian elites, who were often discredited there. In fact, it had the lamentable effect for anti-corruption activists (Knobel & Sanders 2012) as will be shown in the next section. Navalny, as a continuer of digital “anti-corruption” tradition, despite

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frequent persecutions from the government, learned the lessons of his predecessors on YouTube, making his anti-corruption message structured, regular, and therefore highly salient and effective in reaching its audience. YouTube being a strong medium, gave Navalny the opportunity to gain popularity, as measured by audience reach.

7.1.1 The history of anti-corruption discourses on YouTube in Russia The significance of YouTube, like any other social media platform, is that it helps to reproduce and disseminate content, particular discourses consisting of culturally familiar symbols. Apart from the symbols and narratives broadcasted by mainstream media in Russia, mostly owned and controlled by the government; there are alternative discourses which emerge online, particularly on YouTube, including an anti-corruption discourse of Navalny. Navalny is not a pioneer in outspokenly criticising government and corruption in the country. Academic literature refers to several prominent cases of anti-corruption videos being posted on YouTube prior to Navalny’s initiatives.

Etling et al. (2010), exploring the Russian blogosphere, studied 100 videos on YouTube linked to blogs in Russia. The authors conclude that a considerable number of videos contain anti-corruption narratives, an outspoken critic of the Russian elites as well as appeals to high-ranking officials. The first renowned case included the YouTube video of Alexey Dymovsky, a police Major in the Russian city Novorossiysk. In 2009, Dymovsky created his website where he published a video addressing retired and current colleagues and then-PM Putin, criticising the police system as being rotten and corrupt (cited in Knobel & Sanders 2012, 27):

You have been talking about corruption – you have been saying that not only should corruption constitute a crime, you said it should also be unseemly to engage in corrupt practices. But this is not the case in this country. … How can a police officer accept bribes? Do you understand where our society is heading? I told my boss that the police are corrupt. And he told me that it cannot be done away with.

The videos were exported to YouTube and quickly became viral among its users. The videos received great exposure in the opposition liberal media, then in the mainstream federal media. Dymovsky started to give press conferences and later led the socio-political movement, “White Ribbon”, fighting for law and order and an eradication of police corruption. He was consequently suppressed by the police itself through administrative detentions and punishments, together with assassination

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attempts (Lenta.ru 2011). Knobel and Sanders (2012) called this process “digital deride”, where the Russian government together with regulatory and law-enforcement bodies suppress online attempts to criticise the government. The same fate has overtaken Navalny, who is regularly detained by the police and is a subject of physical attacks from unknown criminals.

Knobel and Sanders (2012) also mentioned Yuri Schevchuk, a rock musician, who, following the Dymovsky tradition, expressed anti-corruption sentiments during his concert, which was broadcasted on YouTube. During the meeting between culture representatives and PM Putin, Schevchuk openly asked Putin about malicious facts of corruption. His comments were eventually broadcasted to all federal media and YouTube (Schwirtz 2010). As a consequence, later on Schevchuk was unofficially excluded from the public sphere and demonstratively ignored by the mainstream media and Russian officials due to his opposition activities.

Further to this, anti-corruption activist Dmitry Baranovskii, an executive member of NGO “Justice”, has similarly posted videos about corruption on YouTube. The members of “Justice”, mostly lawyers, investigated the case of corruption of a (administrative division) official, and have since been subject to different criminal detentions, including Baranovskii, who was later sentenced to prison for more than a decade (Etling et al. 2010). While the organisation’s members and activities are similar to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, their fate due to the “digital deride” were more intense even though their audience reach through the digital platform was modest compared to Navalny. In this section, I argue that it is due to the developed communication strategies social media affordances that Navalny has used.

The cases of Dymovskii, Schevchuk, and Baranovskii that took place in 2010- 2011, during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, represent a period of relative liberation of freedom of speech and political activity in Russian contemporary politics. Etling et al. (2010, 34) note that at that time, YouTube played the vital role of a “watchdog” of the elites and the government, with an emphasis on corruption and the abuse of power. It allowed users to use such affordances of YouTube, mapped by Burgess and Green (2009a), as the distribution of popular culture and vernacular activity. Knobel and Sanders (2012) added a third function to this existing list of functions the third function: “an adaptation and adoption to a side pressure brought by a technically agile manipulative state”.

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The events that followed the mass protests of 2011, the end of Medvedev’s presidency in 2012, and the comparative heyday of the Russian opposition included the prosecution of non-systemic opposition, restrictions on the activity of NGOs in Russian, and further limitations on the freedom of the media and the Internet. The non- systemic opposition was forced to operate in the risk of persecution and addressing the censorship in the media. Those few critics of the government and corruption in the country who continued to operate online, relied on social media affordances that helped them to overcome those political difficulties. However, almost none of them have ever reached Navalny’s popularity on YouTube, which makes his case unique in these circumstances.

7.1.2 Radical content and YouTube in Russia Although the Internet theoretically establishes as an environment for free speech, in practice, Russian regulatory bodies together with lawmakers overuse an “extremist umbrella” to regulate the Russian Net. To justify political censorship online, different content can be labelled as “extremist”; then it is subject to criminal punishment; at the same time, the censorship jurisdictions of regulatory bodies are enlarged through the laws and practices of counteraction to terrorism. The Freedom House (2018) report on the Russian Net states that in the first half of 2018, “there were 762 ‘extremism’ cases, many of which relate to online activity”. Further evidence suggests that the “Yarovaya Package” laws adopted in 2016 and entitled as “anti-terrorist”, were in fact enlarging the mandate of regulatory bodies and security services to regulate activities online.

Navalny’s views expressed in videos can to some extent be called “radical”, as they look outside of the existing political system. As was partly described in Section 3.3.3, in 2018, Navalny published an investigative video on his YouTube channel, entitled “Yachts, oligarchs, girls: The huntress for men exposes a briber”. The video described the corruption activities of then Deputy PM of Russia Prihodko and his connections with businessman Deripaska. Deripaska appealed to the court with the requirement to delete the video from all the sources possible; however, YouTube refused to delete the video, unlike Russian social media sites who were forced to edit or delete the video from their sources (Agora 2019, Mediazona 2018). Despite the relative resistance of YouTube to Russian authorities, the platform seems to compromise and satisfy some of the requests to delete the content. Authors of the

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Agora report (2019) state that YouTube, for instance, blocked Navalny’s adds calling people for protests against the pension reform in Russia.

According to Google’s (n.d.) transparency report, from 2009 to January 2019, Google received 83,753 requests to delete content in Russia. As Figure 7.1 shows, most of them were connected to requests to delete YouTube videos – approximately 49,000 requests, which is more than a half of all the requests. The number of requests has risen dramatically in Russia starting from 2017. Figure 7.2 shows the percentage of the content that was deleted from Google in the total overall percentage, the percentage of requests that are based on subpoena, and the percentage of the requests from government bodies in Russia.

It can be seen that Google (n.d.) has more than 60 per cent of satisfied blocking content since 2010. The tech company can refuse to delete the content due to various reasons, for example, when “the requests do not contain accurate information about the elements that the government want to delete such as URL”. The report (Google n.d.) says that “often, private parties justify their requests to delete content by the subpoena that do not require specific actions from Google and these requests are a dispute with a third party”. The number of satisfied blocking content by subpoena is relatively low in the total percentage of satisfied requests of blocking content in Google. However, Figure 7.2 only represents the total number of satisfied requests in Google and not YouTube particularly.

Despite the high percentage of satisfaction of government requests to delete content, the authors of the Agora report (2019) note that Russian authorities negotiate and use “soft pushing” of cooperation applied to major international corporations like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Sometimes, as with some of Navalny’s videos, important political content seemed to slip away through the “strainer” of censorship on YouTube (Agora 2019). However, this strategy did not apply to smaller digital players. In 2016, Russia blocked LinkedIn, in 2017 instant messaging applications Zello, Line, and Blackberry Messenger, and in 2018 Russia blocked Telegram (Agora 2019).

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copycat RuTube, as well as the recent abundance of anti-corruption campaigns driven by YouTube activism. These conditions potentially could have favoured the reproduction of anti-corruption symbols online. The following sections describe the evidence of the significance of these factors.

7.1.3 YouTube, Russian television, and RuTube In Russia, the restrictions on the Press Freedom included censorship of the major television channels, which have undermined the people’s trust in public broadcasters. Though television is still the main source of political news in Russia, trust in television has fallen from 80 to 55 per cent in the last decade (RBK 2019). According to Public Opinion Foundation (FOM 2018), 63 per cent of Russians watch television every day, but 65 per cent of the audience do not trust the news on television. The distrust in Russian television could have been developing through the years of constant political pressure and the elimination of journalistic freedom described in Section 3.2. In the decline of trust in television, big exposure within a country is making YouTube a very competitive alternative to public broadcasters. The niche of objective, truthful journalism, allowing alternative agenda emerged online, enables space for anti- corruption, investigative initiatives such as Navalny LIVE and Navalny’s video channel on YouTube.

YouTube has its copycat, RuTube, in Russia, which was founded in 2006. It is owned by private stakeholders and Gazprom Media affiliated with the Russian government. RuTube, compared to YouTube, is not even among the 15 most popular social media platforms in Russia (Statista 2019a). Academic research on RuTube is also limited, which hampers a comparison of the affordances of the two platforms within this research. However, at first glance, the affordances of the platform mostly consist of broadcasts of mainstream television channels belonging to Gazprom Media, such as TNT, Match TV, STS, Friday! (rus. Pyatnitsa!), and others. To create content and interact with users, RuTube users are required to link their account to other social media accounts (Pass.Media, Mail.ru, VKontakte, and Facebook) or register a new account on RuTube, which makes the ability to comment and “like” the videos more difficult and effort consuming. The affiliation with government media structures is conducive to censorship of RuTube’s content, which eventually can impede the growth of citizen political journalism or anti-establishment videos on this platform. As a result, competition between the two platforms in Russia is seen as low, meaning that it does

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not undermine YouTube’s position in Russia, and it is the main source of video content in RuNet.

7.1.4 Navalny’s “populist template” During the analysis, it was observed that Navalny’s visual style of narration on YouTube has been borrowed and copied by his fellow politicians and/or anti- corruption activists. One of the prominent examples of this phenomenon can be seen in the YouTube activities of opposition activist Ilya Yashin. Known for participation in the protests “for fair elections” in 2011 and other anti-corruption protests, he published several reports on the state of Russian social, economic, and political development.

Unlike Navalny, Yashin has achieved electoral success, being voted in as a municipal deputy of Krasnoselsky district in Moscow in 2017 and later becoming a municipal head. In 2018, he nominated himself as a candidate to the mayoral election of Moscow. His blog on YouTube was created in 2013, however, he put his first video on the channel on September 25, 2017 (Yashin n.d.). The visual aesthetics of Yashin’s YouTube performance mostly repeats Navalny’s, which can be seen in Figure 7.327 and 7.4 As of February 19, 2019, Yashin had only 60,709 subscribers, as opposed to Navalny’s 2,529,859 subscribers. However, Navalny and Yashin are colleagues and both have expressed support toward each other. Navalny publicly supported Yashin’s campaign to mayoral elections in 2018 (Navalny 2018d). Yashin is a frequent guest and a host of Navalny LIVE.

Figure 7-4: Screenshot of Yashin’s YouTube Figure 7-3: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video video.

27 This and other screenshots of Navalny’s videos and the videos of his associates such as Ilya Yashin and used in this thesis are used in compliance with provisions in sections 41 and 103A of Australia’s Copyright Act which provides for fair dealing with a copyright item for the purpose of criticism or review of media materials such as YouTube videos of Alexey Navalny and his associates.

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Other well-known anti-corruption activists succeeded in using YouTube, although their popularity is less than Navalny’s and Yashin’s. Vladimir Milov, an activist and politician, co-author of Boris Nemtsov’s reports on Putin’s Russia, hosts one of the programs on Navalny LIVE. He also has a YouTube channel with 130 thousand subscribers where he analyses and comments topical political events in Russia. Ilya Zaslavsky, the founder of the website podrivateli.info (Eng. version www.underminers.info), through the website aims “to raise awareness of the scale and nature of kleptocratic actors’ actions in domestic politics and their assets and corrosive activities in Europe and USA” (Underminers n.d.). He appears in several interviews on YouTube, including interviews on Navalny LIVE.

Navalny, unlike his anti-corruption peers and predecessors, has become a proficient user of YouTube affordances through the years. Dymovsky, Schevchuk, and Baranovskii were still amateur users of YouTube, as the platform had just started to function in Russia at the time. They were prominent in their videos; however, they did not use YouTube systematically and purposively for anti-corruption videos and it reminded more a “side-product” of their other activities. Dymovsky, for example, was relying mostly on his personal blog, and expressed his personal frustration about his job and his work at the police, which is confirmed by his simple language, slang, and frequent mistakes and pauses in his speech. The video with his speech to Putin was posted later on YouTube than the original video. Schevchuk’s criticisms appeared on YouTube accidentally as a part of the broadcast of his rock concert. Later the media spread his questioning at a cultural meeting with Putin, YouTube was one of the platforms that spread that broadcast. The YouTube performance of Baranovskii was also not strategically planned and adopted for YouTube.

More recent examples of anti-corruption online production on YouTube include Yashin, who copies Navalny’s style, Milov and Zaslavsky who cooperate with Navalny and Navalny LIVE. Together they form what I call a “digital anti-corruption ghetto”, which helps them to strengthen the power of anti-corruption discourse online. This ghetto consists of outsiders of systemic politics, such as Navalny, Milov, Yashin, Zaslavsky, and other Navalny’s associates who are trying to enter Russian systemic politics and participate in political decision making. They use similar visual style and YouTube affordances to spread their political discourses, including anti-corruption and anti-establishment sentiments linked or related to each other. This thesis looks at

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the visual aesthetics of this ghetto, most prominently its leader, Navalny. However, future research can shed light on the characteristics of this online ghetto in general, including their visual aesthetics and narrations.

In the next two sections, I argue that, unlike his predecessors, Navalny uses visual aesthetics of populism, adapting his image to populist needs as well as employing the functions of the platform to make his videos popular and viral.

7.2 POPULIST IMAGERY OF NAVALNY

This section explores the “populist look” of Alexey Navalny on his videos, i.e. how he is staging himself while communicating with “the people”. I will look closer at his clothing in the videos, the decoration of the “scene”, where Navalny’s “performs”, as well as at the colours that he uses to communicate with his public. I will analyse what identities Navalny represents through these elements while talking to “the people” and how they align with the overall style of his communication. For these purposes, I will use visual content analysis applied to the screenshots of Navalny’s videos, the methodological procedures for this section are described in RS7, Section 4.4.2.

7.2.1 General characteristics of the screenshots of Navalny’s videos In most of the excerpts Navalny performs as a host of the video, where he sits in front of video camera separated by a table on a dark background. This is a typical YouTuber background that used by many influencers on the platform. The ascetic “stage”, where there is nobody except Navalny and the table allows users to concentrate on his personality and his narration only. It further emphasises the leader position of Navalny to the audience, where he is exclusively alone in the shot (from time to time he invites co-hosts to his broadcasts), and at the same time, it distances him from the audience, separating the space between the audience and the narrator by the table. Casullo (2018) states that this feature is typical for a populist leader, who wants to be with “the people” but also wants to demonstrate their exceptionality and their leader position. The typical representation of Navalny’s image in the videos is shown in Figure 7.5 (Navalny 2018e). Navalny’s image as a populist leader in general will be further analysed through his clothing style, the decoration of the “stage”, as well as colour symbolism.

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Navalny rarely wears suits, and their use often coincides with special occasions. In eight out of 16 videos in which he appeared in a suit; the topics of the videos were about elections. In them, he announced his nomination to presidential elections and further plans for electoral campaign; introduced his electoral programme. He also addressed schoolchildren, teachers, and Dagestani people with different calls to action about the election; and, finally called to boycott elections. Half of the cases where he wore suits are connected with his political and electoral profile. It further emphasises his political ambitions and a desire to be a part of systemic politics, where this way of clothing is typical.

Giving a New Year address to citizens, similar to what President Putin does every year, Navalny also copied his style, wearing a suit and a tie. In four cases, he wore suit while describing the corruption investigations of his team against the officials. In one video, he talked about protests in another country and what Russians can learn from them, and, in another video, he talked about the decision of the court to ban his video. One cannot say that Navalny wears a suit only when he talks about elections, as in some cases he wears a shirt for these occasions, too. However, it seems that Navalny wears a suit particularly when he wants to highlight his “politician” profile and serious topics.

Finally, in rare cases, Navalny was wearing a T-shirt and a jumper as seen in Figures 7.6 (Navalny 2017g) and 7.7 (Navalny 2018f). He wore a T-shirt while telling an anecdote about how he made money out of the “fools”, a pro-Kremlin, Russian tabloid-style media outlet, LifeNews. The media outlet had promised a reward of 50,000 rubles for anyone who would send a video of Navalny while he was on vacation in France. His wife earnt that money by posing as a citizen reporter and created her own video about their holiday. This casual look and an entertaining story could further create an intimate feeling with the audience. He even used the casual slang such as “fools” towards the journalists, which is familiar to an average citizen and young audience. Besides, this style and behaviour answers what Lewis (2018) called the “hippness” of YouTube’s audience.

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Figure 7-6: Screenshot of Navalny’s Figure 7-7: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video YouTube video

Whereas the link between the story and the look is obvious in the previous case, the fashion of Navalny in Figure 7.7 is not explaining why a populist politician wears a red Christmas-style jumper with snowflakes when he talks about the “oil money” of Russia. In this video, he criticises how Russian authorities were spending the taxpayers’ money acquired from oil sales in the beginning of the 2000s, when prices on oil were high. The explanation for the dissonance of the clothing style and narration can be the timeline of the video release (January 15), which was still close to the New Year, a holiday widely celebrated in Russia. Usually, Russian people have approximately 10 days of holidays after the New Year, and this image of Navalny could still translate into a “cozy”, “holiday” feeling, which many of the citizens still had by that time already working at the offices, again in an attempt to be closer to the audience.

In sum, the clothing style of Navalny’s communication on YouTube represents a stable image of a journalist and/or a politician, repetitive throughout the videos. He prefers to wear official clothes, such as a shirt, sometimes combined with a suit, and a tie. This image was prevalent among the explored sample of screenshots. However, in a rare occasion, he wears a colourful t-shirt or a jumper to highlight the casual style to show that he is a citizen like everyone in Russia and close to “the people”.

7.2.3 “The stage” for Navalny’s performances On a par with a populist image involving the perception of closeness to “the people”, and the exceptionality of a populist leader, the journalistic format resembles a similar relationship with the audience known as “intimacy at a distance” (Horton & Wohl, 1956). This principle involves the perception of a face-to-face interaction, while the media communicators are actually located remotely (Levy 1978). Decades ago,

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Levy (1978) stated that the journalist performance to the audience involves speaking directly to the camera, engaging in clever monologues, as well as other features. These principles are attributive to Navalny these days too, who performs on YouTube as a host similar to a television news programme format.

As seen in Figure 7.5. Navalny often performs on a black background, sitting at a white table, sometimes accompanied by a black notebook. This background was recommended to Navalny by an experienced Russian YouTuber Petukhov (Forbes 2019) who has a popular YouTube channel Wylsacom with more than nine million subscribers in June 2020. His channel is dedicated to the discussion of new technologies (Wylsacom n.d.) and Navalny adopted similar visual aesthetics in his own videos. This can contribute to the factor of Navalny becoming a typical YouTuber. In addition, in his videos, Navalny is separated from the audience by a table, which further emphasises the distance from the audience. At the same time, it contributes to his identity as a host of a show of a journalistic format, who usually sits behind the table, and thus adds to his status of an investigator.

Navalny changed the stage in four cases within the sample. In a first case, in a video “He is not Dimon to you” about Medvedev, Navalny narrated in front of bookshelves, which are filled with books, wine bottles, small yellow inflatable ducks, an image of PM Medvedev and a drone as seen in Figure 7.8 (Navalny 2017b). These are symbols of the investigation which later triggered mass protests in Russia. Wine bottles symbolise the wineries that, according to Navalny, Medvedev possessed while actively lobbying the wine industry in his own government.

Figure 7-8: Screenshot of Navalny’s YouTube video

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The yellow duck was a symbolic representation of an interesting find of Navalny’s team. In the video, Navalny used drone footage to show Medvedev’s summer home (dacha) and on this estate, they saw a small house for a duck in the middle of a lake. Since then small yellow duck has become a symbol of allegations about the luxurious life and corruption of Medvedev (memepedia.ru 2018). Inflatable yellow ducks were extensively used in the following anti-corruption protests organised after the release of the investigation. This is a successful adaptation of an online image, or footage to offline symbol of Russian corruption.

The drone represented as a journalistic instrument, was widely used in the filming of the video. Furthermore, Navalny in this shot is not separated by the table anymore, which makes him closer to the audience. Instead, he sits in a chair. Overall, Navalny spent more time and effort to film “He is not Dimon to you”, but also, he decorated the stage of the video where he performed to make this video memorable and viral. For this special video, he changed the decorations and filled them with special symbols: a drone, a yellow duck, an image of Medvedev, and wine bottles, which were meant to fixate the symbols of Medvedev’s corruption in people’s minds.

Another case in which Navalny changed the decoration was the video of the New Year addressing, where he copied the usual addressing of Vladimir Putin on the New Year’s Eve. He released it in 2017, right after the decision to bar him from contesting the 2018 presidential elections. Chronologically, the video starts with the image of Kremlin chimes as in Putin’s addressing. Then, Navalny appears in front of the audience in front of the painted Kremlin as seen in Figure 7.9 (Navalny 2017h). Navalny explains this background (Navalny 2017h):

In the tradition of New Year addressing, I need to say that it was a challenging, difficult year for the whole Russia, and in the next year we need to “tight our belts”. But I will be honest, if you haven’t noticed already, the Kremlin behind my back is painted, it is not real. So, I will not speak for the whole Russia.

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table, which again highlights his leader position to the audience and his exceptionality to the audience as a politician.

Overall, Navalny uses the same background in the majority of the videos, a special studio, where he performs as a host on a dark background separated from the audience by a table. This background further stylises his populist image, being at the same time close to people but also exceptional and distanced. All the cases of changing the “decorations” for Navalny’s YouTube videos reflect important milestones in Navalny’s career, such as his nomination to presidency, release of the investigation “He is not Dimon to you”, and a summary of his political year right in the aftermath of the court decision to bar him from elections. He decorates “the stage” with special symbols, meaningfully connected to these occasions: wine bottles, yellow ducks, a drone in the case of the investigation of Medvedev’s corruption; the drawn image of Kremlin in his New Year’s addressing; and pictures of his family in the case of his announcement of nomination to presidential candidate. These changes can evidence the important milestones of his political career in Russian politics translated through the stage and its decorations.

7.2.4 Colours of Navalny’s populism As in the case with clothing and “the stage” for his performance, Navalny is consistent with the colour representation of his video, mostly expressed through the colours he is wearing. He prefers to wear a shirt of pastel tones like white or blue, black suit and sometimes a red tie, typical colours for politicians. Colours can be researched through the emotions they cause from the audience, but also through the lens on visual politics, in other words, how these colours can be used in politics.

In 49 cases out of 70, Navalny wore a blue shirt while performing to a YouTube audience. Blue from an emotional point of view is associated with “low anxiety levels and the qualities of being comfortable and soothing” (Spielberger CD 1983; Wexner 1954; Clarke & Costall 2008). It is a neutral colour that many people find “calm and peaceful” (Clarke & Costall 2008). This colour would not create negative or active emotions, and it does not distract people from the narration of a speaker. From a political perspective, there are many interpretations of symbolism of a blue colour in politics. Sawer (2007) states that blue is a colour of Conservatives and recently of Democrats; however, I do not tend to associate Navalny with any particular ideology through the colour; this would require a different methodology and comparative angle

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with other politicians. Studies (Czerko 2004 as cited in Sorokowski & Wrembel 2014) have shown that if politicians wear a blue or a white shirt, it creates more positive emotions from the audience, than the candidates in shirts of other colours. It can be summarised, that Navalny wears blue to create emotions from neutral to positive, to be liked by the audience and to not distract people from his message.

Red colour as a warm colour provokes active feelings and emotions (Clarke & Costall 2008). It is described by participants of Wexner’s (1954) study as a “motivating and exciting” colour. This aligns with the political meaning of red as a colour. Historically, red is associated with radicalism, social movements, and particular parties. It was widely used in the French revolution in 1789. It was associated with the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, also used by the Labour party in the UK. Red has also become “an emotive signifier of the socialist movement in Europe” and beyond (Sawer 2007, 3).

Whereas the red colour in Navalny’s clothing is less unlikely to be connected to Russian Communistic past, it is linked to “radicalisation” and “politicisation” of his speeches in the videos. There were six cases out of 70 when Navalny wore a red tie. These were videos in which he called people to participate in the protests “He is not a tsar to us” in May 2018, following the inauguration of Vladimir Putin; or to boycott the presidential election. He used a red tie for his New Year’s addressing too, and the video about the court’s decision to delete his video and announcement of his presidential programme. Once, he wore a red tie for the corruption investigation about officials.

In the first two cases with a red tie, where he calls for protesting and boycotting of the election, it is evident that he strengthens his calls by the visual aesthetics of red colour, which creates this “motivating” and pro-active response from the audience. In all of the cases, except, for maybe the anti-corruption investigation, these were all political videos, that covered different aspects of his political life in Russia. Red in the case of Navalny was to some extent an emotional signifier of radicalism in Navalny’s speeches, but it also strengthened his political profile in various cases.

7.2.5 Clothing, stage, and colour aesthetics of Navalny’s populist communication Navalny’s communication on YouTube consists not only of the discourses and symbols of populism. Due to the video format of his communication, provided by

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YouTube’s affordances, I could evaluate the visual aesthetics of his communication. I explored the visual representation of his style of communication from the perspectives of clothing, “the stage”, where he performs, and also the colour aesthetics. Using the screenshots of the video, I concluded that Navalny is using a stable and consistent image throughout his videos. He usually wears a blue shirt, narrating to a camera in a video studio, separated by the table form the audience. He repeats the format of a television news programme, where he performs as a host, and this consistency in visual image enables the continuity of the show positioning, while the audience is becoming used to such format. At the same time, Navalny’s style corresponds to typical YouTube visual aesthetics which had already been used by popular Russian YouTubers such as Wylsacom and had proven its success among others.

Such visual representation reflects his populist image, where he stands as someone close to the public, but exceptional as a leader. He wears shirts of a blue colour, which generate positive and neutral emotions from people. But at the same time, he wears official clothes like suits to highlight his political leadership, and he is separated from the audience by the table. I found an intersection of the identities of Navalny as a populist politician and a host, which are evident through his official clothing but also in this perception of “intimacy at the distance” (Levy 1978). Navalny’s performance is distant from the audience both in a role of the journalist narrating and from the distance behind the table, but also, these features can be attributive to politicians addressing to the public.

The deviations from his typical image, where he portrayed himself as an ordinary citizen, were observed in clothing. Navalny wore a T-shirt or a jumper casually, to appear a person close to “the people”. He changes his “stage” for “performance” in exceptional cases, when the important political events happen to him; as the release of the investigation on Russian PM Medvedev or announcement of his presidential campaign. He “decorates” the “stage” with meaningful symbols which further dwells on the meaning of his narration and sometimes transform in the physical symbolic attributes that are used in protests later. That happened to yellow duck, that was shown as a symbol of Medvedev’s corruption. Also, the same happened to pairs of sneakers, that citizens brought to the protests of 2017 with them. Navalny’s investigation started from an observation of a leaked PM’s emails, where he bought himself a pair of sneakers online. Sneakers were not used at Navalny’s video backstage, they were

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shown in the actual footage, but protesters put the meaning to this symbol of PM’s corruption and adopted it offline.

In some cases, Navalny used colouring to “awaken” audience’s emotions and motivate them to political actions. Overall, the visual aesthetics of his performance on YouTube adds up to his populist style with a rich populist content. In the next section, I will look of what social media affordances are available to Navalny on the favourable for populist performance platform, YouTube.

7.3 STYLISING THE MESSAGE FOR THE YOUTUBE MEDIUM

In this section, I explore how Navalny adapts his message to a social media platform, specifically YouTube. Choosing YouTube as one of the leading platforms for his communication, Navalny inevitably changes his message according to the affordances of the platform and needs of its audience. This process is becoming part of the style of communication which Navalny uses to interact with his audience better. I review the main instruments and affordances that Navalny uses in his videos based on the qualitative content analysis of the video, using both automated and manual search techniques described in RS8, Section 4.4.2. As will be seen, Navalny embeds in his communication a range of YouTube features from sharing, clicking, and subscribing, typical for many social media platforms, to employing sophisticated genres such as “unboxing”, popular among YouTube audience. Below I describe these practices used by Navalny in his videos.

7.3.1 Click, subscribe, and share Social media, and YouTube specifically, has many affordances that can be beneficial for both for Navalny spreading anti-corruption, anti-establishment narratives online and for his audiences. In general, all four high-level affordances (boyd 2010) are present on YouTube. The content in the form of the videos is recorded archived (i.e. persistent); videos can be shared within the platform and to other platforms via links (i.e. replicable); the visibility of YouTube content is great in Russia and beyond having multi-million views and audiences (i.e. scalable); and finally, YouTube content is searchable due to embedded search bar on the platform.

However, most of these affordances are attributive to other famous social media platforms too such as Facebook and Twitter, for example. But specific context, policies and low-level affordances (boyd 2010), i.e. particular technological features of the

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platform, allow it to be the preferred platform for spreading anti-corruption, populist content in countries like Russia.The simplest features of subscribing, sharing, and commenting are the ones that are used by typical YouTube users. Despite the fact that Russians are mostly observers of YouTube and not the most active users of its features, as was mentioned in Section 7.1, Navalny still calls his users to use these features in almost every video.

In 51 videos out of 77, Navalny asks his audience to subscribe to his channel, mostly in the form of a call “Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here”. This simple YouTube feature enabled mass following of his channel. In November 2019, Navalny’s YouTube channel had 3 million subscribers. He is ranked among other influential YouTube bloggers (Forbes 2019) such as Xenia Sobchak (former presidential candidate, journalist, and blogger) with 1.1M subscribers; Yuri Dud’ (owner of vDud’ YouTube channel, interviewer) with 6.37M subscribers, Valentin Petukhov (owner of Wylsacom channel, blogger) with 8.4M subscribers, and others.

Navalny often offers users to use another feature of YouTube, sharing the video (using a special link which can be embedded in other social media platforms’ posts). Shareability and replicability helps to make videos viral and spread Navalny’s ideas: “Take this video with the investigation and send it to everyone, simply to everyone, put it everywhere you can. This is our war of spreading against their war of blocking, and we should win in it!” (Navalny 2018g) or “Only we can stop them; I ask you to help me with sharing this video!” (Navalny 2017j).

In these quotes, he stresses the antagonism with the elites, using their and them. He uses the YouTube sharing feature as a political instrument of fighting with the mainstream “propaganda” and gives “sharing” a political meaning, as can be seen from the following quote (Navalny 2017k):

We are still thinking with you, what is so special about ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on the Internet. Nothing special. How can we compete with Leviathan? Leviathan quickly twigged how it is painful, when a million people poke you with sharp sticks at the same time. And it takes it (note: Internet) seriously, understanding the fragility of its position.

YouTube, therefore, has become not only the instrument for spreading the information, but the instrument of political struggle, where online action can be a serious threat to the incumbent political regime.

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Navalny arms his YouTube followers not only with instruments but also with Internet sources to support his ideas or fight the regime. He often provides a link in the description of the YouTube video, which can possibly lead to another set of political actions. He provides users to put down a signature for his nomination online, print leaflets for his campaign, donate money for his campaign, or become an electoral observer), organise the protests (to find, organise, or join a protest in different cities), and share the video. These actions are corresponding to the radical “call to action”, which was described in Section 6.3. Mainly to assist users to take part in offline political action such as protests and elections, he provides them with digital instruments to take a small and simple step to political participation enabled through YouTube.

In sum, simple YouTube features or low-level affordances such as sharing the video, subscribing to a channel, and clicking the link in the description of the video can become a prerequisite to offline civil political action in Navalny’s communication. Navalny uses these tools to spread awareness about officials’ corruption, to spread his ideas, and to encourage people to take part in protests and elections. Whereas participating in protests or voting in elections can be difficult to implement for many citizens, the simple steps that users can do first are resulting in a click on YouTube. However, in his YouTube content, Navalny uses more sophisticated forms of performance intrinsic to the platform.

7.3.2 Drone footage and YouTube videos Section 6.3 explores how Navalny often employs drone journalism to shed light on officials’ corruption, showing his users the footage of officials’ properties. Navalny can serve as a unique investigator in the Russian public sphere with the exclusive content. Drone footage also fits the criteria of YouTube content and its main feature, the videos themselves, which is the original format of the communication on this platform. Other platforms, such as Facebook or Russian VKontakte, also have video services; however, their main content is microblogging and posts rather than videos.

The drone footage can always be identified within Navalny’s videos with a change of the image: from Navalny sitting in the centre of the shot behind the table to video footage of expensive properties. He always accompanies this footage with a verbal description of the geographical and visual characteristics of the properties (Navalny 2017l): “Alright, let’s stop talking, let’s fly. So, now we are flying up to the

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island Lodochnyi, now we are up the neighbouring peninsula, and here in the forest big residential building can be seen – this is probably a domestic staff house or a hotel.”

Drones can become a crucial tool of expanding the boundaries of what is “visible” in a political regime like Russia’s (Brighenti 2007; Butler 2011 as cited in Martini 2018, 39):

Within institutional (or even enforced) regimes of visibility, the possibility for everyone to expand the boundaries of the ‘visible’, of what legitimately exists as part of the political and cultural landscape (Brighenti, 2007), has already been proved to be destabilizing for those powers which constantly seek to monopolize the terms of reality (Butler, 2011).

The “monopolisation of reality” is typical for Russian authorities and mainstream media, according to Navalny. The absence of access to the media market as well as political persecution force opposition activists like Navalny to “perform” on YouTube. Drone footage on YouTube, as Martini’s (2018, 44) study show, can establish “unprecedented strength of the relationship between users and events”. Exploring the Dakota Access Pipeline protests also known as NO DAPL movement in 2016, Martini (2018, 44) concludes that drone footage used extensively by NO DAPL supporters has become a “vision that worked as a call to action”. It offers a smooth objective balance, not from an eye of an operator, it increases the visual proximity, while YouTube enables users to live real-time experience. The combination contributed to protesters joining the NO DAPL movement (Martini 2018).

In common with the NO DAPL case, Navalny offers to his users an expanded version of reality constructed by Russian authorities and the media through drone footage on YouTube. Navalny used drone footage in most of his major investigations on YouTube: “He is not Dimon to you” (about former PM Medvedev), “Oligarch buys an official: Showing you how” (about businessman Prokhorov and Deputy PM Khloponin), “Apartments, a summer house (dacha) and an Italian villa of Vladimir Solovyev” (about journalist Solovyev), and other investigations. For the user, it creates the impression of an objective coverage, without human involvement, usually captured from a distance, but at the same time enables the collective witnessing of real-time events enabled through YouTube. This principle resembles the principle of “intimacy at a distance” (Levy 1978) attributive to television journalism.

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7.3.3 Political “unboxing” In the explored sample of YouTube videos, Navalny uses the genre of unboxing twice, which typically shows the unpacking of a commercial product (Marsh 2016). As Kelly (2014) stated after the emergence of YouTube, the genre of unboxing became very popular, with a growing rate of 871 per cent. These videos allow content creators achieve multi-million views on YouTube and multi-million subscriptions for the channels. In addition to that, unboxing is also known as advertising business (Sloane 2015) which leads to the increased sales of the product being “unboxed”. However, the unboxing videos of Navalny have a principally different meaning. Apart from the engaging and entertaining nature, Navalny’s unboxing videos do not aim at selling products, instead they are aimed at helping Navalny to pursue his political goals.

Two videos “Unboxing of the gadget worth 10 billion rubles” and “Secret unboxing. We have questions for you” are among the most popular videos in the explored period with 6.3 and 1.6 million views, respectively as of November 2019. Navalny uses each of them for a particular reason, which he usually explains in the video. Nevertheless, through unboxing videos, he attracts users’ attention to a serious political problem which he incorporates in the entertaining YouTube genre.

In the video “Unboxing the gadget worth 10 billion rubles”, he unpacks and explains the context of the recent innovation of Russian State Corporation Rosnano, an electronic gadget, which, according to Navalny, the corporation spent an enormous amount of money on, and Navalny disproves its efficiency. In his video, he does not hide the real reason behind using this genre for this case (Navalny 2017m):

Hello, this is Navalny! Unboxing – that’s what we need. People get heaps of subscribers on it, and I need these subscribers. You probably saw 150 videos, where famous bloggers, or anyone really unpack different gadgets and closely examine them. So, I need to do the same, but I need to stand out too, attract attention, and this is not easy. Someone, for example, unpacks iPhone for 500 thousand rubles, or a laptop for 700 thousand rubles, or a phone for 20 thousand dollars. But I accept the challenge, I am ready for competition and even if I debut in unboxing, so today I will unpack a gadget worth 10 billion rubles.

To attract attention and get more subscribers, Navalny stylises his message according to the YouTube audience needs. He uses unboxing for practical but, at the same time, political reasons. While unpacking, Navalny describes what originally cost

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10 billion rubles to its inventors. Navalny explains the excessive spending of the corporation, led by its CEO Chubais, and he shows through the unboxing genre that the gadget is not worth its price and does not work properly (Navalny 2017m):

It is really sad because this box [with a gadget] can become a symbol of modern Putin’s Russia. Ten billion rubles invested; heaps of people earned on this. It is interesting to see the income of Chubais during the active phase of the work of this project. From 2010 to 2014, he earned, on average 210 million rubles annually.

Navalny finishes the video with a call to put down a signature for his presidential nomination so he can prevent and stop the unnecessary production and spending on projects that do not benefit Russian society. His politically-coloured unboxing turns into electoral agitation and socially meaningful discourse.

“Secret unboxing: We have questions for you” has a less political context; however, it does have a meaning for Navalny’s video production team, because they use the video to set up the survey to conduct audience analytics. First, Navalny unpacks the box that arrived at their office. The content of the box is connected with YouTube itself (Navalny 2018h):

Ta-da-da-dam! What do we have here? Something sparkles with gold, quick-quick, we don’t have time to wait! In anger, we are ripping off the cellophane. Hooray! This is YouTube button, we have almost two millions of subscribers on this channel. But this gold YouTube button, which is given for the first million of subscribers, arrived to us recently and I want to thank everyone, who has subscribed to our channel and helped to share videos.

Framing his video as “unboxing”, Navalny talks about the platform itself, unpacking the YouTube button in front of the audience. However, he openly talks about the need to analyse his audience on the subject of age, gender, and political stances, because as he explains, YouTube analytics does not provide him with this data. Navalny and his team decided to attract users’ attention with unboxing so they can incorporate this data in their future videos (Navalny 2018h).

This fact evidences the use of political marketing practices by Navalny’s team. Navalny researches his audience, their demands, and general characteristics. Due to the lack of independent analytical centres of public opinion in Russia, he uses YouTube instruments to explore his audience. He provides the link for the survey in the description of the video that users can fill in with their answers.

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To sum up, Navalny uses unboxing videos to have an image of a “YouTuber”, who entertains and engages his audience with the videos of unpacking different products. As a “YouTuber”, he tries to attract more subscribers, likes, and shares to his videos to achieve high scalability and replicability of his content. Nevertheless, unlike typical commercial entertainers on YouTube, he attracts users’ attention by such videos to pursue his own political goals.

7.3.4 A YouTuber with political purposes The analysis of the YouTube features that Navalny employs in his videos to stylise his message to the platform has identified Navalny as a typical “YouTuber” in many ways. Driven by political goals, he uses different YouTube affordances and genres of the platform to entertain, engage, and attract users to the content on his channel. In his videos, Navalny often invites people to subscribe to his channel, share, and like his content using low-level affordances of the platform. He uses these simple features of YouTube to spread awareness about officials’ corruption, to disseminate his ideas, to encourage people to take part in protests and elections. These simple features can be a prerequisite to a political action combined with use of high-level affordances that make his videos even more popular.

Navalny and his team use drone footage to provide a sensationalist effect to his audience, showing users previously unseen shots. He shows the luxurious properties supposedly belonging to officials to bring more evidence to the corruption investigation against them that were never shown on mainstream media. Drone footage creates an effect of objective reporting from a distance not using the operator who holds the camera. At the same time, it is a form of collective witnessing of real-time events (or locations in case of Navalny) broadcasted on YouTube. It creates this feeling of “intimacy at a distance”, typical for news television genres, but also consonant with populist visual representation “close to the people”, but exceptional in terms of content. Whereas other scholars (Martini 2018) argue that drone footage can become a separate form of a “call to action” in social movements, motivating activists to join the protests through the visual aesthetics of witnessing real-time events.

Finally, Navalny widely uses YouTube’s genre of “unboxing” in his videos to engage more users in his content, which mostly has political incentives. Unpacking different items, he attracts users to political issues that penetrate Russian society while

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also serving his own political goals. The entertaining nature of unboxing attracted to these multi-million views videos.

7.4. SUMMARY

Having the third-largest audience in the world and being the most popular platform in the country (Statista 2019a, 2017), Russian YouTube has become an attractive discussion site for those who seem to disagree with the current political regime. YouTube in Russia has attracted a flow of anti-corruption discourses starting from the late 2000s, early 2010s. First, anti-corruption activists acted occasionally and disorganised on YouTube, publishing their videos about corruption in Russia. A video addressed to a politician, a broadcast of concerts with political speeches, and an anti- corruption investigation were published as personal acts of resistance mostly, rarely as the representatives of the fully-fledged anti-corruption movement.

However, this was the time of relative media freedom liberation of the Medvedev’s presidency (2008-2012) and increasing anti-establishment protests activity resulting in big protests of 2011-2012. These videos were contributing to the anti-establishment moods in the Russian society at that time, though the destiny of these activists who uploaded those videos was tragic. Schevchuk has become an outsider of politics and cultural life in Russia, Baranovskii was put into jail, Dymovsky was harassed by the police – and even assaulted. This “digital deride” in Russia affected Navalny too due to his extensive anti-corruption online activities.

Although, Navalny, unlike his anti-corruption predecessors, turned this online discourse into an industry, filled with replicable symbols, and a peculiar template to follow. He united several anti-corruption activists on his YouTube Channel Navalny LIVE, who reproduced, at the very least, almost similar visual aesthetics used by Navalny to achieve their political goals.

Navalny’s style comprises of several elements that were analysed in this chapter. I looked at the visual aesthetics of Navalny’s populist performance as well as YouTube features and genres that he employed in his communication. As for visual representations, I analysed Navalny’s video through the lens of the theory of political performance (Rai 2015), where along with the speech explored in Chapters 5 and 6, I looked at the stage, body, and colour representations used by the opposition leader.

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Using semi-formal clothing style involving a shirt, a suit and sometimes a tie, he tries to be closer to “the people”, reflecting his belonging to working middle-class and also performing as a politician. He emphasises his leadership position through clothing but also his positioning on the video, separated from the audience with a table, highlighting his exceptionality. He mostly uses a neutral “stage” with a dark background and a white table to not distract the audience from the message and typical for some of the YouTubers. However, in exceptional cases and before critical political events, he decorates the stage with specific symbols to the event or investigative case he is describing. He uses emotionally neutral colours like blue, which makes his audience comfortable and soothing. However, when he makes radical calls and wants his audience to participate in political action, he puts on a red tie.

Navalny stylises his message to the platform to make his videos scalable. In his narration, he turns YouTube functions into political action: click, share, and subscribe to the channel – all these actions are also the forms of political resistance towards the establishment and online political actions. He uses the popular YouTube genre “unboxing” not to advertise commercial products, but to attract attention to the political problem in Russia or to pursue his own political goals, for example, getting demographic details about his audience. He employs drone footage as a factor motivating to action, as it shows the previously unseen wealth of Russian officials, which triggers negative emotions among citizens. All these features make him a typical YouTuber, who knows how YouTube features can make his content more attractive to the audience and his potential electorate.

The next chapter will summarise the outcomes of this project and its significance for the scholarship on Russian political communication, digital media, and populism studies. It will bring possible trajectories to the research emanating from the current study.

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Chapter 8: Conclusions and discussion

This project explored the populist communication of Russian non-systemic opposition leader Alexey Navalny on YouTube and how the social media platform with its affordances helped to establish himself as a successful leader opposed to Putin’s elite. Drawing from the theories of political communication, populism, investigative journalism, digital media, and other studies, I analysed the videos of Alexey Navalny through content analysis. In this chapter, I discuss the findings of Chapters 5, 6, and 7 and draw the main conclusions of this project. I proceed with the main theoretical contributions and limitations of this research and conclude with recommendations, suggestions, and questions for a possible follow-up research on this political communication topic. In a broader perspective, the analysis of Navalny’s communication helps to understand whether there is a “luft” (from German: “air”) for spreading anti-establishment discourses in censored Russian political communication, what communication strategies of non-systemic opposition are proved to be successful, and whether they can be replicated by other opposition leaders to make citizens actively participate in politics.

8.1 NAVALNY AND HIS POPULIST COMMUNICATION ON YOUTUBE

This research sheds light on the political communication of Russian non- systemic opposition which struggles with the restrictive political environment dominated by the monopoly of power of Putin’s elite and numerous limitations of press and Internet freedom in the country. I contribute with a case study of the most prominent opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who, after the mass protests of 2011- 2012, is one of the few activists who has been able to offer counter-narratives to the Russian public sphere on a regular basis. Navalny has used the means of digital technologies to achieve this goal. I analysed how Navalny employed digital media opportunities to communicate his populist narratives to oppose himself to Putin’s elite. In this section, I summarise the main findings of the project.

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8.1.1 Political communication shifts and Navalny’s place in Russian public sphere To understand Navalny’s communication phenomenon, I analysed the academic scholarship of political communication through three major shifts in its development in the 21st century. The first shift is associated with the changes in the roles of main political communicators such as citizens, media, and actors seeking political power. Citizens stopped being just receivers of content, but equally became producers of the information. Politicians and news media being providers of information often compete for the leading role of the providers of “truth”. New emergent PC actors are also to play a role in communication processes about politics. Social media platforms, for example, have several roles in facilitating social movements creating a context for activism (DeLuca et al. 2012). In Russia, big international platforms helped to mobilise supporters for the 2011-2012 protests, but at the same time, the government was active online in countering the protests too (White & McAllister 2014, Spaiser et al. 2017). Navalny, understanding this PC shift, skilfully combines all the roles of PC actors such as a journalist, a politician, and an active citizen but also purposefully employs the affordances of social media platforms, such as YouTube.

In light of the decline of trust in conventional news media (Newman et al. 2019), what is seen as the second shift in PC, new journalistic practices emerge to play a watchdog role in society. Investigative journalism with its distinctive features involving traditional and new digital practices is believed to have the biggest potential to fulfil this role in different societies. In autocratic and transitional societies, investigative journalists, professional and amateur, are forced to deal not only with monopoly of the power but also limitations of media freedom. They are forced to fight both for democratisation and accountability of the establishment and freedom of the speech. These lead not only to the emergence of new Internet-based projects, as was seen in Eastern Europe (Stetka & Örnebring 2013), but also bring the elements of advocacy to their materials to create political change. Journalists start to associate themselves with the opposition, as in Russia (Repnikova 2018) and advocate for political change. Navalny’s case represents the latter trend as it utilises affordances of YouTube to publish his documentaries on Russian officials’ corruption and use the decline of trust in the Russian television (RBK 2019) as a context for his claims to represent a credible alternative.

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The last shift in PC is associated with the rise of populism across the world, an emerging and ambiguous term in politics. I was drawing on the notion of de Vreese et al. (2018) who consider populism consisting of populist content and style. Populist content is usually centred around anti-elitist and people-centred ideological elements that dominate populist scholarship. The set of presentational elements that populists use for their performances is based on, among other things, visual representations of the body, the positioning of the setting as a stage (Rai 2015), and the use of colour.

In the global rise of populist communication which has been documented in the third age of PC (Blumler & Kavanagh 1999), social media brought even more possibilities for spreading populist discourses online (Blumler 2013). Depending on political settings, it had different meanings for politicians and the public. In Russia, and Navalny’s case particularly, YouTube helped to host populist performances of a particular style offering Navalny various opportunities to call people to action and discredit the elite using the evidence of their crimes or misconduct.

In light of these PC shifts, Navalny’s populist communication is situated in the political ecosphere with limited opposition forces operating from the “ghetto” (Gel’man 2013) opposing the incumbent elite and the media which is regulated and censored (Freedom House 2017, Freedom House 2018, Agora 2019). Major international social media companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter managed to negotiate selective filtering of the political content with Russian regulatory bodies which prevented major blocking of the platforms. YouTube, a Google subsidiary, fits into this trend by being the most popular social media platform in Russia (Statista 2019a) and allows for selective disseminating of counter-narratives to the Russian establishment. Navalny uses these opportunities of the platform for his political benefits.

8.1.2 Themes and symbols of Navalny’s narration The results of the content analysis showed that Navalny’s YouTube communication was dominated by themes about “elections”, “Russian political system”, “corruption industry”, and “truth and ways to communicate it”. Elections are the most crucial institution for Navalny and the Russian political system in general. Authorities put more attention into achieving re-election, using different manipulations of vote count and public opinion and even fraud, to the degree that the Russian regime has been labelled as “electoral authoritarianism” (Golosov 2011).

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Considering that the timeframe for the sample coincided with Navalny’s presidential electoral campaign in 2018, this theme ran like a golden thread throughout the videos, though it was not the most important theme among others. Mostly, Navalny’s narration on YouTube is dominated by the presence of corruption symbols and references to corruption characteristics, which form the “corruption industry” image in his videos. The symbols of wealth, luxurious life, and nepotism resonate cases of corruption of the elites, which mostly inform Navalny’s narration. In this perspective, these symbols can serve as a trigger of negative emotions from viewers, citizens, most of whom are struggling with hardship and poverty in the country.

The Russian political system theme in his narration is built beyond the simple confrontation of two populist antagonistic entities and include more actors and elements of national political environment. Navalny uses emotionally colourful descriptions of the elites such as “rich”, “crooks”; but also provides for the places, methods and circumstances for “the people” where they can exercise their rights. This is implemented through the words “streets”, “protest”, and “fight”.

Navalny presents himself as a provider of “truth” in the conditions of the absence of access to the mainstream media. He shows what instruments, formats, and channels are available to him and his supporters. His typical saying “Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here!” replicated throughout almost all videos only confirms his desire to show himself as the only “truth-provider” in Russia. This conflict also emphasises the previously mentioned PC struggle between politicians and the media for delivering “the truth” to the audience. Navalny with his own media outlet can substantially oppose to mainstream media agenda dictated by the elite.

In this sense, Navalny performs most of the roles acquired to professional journalists (Hanitzsch & Vos 2017) such as normative, cognitive, practised, and performative roles. Although he is not part of institution of journalistic socialisation, he is performing amateur grass-roots investigative journalism that can have an impact on society. However, he can be described as more than a journalist alone, as together with journalist functions, he also acts as an active citizen fighting corruption in the country, participating and organising protests, and a politician, trying to be elected and using populist narratives and styles to attract the electorate.

In his videos, Navalny attacks the elite in different ways – both generally but also individually, specifying particular actors who he asserts are involved in power

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abuse and/or corruption. The core of the elite in Russia as Navalny’s main target constitute representatives executive and economic powers, the mainstream media and the repressive state apparatus. The most mentioned actors in his videos are representatives of executive and economic powers, especially president Putin and then-PM Medvedev, who are the main targets of his critique.

Navalny’s populist organisation is seen as distinctive within a broader populist Russian discourse. Russian populist communication is personified but also contains antagonism of different social groups in Russia and beyond (citizens vs the “Fifth column”; citizen vs the “West”). He adheres to an anti-oligarchic citizenship (Gerbaudo 2017a) challenging status quo. He talks to “the people” using the most radical forms of appeal as a “call to action”; moreover, he discredits the elite, sometimes using investigative journalistic practices of collecting evidence of corruption crimes. However, these are not only the elements attributive to Navalny’s populism.

8.1.3 Populism in Navalny’s political communication strategy Navalny’s populist communication is not only demonstrating evidence of elite’s crimes, but also politically motivates people. By providing his audience with a variety of political actions in his narration, he shows pathways to political changes in the country that is resistant to them. Some of these practices are easy to implement with one click, while others involve physical actions “go and do”, for example, “go to the streets”. He extends the notion of populism and “the people” by adding an activist element to his discourse. He not only mentions “the people”, but also their political rights, places, instruments, and conditions of how they can exercise their rights. The combination of both evidence of the elite’s misconduct and radical appeal to the audience in his videos creates a unique message for his audience, truthful due to watchdog practices and motivating and encouraging political action, as was seen in protests 2017.

Navalny’s populism has a strong “anti-corruption” flavour. Navalny is a prominent actor in what Sampson (2010) calls the industry, which comprises symbols, actors, and organisations that promote anti-corruption values. In Russia, which is considered as a country with high levels of corruption (Transparency International 2018), both the civil sector and the government are involved in creating anti-corruption narratives. Civil society organisations involved in Russia’s anti-corruption industry

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have been affected by the Foreign Agent Law in Russia in 2012, which led to many NGOs to be labelled as “foreign agent” organisations if they receive foreign funds and engage in “political activity”. The anti-corruption organisations, for example a Russian branch of Transparency International, was marked as a foreign agent, which undermined its authority in the eyes of ordinary Russian citizens. Many NGOs ceased to operate. Consequently, the anti-corruption discourse and the industry moved to online underground with the investigations and symbols of modern Russian corruption. At a time in which the overall anti-corruption industry was shifting to online activism, Navalny and his organisation, ACF, followed suit and made this discourse more prominent through the digital instruments.

Luxurious properties, nepotism of the elites, and emotionally coloured words applied to the officials and their corruption – all of these symbols can possibly trigger negative emotions from Russian citizens. The intolerance of “wealthy” elements of the society is deeply rooted in Russian history. In the pre- and post-revolutionary Russia of the 20th century, kulaks, well-off peasants, were defined as class enemies of the Soviet state. In the 1990s’ Russia, oligarchs, a product of unjust privatisation of Soviet industries, became a subject of mass hate of the citizens. Navalny employs a similar strategy with the same subjects of hate: oligarchs, businessmen, and the politicians patronising them. In the situation of a great economic disparity (European Parliament 2018), this topic resonates with many citizens.

From an analysis of the broader characteristics of Navalny’s populism, I also elaborated specific features of how Navalny’s populist communication is constructed, and he combines specifically the elements of digital activism and investigative journalism in his populist narration.

8.1.4 Digital activism and investigation journalism practices in Navalny’s populist communication Navalny combines investigative journalism and digital activism practices in his populist narration in four combinations. He usually starts his videos with what I called superficial populism introducing the topic of his video. In these parts of the narration, populism and the antagonism of “the people” and “the elite” can be communicated with a few words such as “us” versus “them”. He also uses these excerpts in videos in the middle for the transition to other types of populism in his excerpts. These excerpts

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in his narration do not presuppose a great effort from the narrator in terms of preparation, and neither does it provide people with an instruction for action.

Unlike, superficial populism, investigative populism excerpts in his narration requires major investigative and time-consuming work from Navalny and his team. To discredit the elite, they need to use investigative journalism methods to collect, analyse, and present the evidence of elite’s crimes. Even with a small sample, it can be seen that Navalny prefers to use digital evidence such as drone video footage, social media data, and information on websites. On one side, it provides for cost and time efficiency for his investigations, from the other side, it questions the verifiability and quality of some of the data as will be discussed further.

Investigative populism excerpts can be located in the middle and beginning of his videos, making a substantial evidence basis for the documentaries to make them more trustable and illustrative. Navalny actively invites people to act and create political change by using a radical call and radical populist excerpts at the end of his videos. The opposition leader calls for traditional forms of political participation such as protests, voting, political boycotting, and others. But also using digital platform YouTube, he invites people to act digitally by liking, clicking, sharing, etc. These small digital actions can be a prerequisite to offline activities. They do not require a big effort, and citizens can be more protected from political harassment as they can more freely on YouTube than other Russia-based platforms.

The cases where Navalny calls to act both “online” and “offline” in the same part of the text were observed the most within advocacy populism excerpts. In them, Navalny also invites people to action but also provides the evidence of elites’ crime within the same portion of the video. Mostly, advocacy excerpts are located at the end of the video — or they are full videos solely dedicated to exposure of crime and calls for action in response to it. It is observed that the most concentration of the videos within the sample with these particular excerpts were released anticipating and during the nation’s biggest protest activities since 2011-2012. This was the time between March and June 2017, when two major waves of anti-government protests took place, organised and led by Navalny. The strengthening of the message by Navalny with online and offline call to action, where he adds investigative journalism practices and discredits elites with journalistic evidence are seen, among other things, as potential

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prerequisites to his initiation of these protest activities that requires further analysis of media effects of such messages.

8.1.5 Navalny as a YouTuber The protest activities described in the previous paragraph were mass and popular due to among other things the virality YouTube videos that sometimes triggered them. YouTube, a platform with international headquarters, gained relative independence from Russian authorities, where it can selectively satisfy government requests to remove the content. (Google n.d.). The Russian government uses soft practices of cooperation with the big international platforms, whereas small social media players are subject to full blocking in Russia (Agora 2019). Despite the high percentage of satisfied requests to delete the content, some of the content of anti-government meaning, including crucial Navalny’s videos, “slipped away” from the censorship. That is one of the reasons why it became a “shelter” for anti-corruption activists who discredit the Russian establishment. In light of declining trust in mainstream television in Russia (RBK 2019), the situation of declining trust generates opportunities for alternative media to use other platforms — such as YouTube — to attract an audience of citizens trustworthy in news and information.

To get more subscribers, Navalny adapted his populist message to the platform specificities and used peculiar format of populist performances. Through the visual representations of the “body”, “stage”, and “colour”, which can be demonstrated in a video format on YouTube, main YouTube affordance, he creates an intimate feeling with the audience, associating himself with them. Using neutral colouring in his clothes and a simple black/white background, he creates an emotionally neutral and soothing atmosphere for his audience. When he wants to put emphasis on particular events or want radical actions from his audience, he can wear a red tie or change the decoration of the scenes by filling them with different symbols. At the same time, he distances himself from the audience with formal, and semi-formal clothing styles. Showing his leadership position, he separates himself with a table from the audience. Navalny follows patterns that Casullo (2018) identifies as being associated with the performance of populist leaders, such as intimacy with the audience and exceptionality.

Navalny uses most of the features of YouTube such as click, subscribe, and share, inviting his audience to make maximum use of these simple features. In

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addition, he also employs typical YouTube genres such as “unboxing” and favourable for the platform formats such as drone video footage, to create a feeling of novelty and sensation. He creates unique content comparable to mainstream television channels which answers YouTube’s criteria for popularity and contributes to the rise of his subscribers on the channel. In some cases, due to his communication strategy, his subscribers turn into his active political supporters and join the anti-establishment discourses, gatherings, and movements in Russia — as has been shown by the mass demonstrations that have followed particular videos.

8.2 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIELD

This study lies at the intersection of several theoretical fields such as populism, political communication, investigative journalism, and digital media studies. With the case study of Navalny, this study looks at a phenomenon in an innovative and comprehensive manner. It finds thought-provoking intersections between some of the disciplines that might be relevant for the generations of future researchers specialising in Russian politics and communication, populism, investigative journalism, or political communication in general.

After the conceptualisation of three shifts in PC, several theoretical gaps were addressed. In general, the lack of studies was observed within the fields of digital communication strategies of Russian opposition, populism in Russia, visual aesthetics of populism, the role of YouTube in spreading populism, and the role of YouTube in Russian politics in general. I used mixed-method content analysis with the elements of frame mapping to analyse YouTube videos of Navalny to contribute to these theoretical gaps. Following sections outline these contributions accordingly.

8.2.1 Russian populist communication online This research has illuminated some of the successful communication strategies that the non-system opposition representatives use to stay “afloat” in the autocratic political environment in Russia of the 2010s. In the case of Navalny, we see the continuation of use of populist communication strategies outlined by Gel’man (2013) at the beginning of the 2010s of the non-systemic opposition who seek to challenge Putin’s elite that has held power for 20 years.

The success of Navalny’s project as a prominent non-systemic opposition figure in Russia can be explained by his ability to survive and be politically active despite the

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restrictive political environment and absence of press freedom. In the environment, where dissident elements of society are silenced, threatened, harassed, or even eliminated his project looks unique in the last decade. Many of his anti-corruption colleagues who were active online vanished from the Russian public sphere due to harassment as described in the previous chapter. In addition, his non-systemic or systemic opposition colleagues disappeared one by one from the political arena, mainly because of the same pressure from the establishment as outlined in Section 1.1. None of them had fully-fledged digital projects as Navalny or the same level of social media presence. The ability to develop and employ effective digital strategy in combination with populist rhetoric among other factors can be in theory a prerequisite for Navalny to organise multi-thousand protests in the country and requires further analysis.

This work not only extends the notion of Russian populism, and Russian opposition’s populism particularly, but it also brings new perspectives into populism studies in general, including methodological and theoretical contributions. The idea of studying populism through the prism of a communication style and content is not new, and dates back to works of Jagers and Walgrave (2007), Moffitt and Tormey (2014), and de Vreese et al.’s (2018) studies. Most previous studies have concentrated on the textual representations of populism and its quantitative analysis, but by contrast, this project has explored the visual aesthetics of populism and a qualitative dimension of the analysis.

Methodologically, it is challenging to study populist communication due to the ambiguity of the term and the lack of agreement of what the actual elements of populism are. The development of the categories of populism derive from notions of “anti-elitism” and “people-centrism” expressed in particular words, which can be a contribution to the future empirical analysis of populism. With this empirical analysis of the text, it can quickly be determined who is populist by illuminating particular words-markers; however, without a context interpretation and a qualitative analysis, it is hard to make sense of quantitative data. The developed Instruction for a coder in Appendix G can be applied, with necessary contextual modifications, to other populism research too.

The notion of Russian populism as a personified phenomenon is extended by Navalny’s case. He centres his populist discourse on himself and “the people” by

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opposing Putin’s elite consisting of executive power, business, mainstream media, and the “repressive state apparatus”. His videos are also reminiscent of Narodniks’ “goings to the people” phenomenon. Instead of physically going to people’s houses, he publishes videos with anti-government narratives aimed at a change of the political elite. Just as Narodniks propagated the tsar’s overthrow more than a century ago, Navalny was calling for Putin’s resignation and even created a slogan “He is not a tsar to us”.

Navalny’s opposition populism has distinctive features within Russian populism in particular, and populism in general. Navalny’s populism is populism “from the bottom”. As an outsider of systemic politics who is not allowed to implement decision making, he is forced used alternative methods of political struggle including alternative and vivacious communication strategies. He skilfully uses investigative journalism practices in his populist narration. The weight of the evidence of the elite’s “crimes”, as a part of IJ practice, plays a crucial role in Navalny’s populism. It makes his investigations appear trustworthy and irrefutable because the videos involve professional practices of watchdog reporting, which require great time, effort, and professionalism from the investigators. Investigative journalism has common features and purposes with populism, and Navalny’s uses this overlap to his advantage. Both IJ and populism are aimed at exposing and discrediting the elites (“villains”) in society and protecting the interests of the public or “the people”, who are commonly portrayed as the victims of elite’s abuse of power and corruption. This intersections of fields of investigative journalism and populism can be explored by researchers further in different national contexts, both democratic and non-democratic.

8.2.2 Visual aesthetics of populism The visual attributes of populism are a less studied phenomenon than the analysis of populist texts. Seen as a part of political performances, expressed through the body, stage, and the colour representations, visual analysis of populism can show a richer picture of populism. The populists’ use of colours and clothes, how they act on the scene, and how they decorate and interact with the stage – can contribute to a further exploration of how populists perform online and be applied to different contexts. This research demonstrated that when it is broadcasted through the digital platform which allows these formats and representations, the populist message can become viral and reach broader audiences.

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8.2.3 YouTube as a hosting platform for populist narratives The importance of YouTube as a platform that can host populist performances was one of the key contributions of this study to the PC field. While Twitter and Facebook studies on populism prevail in academic scholarship, there is little study of YouTube’s potential as a political platform for populist communication. This study of Navalny demonstrates that the YouTube platform and its community can be a favourable environment for spreading populist content, and such findings will logically be applicable in many other national contexts. Through the video format, audio, text, and visual elements, YouTube can broadcast the populist performance comprising speech, stage, body, and performative labour. If the creators know their audiences and YouTube features and instruments, they can potentially reach a higher viewership of his content and make it viral, as Navalny’s case shows.

Navalny uses YouTube’s adversarial genres like unboxing to his political benefit, attracting more viewers to his content. He turns simple functions of YouTube such as a like, click, and share to political actions which are easy steps of political participation which less likely will cause political harassment or persecution typical for dissent views. This speaks for political capacities of the platform which enables political discussions through its affordances. A YouTuber that employs most of the features of the platform, genres, and stylising the message to the medium pursuing his political purposes can succeed in attracting audiences as online as offline, as was seen in the case of Navalny, but the causality between those facts should be established in future research.

Exploring different features of YouTube, and how Navalny not only uses them but adapts his message to these affordances and the platform respectively was considered as a new element of political style as briefly outlined in Section 2.3.1. The skilful adaptation the message to the medium increases chances of the videos to be seen and be highly spread and potentially have a bigger impact on the audiences. The fact that two of unboxing videos were among the most viewed videos on Navalny’s channel only confirms this suggestion.

The study showed the role of YouTube in the Russian communication sphere. The platform has a tremendous impact on political communication as it is the most popular platform among others existing in Russia (Statista 2019a). The platform seems to negotiate with the censorship and regulatory bodies in terms of the regulation of its

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content. In so doing, YouTube, among other things, helps the preservation of anti- corruption discourses in Russia. In contrast, at the beginning of the 2010s, these narratives existed in a fragmented and occasional manner on YouTube, as shown by the cases of Dymovsky, Baranovskii, and Schevchuk.

Navalny has become an integrator of anti-corruption discourses attracting other activists like Milov and Yashin to his YouTube resources. Together they use a similar way of narration, symbols, and content of the anti-corruption industry, creating what I called as “digital anti-corruption ghetto” on YouTube. In common with what Gel’man’s idea of the opposition ghetto, which emerged after protests in 2011-2012, the “digital anti-corruption ghetto” hosts and maintains the flow of the anti-corruption discussion of the outsiders of systemic politics. Using similar visual aesthetics, same channels and platfroms (Navalny’s associates often release videos on Navalny LIVE), and potentially the same rhetoric, what needs further exploration, they support the survival of the anti-establishment minority with digital instruments. The relative freedom of the platform, the high viewership and exposure, and simple functionality of the YouTube platform allow several anti-corruption activists and opposition leaders to stay afloat in the monopolised by the State public sphere.

8.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT

Despite obvious perspectives that this project opens up for future research, there is a number of limitations that were caused by the PhD time restraints, and some areas were not covered in this thesis. I explored the political potential of one digital platform in Navalny’s communication, namely YouTube. However, Navalny also uses VKontakte, LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and other social media platforms for his discourses. Each platform has its own audiences, policies, and formats and, therefore, it would be impossible to compare them all in the three-year period. If YouTube has particular features favourable for spreading populist content, then the rest of the platforms will have their own features as well.

Within the YouTube platform, I did not explore in-depth comments, likes, and shares of Navalny’s videos, in other words, how users interact with his messages. The audience’s reactions to Navalny’s videos were not part of my research question and can become a follow-up research exploration.

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Within the study of populism, I excluded “out-groups” from the elements of populism and from a number of variables determining populism in texts. Earlier on, Navalny was known for his right-wing views and his criticism of migrants and residents of Caucasus regions of Russia, republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and other subjects of the Russian Federation. However, in the late 2010s Navalny does not speak much on this matter anymore, perhaps to attract more supporters to his candidature. In one of his videos, he even calls them to cooperate and to become observers in the elections in these republics. In the transcripts of the videos, I did not find any evidence that Navalny currently maintains his previous views on migrants and minorities or distances himself from these groups of people.

These and other limitations open up possibilities for follow-up research on Russia, populism, digital media, investigative journalism, and other areas of political communication. These prospects are outlined in the next section.

8.4 FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR THE RESEARCH

In regard to the limitations mentioned in the previous section, they can be addressed with new studies respectively. Firstly, the comparative study can be drawn by exploring the strategies of populist communication of Navalny throughout different digital platforms and perhaps its inter-connection between them. Secondly, a follow- up study can be launched that extends knowledge about YouTube audience of Navalny and its perceptions, through the analysis of comments, likes, and shares. Thirdly, another new direction for research could be to explore whom Navalny currently identifies as an “out-group” in his populist communication.

Furthermore, observing investigative journalism history, I saw other examples of investigative Internet projects in Eastern Europe created in the conditions of limited press freedom (Stetka & Örnebring 2013). The comparison of these Internet projects of Eastern Europe with Navalny’s case and, perhaps, the possible investigative NGO projects existing in Central Asia, as former Soviet republics can open up a discussion on the development of digital investigative journalism in a post-Soviet space, its struggles, achievements, and the democratic potential.

Nevertheless, one of the most promising directions for future research can be, in my view, the study of the Navalny’s populist digital template that is currently used by

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his associates. This direction can be developed further with the comparison of visual aesthetics and narration of Navalny and other non-opposition figures in Russia.

8.4.1 Navalny, his copycats and further protests as an ongoing political pattern The question of whether communication projects like Navalny’s can bring prospects of democratisation to society is debatable. Unlike Western countries, where populism is seen as an authoritarian phenomenon, in Russia, the populist project of Navalny seems to overcome authoritarian tendencies by providing alternative narratives to the Russian establishment, fighting for freedom of speech, challenging the monopoly of Putin’s power, and mobilising people for political action. Navalny throughout his career was unable achieve the resignation of the high-ranking officials with his investigations. The targets of his investigations were almost never charged for their corruption; instead, Navalny himself was arrested and persecuted for his activities. The protests organised by Navalny did not achieve its goals either. Protesters were harassed or persecuted, and the rallies did not grow into a consistent, regular national movement. Nevertheless, the communication activities of the opposition could be a prerequisite to consistent and effective political action from the bottom.

Navalny’s YouTube communication brings diversity to pro-government discourses. His videos are highly viewed, accessible, and can be easily shared on the platform. Navalny provides people with this opportunity by showing an alternative communication agenda and that invites people to act. He became an example for other activists, mostly his associates, to resist authoritarian rule and activate the mobilising potential of citizens to advocate their political rights.

With this project, I continued the academic discussion on Russian non-systemic opposition development in the 2010s. The patterns that I observed in my research seem to be resembled in Navalny’s associates’ activities. In Section 7.1, I briefly mentioned the trends that followed the protests of 2017-2018 initiated by Navalny, involving the active participation of his associates. The 2019 year has become a year of protests too for Russia and Moscow in particular in regard to several occasions.

Firstly, in June 2019, there were mass protests in Moscow supporting the release of arrested journalist Ivan Golunov, falsely accused of drug dealing, which I described in Section 3.2.2. After the release of Golunov, new protests followed in July and August. This time protesters demanded fair and honest electoral process in regard to

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the elections to Moscow City Duma. Three of Navalny’s associates and colleagues were trying to be elected to the body: Ilya Yashin, ’, Ivan Zhdanov, Vladimir Milov and others. Other opposition members also were trying to be elected including Dmitry Gudkov, former member of the party “A Just Russia”, excluded from the party due to his protest activities. The Electoral Commission of Moscow (Mosgorizbirkom) refused to register many opposition candidates for non-transparent reasons. Opposition candidates and Navalny — who was not a candidate for any position in these particular election — organised mass protests in Russia’s capital.

If we look at the communication of Navalny’s associates we can see that they at least repeat Navalny’s visual style on YouTube and trying to engage people through the same communication instruments, including YouTube. Ilya Yashin, as was mentioned in Section 7.1.4, has his own YouTube channel and copies Navalny’s communication style there. He has 143,000 of subscribers as of February 2020. Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s organisation ACF, was also trying to be elected to Moscow Duma and failed to do so due to electoral restrictions. He has a YouTube channel with 5,000 subscribers as of February 2020. He created his channel in 2019, but he regularly posts videos with anti-establishment views preceded by the videos about his 2019 electoral campaign. The names of the videos are reminiscent of the names of Navalny’s videos, for example, a video entitled “Another question to Medvedev” from December 5, 2019 (Zhdanov 2019), whereas the visual representation is also similar to Navalny’s YouTube style as can be seen in Figure 8.1 (Zhdanov 2019). In 2020, against Zhdanov as a director of ACF, the criminal proceedings were instituted for not deleting a video “He is not Dimon to you” from YouTube. The video was released three years before the incriminations (Meduza 2020).

Lyubov Sobol’, an employee of Navalny’s ACF, hosts a show on YouTube channel Navalny LIVE called “With facts” (Rus. “po faktam”), which is released every four days a week. The videos have obvious anti-government political character and reach multi-thousand views. She was one of the prominent figures of the Moscow protests for fair elections in City Duma. After she was banned from the participation in the elections, she declared a hunger strike which lasted for a month (Radio Svoboda 2019).

234 Chapter 8: Conclusions and discussion

Figure 8-1: Screenshot of Zhdanov’s YouTube video

Sobol’, Yashin, Zhdanov, and other anti-corruption activists connected with Navalny form an “anti-corruption digital ghetto” on YouTube led by Navalny, a headman of the digital movement on the platform. His associates are trying to be elected to systemic politics and use the same communication strategies and even the same facilities to attract the electorate (e.g. the studio for video recording, or the same YouTube channel Navalny LIVE). They copy at least part of Navalny’s style in the form of visual aesthetics as it showed its reliability and prominence in 2017-2018 protests.

As Navalny, they are able to organise protests and mobilise the electorate against the injustices of the Russian political system. These facts evidence of a broader phenomenon of anti-corruption, anti-government movement online, which among other things advocate for the essential political rights, using digital means and YouTube particularly to communicate their messages. Follow-up research can look at this online movement operating from the perspective of “digital anti-corruption ghetto” and its capacity for the pluralization and preservation of dissent political views in modern Russia.

Overall, the communication project of Alexey Navalny as a member of non- systemic opposition involved the combination of populist strategies, investigative journalism, and digital activism practices embedded in his YouTube videos to gain the electoral support and inspire mass protests among Russian citizens. It potentially could become an exemplar for his anti-corruption associates who were also using elements

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of his communication style on YouTube to attract the electorate for a smaller-scale election, such as Moscow City Duma election. Navalny, as well as his associates, face strong resistance from the government. Following the Moscow Duma Election in 2019, his organisation ACF was raided in thirty regions of Russia, the ACF was declared as a “foreign agent”, its bank accounts were blocked, and some employees were arrested (Anisimova & Antonova 2019). However, his anti-government project cannot be fully destroyed by the State as some experts claim (Anisimova & Antonova 2019), mostly because of its prominence and big resonance to public. The activists are still able to operate from digital underground despite physical threats, harassment, and abuse.

The resilience and success of Navalny’s communication strategies together with protest activities constituted one of the prominent resistances to the Russian establishment in the late 2010s allowing for diversification of political discourses in the public sphere. However, the influence of such communication activities on the protest potential of Russian citizens should be explored further and take into consideration other political factors, for instance, the parallel enhancement of the methods of countering and suppression of such digital resistances.

236 Chapter 8: Conclusions and discussion

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Appendices

Appendix A. Components of quantitative content analysis and their description (Krippendorff 2012, 84-86) Components of Description content analysis Unitizing “Draws systematic distinctions within a continuum of otherwise undifferentiated text – documents, images, voices, websites and other observables.” Sampling “Limiting observations to a manageable subset of units that is statistically or conceptually representative of the set of all possible units, the population or universe of the interest.” Recording/coding “Bridges the gap between texts and someone reading them, between distinct images and what people see in them, or between separate observations and their situational interpretation.” Reducing data to “Need for efficient representation, especially of large volumes of data” manageable representations Abductively inferring “Move the analysis outside the data. It bridges the gap between descriptive contextual phenomena accounts of the text and what they mean, refer to, entail, provoke or cause.” Narrating the answer to “Amounts to the researchers making their results comprehensible to the research question others.”

Appendix B. Description of analytical tools in qualitative content-analysis (Mayring 2014, 65,79,88, 95) Analytical tool Description

Summary “Central points are the distinction between ascending (text-bound) and descending (pattern-bound) processing and the formulation of macro- operators for reduction. The basic principle of a summarizing content analysis is then that the level of abstraction of the summary should be exactly determined in each case, so that the macro-operators can be used to transform the material precisely to that level.”

Inductive “The aim is to arrive at summarizing categories directly, which are coming from the material itself, not from theoretical considerations. It aims at a true description without bias owing to the preconceptions of the researcher, an understanding of the material in terms of the material.”

Explication “Whereas the goal of summarizing content analysis and inductive category formation was the reduction of the material, the tendency of explication is exactly the reverse. Individual parts of text in need of interpretation are enriched by additional material aimed at explaining them, making them comprehensible, subjecting them to comment and illustration.”

Deductive “It has the goal of extracting a certain structure from the material. This structure is brought to bear on the material in the form of a category system.”

Appendices 255

Appendix C. Metadata of the sample of 77 videos of Alexey Navalny from his YouTube channel in the period from December 13, 2017 to May 7, 2018. (translated from Russian) Cod Name in English Name in Russian English Navalny Length Date Number e transcri is a host of views pt on May 2018 1. Navalny about the rally Навальный об + 4:19 06.05.2018 2200000 on the 5th of May акции 5 мая 2. The 5th of May. Will 5 мая. Обсудим с + 12:40 2.05.2018 1800000 discuss from Putin’s точки зрения point of view Путина 3. The oligarch buys the Олигарх + + 13:57 26.04.2018 1700000 official. Showing how покупает чиновника. Показываем, как 4. What happened in Что произошло в + + 9:28 25.04.2018 2400000 Armenia and what Армении и что should we do нужно делать нам 5. Putin is not our tsar. Путин нам не + + 10:25 12.04.2018 3100000 Going to the streets on царь. 5 мая the 5th of May выходим на улицы 6. The state summer Госдача Тулеева, + + 6:23 10.04.2018 2100000 home (dacha) of которую мы Tuleev that we will pay оплатим for 7. The false popularity of Фальшивая + + 8:17 05.04.2018 2200000 Putin. Evidence популярность Путина. Доказательства 8. Kemerovo: what Кемерово: что + + 11:29 28.03.2018 4300000 happened and who is случилось и кто guilty виноват 9. Tuleev about the rally Тулеев о митинге 1:30 27.03.2018 2600000 of citizens of кемеровчан: это Kemerovo: these are 200 бузотёров 200 troublemakers 10. About the results of the Об итогах + + 11:00 20.03.2018 3200000 strike and “elections” забастовки и «выборов» 11. Dear teachers! Don’t Дорогие + + 4:25 15.03.2018 1800000 do this! учителя! Не делайте этого 12. Coveting deputy. Домогающийся + + 10:00 8.03.2018 1700000 Psychopath. Corrupter депутат. Психопат. Коррупционер. 13. Secretive unboxing. Таинственная + 3:22 04.03.2018 1600000 There are some распаковка. К questions to you вам есть вопросы 14. The palace that we Дворец, на + + 9:41 06.03.2018 4300000 cannot look at который запрещено смотреть 15. Address ing to the Хочу обратиться + 3:53 20.02.2018 2000000 Dagestani dudes к дагестанцам- пацанам 16. Are you ready to catch Вы готовы + 6:44 13.02.2018 1700000 crooks? ловить жуликов за руку? 17. The investigation is Расследование + + 5:36 12.02.2018 2500000 announced forbidden объявлено запретным 18. Yachts, oligarchs, Яхты, олигархи, + + 25.11 08.02.2018 7300000 girls: The huntress for девочки: men exposes a briber охотница на мужчин разоблачает взяточника

256 Appendices

19. Candidates who don’t Кандидаты, + 5:03 01.02.2018 1700000 care которым на вас плевать 20. The police barge in the Полиция 4:24 27.01.2018 1900000 office of Anti- врывается в Corruption Foundation студию ФБК во during the live время прямого broadcast эфира 21. First step to the win Первый шаг к + + 5:21 25.01.2018 1800000 победе 22. Schoolchildren , don’t Школьники, не + + 5:20 22.01.2018 1800000 let this trick you дайте себя обмануть 23. And where is our oil А куда делись + + 8:48 15.01.2018 2300000 money? наши нефтяные деньги? 24. The New Year Новогоднее + + 2:26 31.12.2017 2300000 addressing of Alexey обращение Navalny Алексея Навального 25. Why is the strike Зачем нужна + + 6:45 27.12.2017 1700000 needed? Going to the забастовка? 28 streets on the 28th of января выходим January на улицы 26. We are announcing a Объявляем + + 4:26 25.12.2017 2900000 strike of voters забастовку избирателей 27. How did the press Как пресс- + + 13:32 21.12.2017 2400000 secretary of Vladimir секретарь Putin buy an apartment Путина квартиру in Paris в Париже купил 28. The elections are Выборы + + 5:02 18.12.2017 1600000 announced: Our объявлены. upcoming plans Наши ближайшие планы 29. Dear Vladimir Уважаемый + 5:29 15.12.2017 3100000 Vladimirovich Владимир Владимирович 30. The programme of Программа + + 6:34 13.12.2017 2000000 Alexey Navalny Алексея Навального 31. The unboxing of a Распаковка + + 15:08 30.11.2017 4200000 gadget worth 10 billion гаджета за 10 rubles млрд рублей 32. How am I any better Чем я лучше + + 3:16 17.11.2017 1900000 than Putin? Путина 33. Putin’s team and its Команда Путина + + 10:27 9.11.2017 1700000 American property и ее американская недвижимость 34. Vladimir Putin and a Владимир Путин + + 4:51 01.11.2017 1700000 pork head и свиная голова 35. Apartments, a summer Квартиры, дача и + + 13:55 28.09.2017 5600000 house (dacha) and an итальянская Italian villa of вилла Владимира Vladimir Solovyev Соловьева 36. The secretive summer Секретная дача + + 10:02 30.08.2017 5600000 house (dacha) of Putin Путина 37. How I earned money Как я заработал + 3:07 18.08.2017 2200000 on the fools from денег на LifeNews дурачках с LifeNews 38. The son of Peskov: Сын Пескова: из + + 14:27 17.08.2017 4300000 from English jail to the английской Russian elite тюрьмы в российскую элиту 39. They forgave - we paid Они простили – + 6:25 15.08.2017 1900000 мы заплатили 40. Looking at what the Смотрим, что + 10:40 08.08.2017 2000000 brothers Rotenbergs нажили братья have capitalised Ротенберги

Appendices 257

41. How Putin lied to a girl Как Путин + + 5:27 27.07.2017 2500000 девочку обманул 42. Why the hell do we На черта нам + + 5:51 19.07.2017 1700000 need this election? такие выборы? 43. The important thing Важная вещь на + + 6:30 13.07.2017 1600000 from its own example собственном примере 44. Answering Vladimir Отвечаю + + 7:16 11.07.2017 2400000 Putin: About Владимиру constructive things Путину. О конструктиве 45. Hello. I am back Здравствуй, я + + 11:00 07.07.2017 2400000 вернулся 46. You are children of Вы — дети 2:51 15.06.2017 2200000 corrupters коррупционеров 47. The addressing of Обращение + 0:46 13.06.2017 1700000 Alexey Navalny from Алексея the Simonov’s Court Навального из Симоновского суда 48. The 12th of June. 12 июня. + 6:28 11.06.2017 1800000 Explaining on ducks Объясняю на уточках 49. Everybody to Все на Тверскую + 4:14 11.06.2017 1900000 Tverskaya! 50. To schoolchildren and Школьникам и + + 5:25 07.06.2017 2700000 students студентам 51. The “Court” with «Суд» с 10:50 5.06.2017 1900000 Usmanov and a new Усмановым и video of the covert новое видео summer house (dacha) секретной дачи of Medvedev Медведева 52. “The Court” ordered to «Суд» обязал + 2:01 31.05.2017 2300000 delete the investigation меня удалить “He is Not Dimon to расследование you” «Он вам не Димон» 53. An answer to Alisher Ответ Алишеру + + 24:44 29.05.2017 4200000 Usmanov Усманову 54. Usmanov II: Pish for USMANOV II: + + 5:03 24.05.2017 2200000 thee one more time Тьфу на тебя еще раз 55. Pay for their teaspoon Оплатите им + + 5:39 22.05.2017 2500000 14 thousand rubles чайную ложечку за четырнадцать тысяч рублей 56. How we revealed the Как мы раскрыли + 7:45 19.05.2017 1800000 biggest cartel of крупнейший Putin’s “chef” картель повара Путина 57. Oligarch Usmanov to Олигарх + + 12:59 18.05.2017 3100000 Navalny: Lyosha, you Усманов must answer to me Навальному: Леша тебе придется ответить передо мной 58. Alisa Voks and rapper Алиса Вокс и + + 5:54 16.05.2017 3600000 Ptakha destroyed рэпер Птаха Navalny уничтожили Навального 59. The atmosphere of Атмосфера + + 3:56 03.05.2017 1800000 total intolerance to тотальной corruption нетерпимости к коррупции 60. Why nothing good is Почему ничего + + 6:29 27.04.2017 2700000 going to happen in the хорошего не example of Zenit- будет – на Arena примере Зенит- Арены 61. Comparing money on Сравниваем: + + 8:19 25.04.2017 2400000 thieves and money on деньги на воров, children деньги на детей

258 Appendices

62. Answering the Отвечаем 10:36 20.04.2017 1900000 manager of управляющему Medvedev’s palaces дворцами Медведева 63. Answering oligarch Отвечаем + + 12:15 17.04.2017 4500000 Usmanov and showing олигарху his house Усманову и показываем его дом 64. Slicing. Smashing. Кромсать. + 3:37 14.04.2017 1800000 Slap faces Крушить. Бить рожи. 65. We didn’t get the Мы не получили + + 8:26 12.04.2017 2300000 answers, that is why ответов, поэтому we need to continue надо продолжать 66. Rubbish, dreg and Чушь, муть и 10:58 06.04.2017 3900000 compote. Miserable компот. Жалкие excuses of Dmitry оправдания Medvedev Дмитрия Медведева 67. Putin and Medvedev Путин и 3:00 27.03.2017 1700000 are trying to shut down Медведев the Anti-Corruption пытаются Foundation закрыть Фонд борьбы с коррупцией 68. On the 26th of March, 26 марта все на + + 12:11 23.03.2017 1700000 everybody to the улицу: он нам не streets: He is not Димон Dimon to us 69. He is not Dimon to Он нам не + + 8:08 14.03.2017 1800000 you: We are Димон: требуем demanding answers on ответов на улице the streets 70. The Putin’s official Путинский + + 5:34 10.03.2017 1600000 and an Italian clinic of чиновник в beauty итальянской клинике красоты 71. The fantastic reaction Фантастическая + + 7:58 09.03.2017 5000000 of the authorities to the реакция власти mansions and yachts of на дворцы и Medvedev яхты Медведева 72. He is not Dimon to you Он вам не Димон + + 49:38 02.03.2017 27000000

73. How pro-Putin couple Как супруги- + + 7:03 17.02.2017 1600000 escaped to Ukraine путинцы на Украину сбежали 74. The lie of NTV Ложь НТВ: 7:27 31.01.2017 1600000 Channel: “unfeeding лапшеснимание the lines” 75. The covert millions of Тайные + + 7:37 26.01.2017 1900000 the fighter with миллионы борца corruption с коррупцией 76. The mayor and his Мэр и его + + 12:08 21.12.2016 2100000 covert apartments in тайные квартиры Miami в Майами 77. It is time to choose: Пора выбирать: + 3:30 13.12.2016 1600000 Alexey Navalny is the Алексей candidate to the Навальный — Russian Presidential кандидат в elections президенты России

Appendix D. Explanatory note in English to the transcription of 73 videos from Navalny's video blog on YouTube (ENG/RUS) The transcripts are the version of “clean read or smooth verbatim transcript”, where “The transcription is done word for word, but all utterances like uhms or ahs, decorating words like, right, you know, yeah are left out. A coherent text, simple to understand but representing the original wording and grammatical structure is produced. Short cut articulation and dialect are translated into standard

Appendices 259

language (c’mon = come on).”. (Mayring, 2014, 45). However, the dialects are kept in original to explore the emotional colouring of Navalny’s speech.

The following indications were used in the transcripts:

• Text – the narration of Navalny in video, or/and other hosts of the video, including employees of an Anti-Corruption Foundation • [text] – secondary conversations or inserted parts of the video during the montage of Navalny’s video which consist of speeches, conversations of other people footages borrowed from other videos. Sometimes can be referred to the precious videos of Navalny. • […] – inserted parts of the video in Navalny’s video during the montage which do not consist of speech (conversations) and/or do not have meaning for the analysis for the discourse. Often can be music or transitions from one part of narration in the video to another. • [comment] – in the comments (function MS Word) the authors of secondary conversations are stated. • Numbering – during the trancription numbers in Russian written under 10 (not including) by letters, (e.g. nine ), after 10 (including) by numbers (e.g. 73, 58, 12). Hundreds, thousands and millions, billions are written by letters. E.g. 72 thousand rubles, e.g. 10 million. The same is applied to ordinal numbers. • English names – are written with Russian transliteration and if necessary for the purpose of meaning with the original language in brackets.

Пояснительная записка на русском к 73 расшифровкам видео Навального с его видеоблога на ЮТюбе. Расшифровка представляет собой так называемое «дословное или чистое прочтение речи», где расшифровка производится слово в слово, где опускаются междометия по типу: ну, хм, ах; наречия по типу правда, вот. Сокращения расшифровываются (пример: «че – чего») (Мейеринг 2014). Диалектизмы сохраняются в расшифровке для дальнейшего изучения эмоциональной окраски речи Навального.

В расшифровках используются следующие обозначения:

• Текст – зачастую повествование от лица Алексея Навального в видео и/или других ведущих, сотрудников Фонда Борьбы с Коррупцией. • [текст] – в скобках с текстом указываются второстепенные диалоги, монологи, вставки видео, которые были добавлены при монтаже видео и которые содержат речи других людей, материалы СМИ или отсылки к ранним видео Навального или ФБК. • […] – в скобках с многоточием указываются вставки видео, которые были добавлены при монтаже видео Навального, которые не содержат прямой речи и/или не несут смыслового значения, требуемого для данного анализа дискурса. Например, вставки из музыкальных клипов или переходы от одной части повествования к другой. • [комментарий] – в комментариях к вставкам (MS Word) указаны участники разговора или авторы речи. • Числительные – до 10 (не включая 10) написаны прописью, в то время как числа больше 10 (включая) записаны цифрами в тексте. Слова тысяч, миллионов, миллиардов. Сотен написаны прописью. Пример: 10 тысяч рублей, 27 миллионов 65 тысяч долларов. Такое же правило применяется к порядковым числительным. Например, пятого мая, 24-го июня. • В тексте названия на английском прописаны на русском, включая названия соцсетей, названия компаний, имена собственные и английские выражения. В исключительных случаях, когда значение на русском может быть не ясно кодировщикам, в скобках дается оригинал на английском.

Appendix E. Categories and actors of secondary excerpts of Navalny’s YouTube videos Name of the Description of the category Actors (nodes) category 1. Citizens linked Referring to the citizens explicitly expressing 1. Citizens linked to to Putin's elite their pro-elite position on a secondary excerpt,

260 Appendices

or according to Navalny involved in the Putin’s elite government, business machinations, schemes of corruption etc. Example: Nastya Rybka

2. Citizens not Referring to the citizens in the secondary 2. Citizens not linked to linked to Putin's excerpts, which expressed anti-elite sentiments Putin’s elite elite or neutral position towards the elite.

3. Economic Referring to the Russian businessmen, mostly 3. Businessmen powers CEOs or heads of the companies in Russia affiliated with the government. As well as 4. State corporations rep- representatives of the State Corporations as a s (representatives) particular type of the companies in Russia created under Federal Laws. Example: businessmen Alisher Usmanov, the head of the State Corporation RosNano Anatolii Chubais

4. Entertainment Referring to fun, creative elements in the 5. Entertainment elements videos such as scenes from movies, video elements clips, talk shows, video memes.

5. Executive Referring to the leading representatives of the 6. Federal Ministers and power executive branch of power in the Russian Deputy PMs Federation according to the Constitution of Russia. Example: president of The Russian 7. Governors Federation Vladimir Putin 8. FS (Federal subjects) ministers

9. Other employees of the Government and FS governments

10. President Vladimir Putin

11. PM Dmitry Medvedev

12. Federal Agencies rep-s

13. Federal Services rep-s

14. Presidential administration staff

6. Intellectuals Referring to the members of intellectual elites 15. Intellectuals in Russia affiliated with the government. Usually, writers, universities, professors.

7. Judicial power Referring to the leading representatives of the 16. District courts judges judicial branch of power in Russia according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation. 17. Federal courts judges Including judges on different levels: federal, (the Constitutional Court, district, and regional courts. Example: The the Supreme Court, the Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court of Russian Federation Arbitration of the Russian Federation)

Appendices 261

18. Regional and appellate courts judges

8. Legislative Referring to the leading representatives of the 19. State Duma deputies power legislative branch of power in the Russian Federation according to the Constitution of 20. Federal Council Russia. Example: deputy Leonid Slutsky senators

21. Deputies of FS and municipal parliaments

9. Navalny, ACF, Referring to Navalny's narrations in previous 22. ACF Navalny LIVE videos inserted in between his direct narration. Referring to the employees of the Anti- 23. Navalny corruption Foundation and YouTube channel Navalny LIVE, as well as earlier videos from 24. Navalny LIVE Navalny LIVE

10. Not specified Referring to the short scenes in an episode 25. Not specified which do not contain Navalny's direct narration and which do not contain the direct speech or/and conversation of any of the actors. These scenes and do not have the meaning for the research. Example: sounds of laugh, music.

11. Opposition Referring to the politicians, officials, party 26. Opposition politicians politicians representatives who might be or be not working in the political system (anti-systemic opposition excluding Navalny himself) who are expressing negative sentiments towards the elite

12. Mainstream Referring to the media outlets which are owned 27. Pro-government media pro-government partly or wholly by the government, and outlets media business structures affiliated with the government. Journalists who work in these 28. Pro-government media outlets and have an explicit pro- journalists government, pro-Putin position. Example: First Channel, journalist Vladimir Solovyev

13. Media not Referring to the media outlets and journalists 29. Media not aligned with aligned with Putin's from these media or journalists not aligned or Putin’s elite elite affiliated with the government and Putin's elite excluding Navalny's media, which constitutes a separate category of actors in secondary conversations

14. Orthodox Referring to representatives of the Orthodox 30. Orthodox Church Church Church in Russia

15. Repressive state Referring to the military, security forces, 31. General Prosecutor apparatus paramilitary organisations, police, General Prosecutor’s office, censorship bodies in the 32. Russian Army Russian Federation. Example: General Prosecutor of Russia Yury Chaika 33. Regional prosecutors

34. Other internal military organisations employees

262 Appendices

(The Russian Guard, Kazaks etc.)

35. Police

36. Rep-s of the Federal Security Service

37. RosKomNandzor

Appendix F. Main categories of actors of Putin’s elite Name of the Description of the category Actors category (mentioning by surnames and names, job positions, pronouns him/her which should be identifiable through the context)

1. Economic powers Referring to the Russian businessmen, mostly Businessmen CEOs or heads of the companies in Russia affiliated with the government. As well as Representatives of representatives of the State Corporations as a the State particular type of the companies in Russia corporations created under Federal Laws. Example: businessmen Alisher Usmanov, the head of the State Corporation RosNano Anatolii Chubais.

2. Executive power Referring to the leading representatives of the Federal Ministers executive branch of power in the Russian and Deputy PMs of Federation according to the Constitution of the Government Russia. Example: President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. Governors of the federal subjects

Ministers of the federal subjects

Other employees of the Government and governments of the federal subjects

President Vladimir Putin

PM Dmitry Medvedev

Representatives of

Appendices 263

the Federal Agencies

Representatives of the Federal Services

the Presidential administration staff

other

3. Intellectuals Referring to the members of intellectual elites Professors, in Russia affiliated with the government. academics Usually, writers, universities, professors. Writers

Universities

Thinkers, philosophers

4. Judicial power Referring to the leading representatives of the Judges of district judicial branch of power in Russia according courts to the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Including judges on different levels: federal, Judges of federal district, and regional courts. Example: The courts (the Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Constitutional Russian Federation. Court, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Arbitration of the Russian Federation)

Judges of regional courts and appellate courts

5. Legislative power Referring to the leading representatives of the Deputies of the legislative branch of power in the Russian State Duma Federation according to the Constitution of Russia. Example: deputy Leonid Slutsky. Senators of the Federal Council

The deputies of regional and local parliaments of the federal subjects

6. Mainstream pro- Referring to the media outlets which are Pro-government government media owned partly or wholly by the government, media outlets and business structures affiliated with the government. Journalists who work in these Pro-government media outlets and have an explicit pro- journalists government, pro-Putin position. Example: First Channel, journalist Vladimir Solovyev.

264 Appendices

7. Orthodox Church Referring to representatives of the Orthodox The Orthodox Church in Russia. Church

8. Repressive state Referring to the military, security forces, The General apparatus paramilitary organisations, police, General Prosecutor of Prosecutor’s office, censorship bodies in the Russia Russian Federation. Example: General Prosecutor of Russia Yury Chaika. The Russian Army

Regional prosecutors

Employees of other internal military organisations (The Russian Guard, Kazaks etc.)

The Police

Representatives of the Federal Security Service in Russia

Roskomnadzor

9. Other organs of Organs of federal power not associated with The Central Bank federal power executive, legislative, judicial branches of power and Prosecutor’s office in Russia. The Central Electoral Commission

other

10. Other actors The actors that do not belong to categories listed above, but still constituting part of the elite. These actors should not be ordinary citizens criticised by Navalny. They will be a separate category for the analysis.

Appendix G. Instruction for a coder for the inter-coder agreement test (RUS/ENG)

(ENG)Instruction for a coder

A coder will need to identify the elements of a populist style such as an ‘appeal to the people’ and ‘discrediting the elites’ within the excerpts of Navalny’s YouTube videos. Within the category of ‘an appeal to the people,’ a coder needs to identify ‘call to action’. Within ‘discrediting the elites’, a coder will need to identify the facts of ‘empty discrediting’ and ‘discrediting with the evidence’ as well as to identify the category of the elite being discredited. All these categories are described below with the examples.

1. Appeal to the people

Appendices 265

Words-markers of ‘the people’

To indicate an appeal to ‘the people’, the coder can meet in the text words-markers and part of the words symbolising this element of a populist style. ‘An appeal to people’ consists of the subject – ‘the people’ and ‘an appeal’. An appeal can take different forms: from simple forms of addressing ‘to the people’ using the nouns and other grammatical constructions to radical forms such as ‘call to action’. Sections 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 will explain the indicators of ‘the people concept’, Sections 1.4 and 1.5 will delve into ‘an appeal’ to people in its simple form and ‘call to action’.

1.1 Nouns Nouns, pronouns which symbolise ‘the people’. See Table 1 for the examples of the words, and examples of the sentences with these words below.

Table 1. Examples of nouns-markers of ‘the people’ concept we you (singular) millions of citizens people us our all country me and you ours us with you you (plural) people they (meaning the people)

Examples in a sentence: “I can clearly see that people who went out on the streets on March 26th were true patriots, and they were opposed by traitors and thieves.” “No matter if you live in a huge city or in a small village, come and join our nationwide anti-corruption rallies on June 12th.”

1.2. Categories of people within population Navalny can refer in the text to particular categories of people within the entire population depending on the purposes of his communication. These are not out-groups in his communication. In Navalny’s view, these categories are still not sure in their political preferences and actions. Navalny appeals to them, too, but he does not exclude them from ‘the people’. Instead, he acknowledges the fault of the elites in the actions of these population categories (e.g. falsification of elections). These categories can demonstrate professional, national, ethnical, religious and other belonging. Overall, Navalny does not criticise these categories; however, he addresses them separately.

Table 2. Categories of population (examples) teachers students Chechens schoolchildren young people Avars

Example in a sentence: “The young people, schoolchildren and students, who are interested in politics, who go to the rallies and who refuse to believe the lies from the TV screen are the best people of the country.”

1.3 Verb endings in the imperative mood in Russian In the Russian language, some words indicate addressing the subjects without using the noun (the subject itself) in the sentence. These are verb endings, which in contrast to English, where the subject of addressing cannot be determined through the verb, indicate the subject of addressing, in our case – ‘the people’. If a verb is addressed to the people – it is going to be in a plural form, in the imperative mood. The singular form and imperative mood are used to address to a person or individual from ‘the people’ (not the elite). These verbs can also identify a call to action, which will be described later. The examples of these verbs are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Examples of verbs in Russian with English translation (underlined parts in Russian words): давайте поверьте голосуйте let’s believe vote

1.4 Appeal to ‘the people’

266 Appendices

Using the populist style politicians appeal to ‘the people’, as was stated earlier ‘an appeal’ can take different forms in text from simple addressing ‘the people’ to calling them to action. This section provides examples of what can be considered as an appeal to people. I distinguish two forms of the appeal: simple addressing and a ‘call to action’.

1.4.1 Simple addressing Simple addressing means that a politician (Navalny mainly) is merely talking to people, invites them to a conversation through the video. He/she addresses them to associate himself with the audience. In this case, he/she does not invite them to a political or other form of action. He/she uses it as a part of the narration. These sentences, excerpts will consist of nouns, pronouns, special categories of a population from Sections 1.1 and 1.2 but they will not contain an invitation to actions expressed through special verbs and the endings in imperative mood from Section 1.3.

Examples in text: “Even if we look at the results of these totally fake elections, where no real competitors were admitted, 53 million voters didn’t vote for Putin”. “Putin studiously ignores us, he keeps repeating that we don’t have any propositions or a constructive agenda.”

1.4.2 ‘A call to action’ A ‘call to action’ is a radical form of appealing to people which provides an invitation to any forms of political participation. The excerpts containing a ‘call to action’ are considered automatically as the one that contain ‘simple addressing’ too. As calling people to action, a communicator uses different forms of addressing. However, a coder will attribute a value only to one of the categories in the coder sheet, to distinguish more radical excerpts with an invitation to action. This category contains special verbs, which mean a direct call to action. A narrator might use imperative mood to indicate motivating or mobilising supporters around his/her political goals. This is a more active and radical form of appealing to people. It presupposes the subsequent action that a populist communicator expects from the audience. The coder will indicate the excerpts containing a ‘call to action’ in texts to determine later the degree of radicalisation of Navalny’s appeal. Other excerpts marked with no call to action, by default will be considered as ‘simple addressing’ from Section 1.5.2.

Example in text: “On May 5th, I urge all of you to participate in demonstrations, rallies and protests for our right to be the citizens of our country.

“We demand to release the political prisoners. We demand to stop arresting people for likes and posts on social networks. We demand to leave the Internet alone.”

1.5 Talking about ‘the people’ There are other examples of mentioning people in texts. Some of them can be simple mentioning, abstract referring to the population, simple facts about ‘the people’; but these parts of the texts are missing an actual ‘appeal’. This still can indicate populism, but it is not an essential part of a populist style. Artists, businesspeople, and celebrities can also talk about ‘the people’, but they do not pursue political goals. These excerpts will not be marked as containing an ‘appeal to the people’.

Example in text: “Over 20% of the population live below the poverty line.”

Overall, an appeal to people, identified by a coder in the text, will contain an indication of a subject of the appeal – ‘the people’ expressed through the nouns and pronouns, special categories of population and verb endings in imperative mood described in sections 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. ‘An appeal’ itself in the form of simple addressing to the people and a more extreme form as a ‘call to action’ (see Section 1.4.). A coder will need to identify the excerpts containing the appeal and a subject of the appeal (both of the elements should be present in the excerpt). A coder will mark this excerpt as containing two categories of an ‘appeal to people’ in an excel file. If the excerpt contains a ‘call to action’, a coder needs to put 1-value in a respective column in a coder sheet. The excerpts containing a ‘call to action’

Appendices 267

will be considered as automatically containing ‘simple addressing’, thereby a coder does not need to put 1-value to ‘simple addressing’ column in the coder sheet too. However, if the excerpt does not contain a ‘call to action’, but it still addresses the people in simple forms, the coder needs to put 1-value to a ‘simple addressing’ column in a coder sheet.

The list of columns can be seen in table 4.

Table 4. Categories for coding containing an appeal to ‘the people’ Appeal to the people Call to action

2. Discrediting the elites The second element of a populist style that a coder should identify is the evidence of discrediting the elite by a communicator. By ‘the elite’, in this project, I mean Putin’s elite or part of the Russian establishment, which holds a monopoly on political power in Russia since 2000. These are representatives of the executive, legislative, judicial power, General Prosecutor and his office, businesspeople, intellectuals, NGOs, and other actors specified later in this section who favour Putin’s authority and his pretentions on political power. Navalny, in his texts, tries to discredit these actors in his communication. He uses facts and evidence as part of investigative journalism to disrepute the elites. However, he also can denigrate them without evidence, which is called as ‘empty accusations’. Navalny can resort to discrediting the elite either using factual basis or not, or mix these approaches within one excerpt.

2.1 ‘The elite’ in general A coder can meet in text indicators of ‘the elite’, by nouns or pronounces, used by the narrator (Navalny). They symbolise ‘the elite’ in general without specification or embodiment of the actors. In contrast, with ‘the people’, deriving from populist theories, elites can be represented as ‘enemies’, ‘them’. The narrator can use slang, negative wording, and make up new words symbolising ‘the elite’ to stress their destructing role in society. The examples of these words can be seen in Table 5.

Table 5. Examples of the words symbolising ‘the elite’ in general they enemy/ies villains system crooks mafia

them authorities Kremlin the state regime machine

their the State Koschei (Russian thieves government folklore character, archetypal male antagonist)

Example in text: And every day, we faced arrests, searches and confiscations. "They've searched through everything and confiscated all the flyers we had in the HQ". This was the only thing that mattered. The outcome of our struggle against Kremlin.

Only we can oppose this ghoul who’s dragging us into poverty and turning Russia into a third world country, just so he can stay in charge and keep getting those fake percent.

2.2 Actors of ‘the elite’ Apart from a general critique of the elite expressed in words from section 2.1, the narrator can target specific people, parties, organisations, positions, and specific institutions of power. This section provides the in-detail specification of actors which can be potentially mentioned and discredited by Navalny as part of the elite. These actors are classified according to the characteristics of the Russian political system and specificities of populist categories, distinguishing the elite from ‘the people’. Table 6 below describes the categories of the actors belonging to Putin’s elite and the examples of actors that can appear in the text. These actors can be mentioned by their names, job position or nicknames (e.g. Dimon – Dmitry Medvedev) in text. In videos, they also can be mentioned by the members of the families of the actors of the elite. Navalny’s investigation into the facts of corruption in the Russian

268 Appendices

political system always refers to the nepotism of elites and tight involvement of the corrupt officials’ family members into corruption. They will be considered as a part of the elite too (e.g. Tatiana Navka – is a wife of Press Secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov). Coders should possess knowledge of the Russian political system and actors to identify to which category each actor belongs. In Excel file, he/she needs to indicate if at least one representative of a category appeared in the excerpt by putting 1-value in Excel under the relevant category. This will help to understand which category of actors of the elite is the most mentioned in Navalny’s videos and who are the main targets of Navalny’s critique in his YouTube videos.

Table 6. The main categories of actors of Putin’s elite Name of the Description of the category Actors (mentioning by category surnames and names, job positions, pronouns him/her which should be identifiable through the context) Economic powers Referring to the Russian businessmen, Businessmen mostly CEOs or heads of the companies in Russia affiliated with the government. As Representatives of the State well as representatives of the State corporations Corporations as a particular type of the companies in Russia created under Federal Laws. Example: businessmen Alisher Usmanov, the head of the State Corporation RosNano Anatolii Chubais Executive power Referring to the leading representatives of Federal Ministers and the executive branch of power in the Deputy PMs of the Russian Federation according to the Government Constitution of Russia. Example: President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin Governors of the federal subjects

Ministers of the federal subjects

Other employees of the Government and governments of the federal subjects

President Vladimir Putin

PM Dmitry Medvedev

Representatives of the Federal Agencies

Representatives of the Federal Services

the Presidential administration staff

other

Intellectuals Referring to the members of intellectual Professors, academics elites in Russia affiliated with the

Appendices 269

government. Usually, writers, universities, Writers professors. Universities

Thinkers, philosophers

Judicial power Referring to the leading representatives of Judges of district courts the judicial branch of power in Russia according to the Constitution of the Judges of federal courts (the Russian Federation. Including judges on Constitutional Court, the different levels: federal, district, and Supreme Court, the Supreme regional courts. Example: The Judge of the Court of Arbitration of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Russian Federation) Federation Judges of regional courts and appellate courts

Legislative power Referring to the leading representatives of Deputies of the State Duma the legislative branch of power in the Russian Federation according to the Senators of the Federal Constitution of Russia. Example: deputy Council Leonid Slutsky The deputies of regional and local parliaments of the federal subjects

Mainstream pro- Referring to the media outlets which are Pro-government media government media owned partly or wholly by the outlets government, and business structures affiliated with the government. Journalists Pro-government journalists who work in these media outlets and have an explicit pro-government, pro-Putin position. Example: First Channel, journalist Vladimir Solovyev Orthodox Church Referring to representatives of the The Orthodox Church Orthodox Church in Russia Repressive state Referring to the military, security forces, The General Prosecutor of apparatus paramilitary organisations, police, General Russia Prosecutor’s office, censorship bodies in the Russian Federation. Example: General The Russian Army Prosecutor of Russia Yury Chaika Regional prosecutors

Employees of other internal military organisations (The Russian Guard, Kazaks etc.)

The Police

Representatives of the Federal Security Service in Russia

Roskomnadzor

270 Appendices

Other organs of Organs of federal power not associated The Central Bank federal power with executive, legislative, judicial branches of power and Prosecutor’s office The Central Electoral in Russia Commission

other

Other actors The actors that do not belong to listed above categories, but still constituting part of the elite. These actors should not be ordinary citizens criticised by Navalny. They will be a separate category for the analysis.

Example in text: Moreover, if we take this Putin’s mafia, its top and even the middle level, we’ll see that the national guarantor and favorite Vladimir Putin should be included into the list of the least popular politicians.

Recently Peskov has made a habit of telling that all his inexplicable wealth comes from his wife makings, so we started to look for corruption stories that couldn't be connected to Tatiana Navka’s income.

(Explanation: Putin – is the President of Russia; Peskov is a Press Secretary of the President, Navka is the wife of Peskov)

2.3 Discrediting the elites: empty discrediting and discrediting with evidence A coder should look for the facts discrediting the actors of the elite or Putin’s elite in general. By discrediting in this project, I mean “to cause people to stop respecting someone or believing an idea or person” (Cambridge Dictionary n.d.)28[1]. Discrediting might be supported by some evidence base, including materials from social media, websites, official documents of the government and related structures, independent organisations (commercial, non-commercial, think tanks), judicial documents that Navalny or his colleagues provide or refer to the videos and which presuppose that every citizen can look them up by him/herself. That would be referred to in coding as ‘discrediting with the evidence’. Empty discrediting are the facts of discrediting that are not supported by any piece of evidence, and more consist of accusations and denigrating. A narrator can use both of these types of discrediting within one excerpt.

Important: usually, the evidence basis for discrediting can be present in one excerpt. However, the evidence can be presented by the narrator in next excerpts within one video (as one video can consist of several excerpts). If this is the case, the coder should attribute a numeric value (1) to an excerpt where the actor of the elite is appearing to whom this evidence base is referring to. If there is at least one fact of discrediting of the elite supported by evidence base present within the excerpt – a coder should attribute ‘1’ value in a respective column in an Excel file. If there is no evidence base provided for denigrating the elite, a coder should assign 1-value in a respective column in an Excel file. One excerpt can consist of both empty discrediting and discrediting with evidence, in that case, a coder should put 1-value in both of corresponding columns.

Empty discrediting: “Kremlin is uniquely placed to see that its authority is based solely on lies and on the inactions of good people.”

Discrediting with evidence: “While I do it, we’ll also entertain you with some footage of Usmanov’s mansion, so you’ll get a chance to see how Russian oligarchs live.

28 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discredit

Appendices 271

So far we’ve established the following: Usmanov gifted a mansion worth 5 billion rubles ($90 million) to the Soscgosproject foundation, which is controlled by Dmitry Medvedev’s men. And we are sure this was a bribe.”

Within one excerpt a coder will need to identify the presence of the elements and categories described in Section 2 by putting 0-value (not present) or 1-value (present) to a respective column in a separate Excel file, using the descriptions above. The list of categories and elements connected with the discrediting the elites can be seen in Table 7.

Table 7. Categories for coding of the facts of discrediting the elite in text Discrediting the elite Discrediting Empty the elite Discrediting with evidence

(RUS)Инструкция для кодировщика Данная инструкция предназначена для русскоговорящего кодировщика со знанием политической системы России, чтобы установить процедурную верификацию контент-анализа для проекта диссертации Глазуновой Софьи «Социальные сети как инструмент внесистемной оппозиции в России: Кейс популистской коммуникации Алексея Навального на YouTube».

Установочные данные: Кодировщик будет работать с тремя следующими документами: • Инструкция для кодировщика. Файл MS Word • Категории для кодирования. Файл MS Excel • Отрывки текста. Репрезентативная выборка. Файл MS Word

Основный понятия: Популизм – выражение популистского контента (содержание) и стиля. Содержание популизма в этом проекте сводится к двум основным элементам: анти-элитный характер дискурса и концентрация на народе, людях. Категория популизма – в данном проекте под категориями популизма понимаются идеологические конструкции, выраженные в тексте с помощью слов-маркеров. В данном проекте выделяются две главные категории: «Обращение к народу» и «Дискредитация элит» Слова-маркеры – слова, по которым можно идентифицировать популистскую категорию в отрывке текста. Подкатегория популизма – подкатегории указанных выше категорий. В данном проекте это «Простое обращение», «Призыв к действию», «Пустая дискредитация», «Дискредитация с доказательством». Отрывок текста – отрывок текста из видео Навального обозначенный специальным номером. Основная единица анализа, которой присваиваются значения в двоичной системе (1 или 0) Элита – в этом проекте представители Путинской элиты в современной России, основанная на принципах политической системы России, а также популистской категоризации. Категоризация элиты представлена ниже в данном документе в разделе 2. Кодировщик должен найти и определить в отрывках текстах к видео Алексея Навального элементы популистского стиля, такие как «Обращение к народу» и «Дискредитация элит». Внутри категории «Обращение к народу», кодировщик должен выявить подкатегории «Простое обращение» и «Призыв к действию». Внутри категории «Дискредитация элит» кодировщик должен выявить подкатегории «Пустая дискредитация» и «Дискредитация с доказательством». Описание данных категории приведено ниже с примерами.

1. Обращение к народу Слова-маркеры Чтобы определить элементы обращения к народу, кодировщик может встретить в тексте слова-маркеры, символизирующие данную категорию в популизме. «Обращение к народу»

272 Appendices

состоит из факта самого обращения, а также категорий народа (людей). Обращение может принимать как «простую» форму, так и радикальную в форме «Призыва людей к действию». Далее приведены основные слова-маркеры данной категории.

Существительные Существительные, местоимения, которые символизируют людей. См. Табл.1 для примеров слов и примеров предложений в тексте.

Табл.1 мы ты наш миллионы вся граждане налогоплательщики людей страна вы нас ваш люди мы с они (люди) и т.д. вами

Примеры предложений в тексте: • Мы с вами сказали, «это не выборы», «и мы их не признаем», «мы на них не пойдем», «и мы будем всех вокруг агитировать против этого». • А те, кто вышел просто сказать: ну хватит воровать, вы растащили всю страну - все молодцы! Я горжусь, тем, что я часть вас и ваш единомышленник.

Категории людей Навальный может обращаться в тексте к определенным категории людей внутри населения страны. С точки зрения людей, это группы, не исключенные из его политической популистской повестки. Навальный обращается к ним, так же, как и к остальным гражданам, но отдельно. В эти категории входят группы людей разделенные по профессиональному, национальному, этническому, религиозному и др. признаку. Важно! В тексте Навальный не должен дискредитировать эти группы. Примеры таких категории в Табл.2

Табл.2 учителя студенты чеченцы школьники молодые люди дагестанцы

Пример предложений в тексте: • Уважаемые учителя, мы очень хорошо понимаем, что не вы это все придумали делать.

Глаголы в повелительном наклонении В русском языке форму обращения можно определить по наклонению глаголов в предложении без существительных и местоимений. Глагол в повелительном наклонении можно определить по его окончанию, а также множественное или единственное число. Глаголы, в повелительном наклонении, которые могут указывать на обращение к людям (не элите) также могут указывать на призыв к действию. Примеры таких глаголов в Табл.3

Табл.3 поверьте голосуйте приходите давайте подписывайтесь бойкотируете

Подкатегории для кодировщика Кодировщик должен определить следующие категории в тексте: «простое обращение» и «призыв к действию» и присвоить им значение 1 (присутствует) или 0 (отсутствует) в таблице в Экселе. Далее приведено описание данных подкатегорий.

1.1. Простое обращение Простое обращение означает, что политик (Навальный) просто обращается, общается с народом, приглашая их к дискуссии через видео. Он обращается к ним, чтобы ассоциировать себя с ними, позиционируя себя как часть народа. Он не приглашает их ни к какой форме действия. Политик использует данный прием как часть повествования. Отрывки текста в данной подкатегории будут состоять из существительных, местоимений, но они не будут содержать призыва к действию, на которое могут указывать глаголы в повелительном наклонении.

Appendices 273

Примеры в тексте: • Я поздравляю вас с успешной акцией и по численности, и по потрясающему географическому охвату мы показали, что Россия хоть и вступает в пятый срок Путина, здесь много тех, кто не готов превратиться в зомби или стать рабом самозваного царя. • Но то, что сейчас происходит с Телеграмом, вы прекрасно-прекрасно знаете и без меня. • И вы мне тут говорите, ну Навальный какую-то нереальную ситуацию описал, не бывает таких людей, мы такой парочки никогда не встречали.

1.2. Призыв к действию «Призыв к действию» — это радикальная форма обращения к народу, которая содержит приглашение к политическому действию. Отрывки текста, которые содержат призыв к действию автоматически содержат подкатегорию «Простое обращение». Но, чтобы выявить для анализа более радикальные формы обращения к народу, если кодировщик нашел «призыв к действию» в отрывке текста, в таблице Эксель кодировщик должен присвоить значение 1 в графу «Призыв к действию» и 0 в графу «Простое обращение». Данная категория содержит глаголы в повелительном наклонении, которые указывают на призыв к действию. Повелительное наклонение может сигнализировать о мотивации, мобилизации сторонников согласно политическим целям Навального. Данная форма предполагает последующее действие от слушателей.

Примеры в тексте: • Подумайте об этом и обязательно подпишитесь на наш канал, потому что здесь говорят правду, в отличие от вашего лживого неконструктивного телевидения. • 12-го июня приходите на анти-коррупционный митинг в своем городе, и не просто приходите, а сделайте пожалуйста так, чтобы максимальное количество людей пришло вместе с вами.

Исключения Говорить о людях Есть другие примеры использованиях риторики о людях в тексте. Некоторые из них могут быть абстрактные рассуждения о людях, но они не содержат прямого обращения к людям. Такие предложения не должны влиять на присвоение значения подкатегориям и должны быть исключены из анализа.

Примеры в тексте: • Двадцать процентов населения живут за чертой бедности

В итоге, кодировщик должен выявить две подкатегории в тексте относящийся к населению: «Простое обращение» и «Призыв к действию». Кодировщик должен присвоить отрывку текста, обозначенным номером значение 1 (присутствует) или 0 (отсутствует). Значение 1 присваивается, когда кодировщик нашел хотя бы одно упоминание категории в тексте. Если категория упоминается дважды, кодировщик все равно присваивает значение 1.

Важно! В данном анализе обозначенные две категории сделаны взаимоисключающими для удобства анализа. Поэтому в двух колонках сразу не могут стоять значения 1-1. Только 0-1 или 1-0. То есть если кодировщик встретил в тексте хотя бы один «призыв к действию», он уже может не искать примеры простого обращения. Он присваивает 1 в графу «Призыв к действию» и 0 в графу «Простое обращение». Если кодировщик не нашел пример «Призыва к действию», но увидел пример «Простого обращения», он ставит 0 и 1 в соответствующие колонки в Экселе. Категории в Экселе представлены в Табл.4.

Табл.4. 1.1. Простое обращение 1.2. Призыв к действию

2. Дискредитация элит

274 Appendices

Второй элемент популистского стиля Навального должен содержать факт дискредитации им элит. Под элитой в этом проекте я понимаю Путинскую элиту или часть Российского истеблишмента, которая держит монополию власти с 2000-го года. Это представители исполнительной, законодательной, судебной власти в России, Генеральный прокурор и прокуратура, бизнесмены, про-государственные СМИ и другие акторы указанные ниже в специальном разделе. Навальный в своих видео пытается дискредитировать этих акторов. Он использует факты и доказательства в рамках журналистского расследования, чтобы дискредитировать элиту. В то же время в одном и том же отрывке текста, он может также просто оскорблять элиту, не используя никаких доказательств. Эти подкатегории получили название «Пустая дискредитация» и «Дискредитация с доказательством», описание подкатегорий приводится ниже.

Элита в целом Слова-маркеры Кодировщик может идентифицировать упоминания элиты в тексте по существительным или местоимения использованных Навальным. В противовес «народу», упоминаемому в популизме, элита может быть представлена как «враги» или «они». Навальный может использовать слэнг, негативные описания, оскорбительные или ново-сочиненные слова, чтобы сделать акцент на губительной силе элиты для общества. Слова и местоимения могут быть в единственном или множественном числе. Примеры слов, отображающих элиту, указаны в Табл. 5.

Табл 5. они/ их/ им правительство система жулики враг/враги режим государственная мафия машина государство Кремль вор/воры власть

Примеры в тексте: • Нам не нравится, когда очевидный вор, взяточник и коррупционер представляет нашу страну. • Время идет, власть деградирует, ворует все больше, и ей все больше нужны такие, как Соловьев, которые с экрана расскажут о мудрости Владимира Владимировича Путина и убожестве оппозиции. • Я не думаю, что найдется хотя бы один человек в России, готовый хоть копейку отдать для Тулеева, но наша власть плевала на наше мнение, поэтому с ней и нужно бороться всеми возможными методами.

Акторы элиты Наряду с общей критикой элиты, в тексте может встречаться критика отдельных политических акторов, когда коммуникатор (Навальный) упоминает специальные институты власти, фамилии, должности. Эти акторы классифицированы ниже, согласно политической системе Российской Федерации и особенностям популистского дискурса. Элита в популистском дискурсе противопоставлена простому народу. Табл. 6 описывает категории элиты выделены в тексте и примеры акторов, которые могут встретиться в тексте. Акторы могут упоминаться по имени, никнейму (Димон – Дмитрий Медведев). В тексте также могут упоминаться члены их семей, которые также считаются частью элиты. Расследования Навального часто указывают на непотизм элит и тесное вовлечение семей и родственников чиновников в коррупционные схемы.

Кодировщик должен обладать знанием главных политических акторов и институтов в России, чтобы определить относятся ли данные акторы к элите либо же к народу. Упоминание может относиться к институту власти, например ГосДума или же к отдельным представителям, например, спикер Володин.

Табл.6 Категория Описание категории Примеры акторов (фамилии) Экономические акторы Бизнесмены, главы Анатолий Чубайс компаний, представители Алишер Усманов

Appendices 275

ГосКорпораций (например, РосНано) Исполнительная власть Ведущие представители Владимир Путин исполнительной власти в Дмитрий Медведев России согласно Вице-Премьер Хлопонин Конституции Пресс-секретарь Песков Интеллектуалы Академики, писатели, любой ректор университета университеты, которые любой писатель поддерживают элиту Судебная власть Представители судебной Конституционный Судья власти в России. Судьи Федеральный Судья разных административных Судья округа уровней Законодательная власть Представители Депутат Слуцкий законодательной власти в Спикер ГосДумы Володин РФ. Члены Государственной Думы и Советской федерации. Местные депутаты, региональные депутаты Про-государственные СМИ Представители про- журналист Соловьев государственных СМИ и журналист Киселев медиа групп, Первый канал аффилированных с ними. Российская газета Журналисты или целые СМИ должны выражать яркую про-государственную позицию и поддерживать элиту Православная церковь Представители института Патриарх Кирилл православной церкви в России. Священники и церковнослужители Карательно-репрессивный Относится к упоминаниям любой представитель из аппарат представителей силовых данных ведомств ведомств, ФСБ, армии, полиции, около-военных организаций и групп людей (казаки), прокуратура, РосКомНадзор Другие органы власти Органы власти и ее Председатель ЦИК Элла представители, не Памфилова ассоциируемые ни с одной ветвью власти, но также Глава ЦБ Эльвира входящие в элиту. Например, Набиуллина ЦБ, прокуратура, ЦИК

Примеры в тексте: • Я вот вижу реакцию на это расследование, вижу, что многие люди внимательно изучили все документы и убедились, что наше доказательство вовлечение Медведева в многомиллиардную коррупцию, в получении взяток, строительство дворцов по всей стране – они просто железобетонные.

• Я вам даже больше скажу, вот завтра случится какая-нибудь такая большая разборка внутри кремлевский мафии, они сожрут Путина, поставят на его место Шойгу или какого- нибудь Лаврова, и мы еще увидим самого Путина с заявлениями о том, что вообще-то в 17 лет он мечтал сделать Россию свободной, он хотел очень хотел отпустить всех заключенных, но все его указа на эту тему блокировали плохие бояре.

276 Appendices

Категории для анализа Дискредитация элит: «Пустая дискредитация» и «Дискредитация с доказательством»

2.1. Пустая дискредитация Кодировщик должен искать примеры дискредитации политической элиты в отрывке текста, как в целом через абстрактные существительные и местоимения, так индивидуально, имея в виду политические институты или конкретные фамилии. Под дискредитацией в этом проекте я понимаю: «Неуместными действиями или словами вызвать (вызывать) недоверие к чему-нибудь, умалить (умалять) чей-нибудь авторитет, значение»29. Пустая дискредитация относится к фактам словесного обвинения или оскорбления элиты и ее представителей без предъявления базы доказательства с целью унизить достоинство или подорвать авторитет власти.

Примеры в тексте: • Поэтому люди и в Кемерово, и во всей России отлично знают, что нельзя верить ни одному слову этого жулья, но они прямо в глаза называют черное белым. Они, не моргнув глазом, скажут самую очевидную ложь и будут на ней настаивать. Когда о количестве жертв нам рассказывают люди, которые вот только что в этой же Кемеровской области пихали пачки бюллетеней в урны, а потом объявили о честных выборах, ну как им можно верить?

• И вот этого нужно очень четко понимать, потому что конкретно Сечин, ближайший соратник Путина и его кошелек, потому что вся путинская власть последние 17 лет только и делает, что создает таких Сечиных и обеспечивает им жизненный комфорт и неприкосновенность.

2.1. Дискредитация с доказательством. Если дискредитация элиты сопровождается представлением базы доказательств в одном отрывке текста (к базе доказательств могут относиться посты в социальных сетях, информация с сайтов, информация с публичных баз данных, судебные документы, документы правительства, другие журналистские расследования и др. традиционные и онлайн формы доказательной базы, видео с дрона, фотографии и т.д.), то этот отрывок текста может быть причислен к подкатегории «Дискредитация с доказательством». Данная подкатегория содержит элементы расследования, которые опираются на базу данных, собранных с помощью журналистских методов.

Примеры в тексте: • Обратите внимание на адрес, где компания осуществляет лицензируемую деятельность. Это поселок Знаменское, Рублево-Успенское шоссе. По этому адресу располагается огромная усадьба — более 4 гектаров земли, главный дом 3000 метров и еще куча других построек — гараж, гостевой дом, бассейн, баня. «Как интересно» подумали мы. Кому же это все принадлежит? Росреестр показывает, что земля принадлежит двум юридическим лицам. Фонду социально значимых государственных проектов и его дочерней компании Грин Ярд. Фонду социально значимых государственных проектов.

• Подозреваю, что вам не терпится посмотреть на Рублевскую усадьбу Дмитрия Анатольевича. Не могу отказать вам в удовольствии. Смотрим. Мы с вами находимся в районе села Знаменское. Это ближайшее Подмосковье — Рублево-Успенское шоссе. Здесь — самая дорогая в России земля, самые шикарные дома, за самыми высокими заборами. Разворачиваемся и перед нами открывается вид на внушительного размера особняки ухоженную территорию вокруг него. Опускаемся пониже, чтобы лучше разглядеть, что же находится на этом участке. Облетаем дом по кругу.

Важно, «Дискредитация с доказательством» — это разновидность или степени подкатегории «Пустая дискредитация». Первое включает второе. Но для удобства анализа в

29 Толковый Словарь Ушакова. «Дискредитировать». Доступно по ссылке https://dic.academic ru/dic.nsf/ushakov/789010

Appendices 277

соответствующих графах файла Экселя кодировщик должен поставить только одно значение в соответствующую графу. То есть, если кодировщик нашел пример «Дискредитации с доказательством», он ставит значение 1 в соответствующую графу, но значение 0 в графу «Пустая дискредитация». То есть ситуации, когда в двух графах стоит 1 и 1 быть не может. Подкатегории анализа указаны в Табл. 7.

Табл.7 Пустая дискредитация Дискредитация с доказательством

В целом таблица Эксель может выглядеть как в Табл.8:

Табл.8 Номер отрывка Обращение к народу Дискредитация элит текста Простое Призыв к Пустая Дискредитация обращение действию дискредитация с доказательством 1.1. 0 1 1 0

По всем вопросам связанных с инструкцией кодировщика, модно обращаться по электронному адресу [email protected]

Appendix H. Thematic dictionaries of Navalny’s YouTube communication

Theme Words/ first stage of analysis Words/ second stage of analysis Elections elections agitate nomination campaign ballot programme vote candidate referendum political elect run (for elections) system electoral signature public commission voter turnout school leaflet voters police municipal filter voting station Corruption accounts oligarch aunt investment/investor industry Anti-Corruption owner billionaire jet Foundation residence brother manor anti-corruption expensive businessman material apartment palaces buyer metres assets price corrupt millionaire billion property cost price bought pay developer Range Rover business prime (minister) earn relative bribes private empire rent car purchase enrichment savings company building euro son-in-law corruption rubles father Tesla dacha salary Ferrari wallet estate secret firm watches family Usmanov fund wealth friends budget grandchildren head offshore house foundation income vineyards Italian son land sq (square) million taxes money villa Medvedev wife

278 Appendices

oil yacht Russian political authorities official activists pensioners system children party boys person citizens people crowd picket city power demonstration politician country president deputy population crooks protest girls prime minister fight Putin Leviathan protesters friends rallies man public opinion government regime manifestation Russian governor residents minister Russian Federation jail rich ministry social Kremlin Russia movement strike law streets Muscovites women lies support parliament mayor United Russia national Truth and ways to truth documents news article Odnoklassniki communicate it video information broadcast photo investigation media censorship prove TV court channel radio station Navalny film editorial social media internet facts VKontakte footage website Instagram YouTube reportage journalist

Appendices 279