Security Threats and Public Perception

Table of Contents

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Introduction

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   The Ukraine crisis amplified a number of existing threat narratives and put them back on the agenda, despite the absence of Russia’s own ‘Maidan’, i.e. Russia’s own mass scale movement that led to a regime change. Thus, this book focuses on the time period between 2011 and 2015, covering the discursive struggles around electoral protests, resurgent anti-Americanism with its adoption ban and foreign agents legislation, Pussy Riot trial, debates on sexuality, the fascism discourse in relation to the Ukraine crisis and anti-migration narratives. This book is the first study of this scale to investigate the conditions for the success and failure of securitization narratives using social network data and problematizing the notion of audience and embeddedness of the securitization discourse.

3. Chapter 2. Defining Securitization, Enemy Images, and Memory

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   In this chapter I begin to examine three approaches to the study of threat narratives that are used in this book: securitization, enemy image research, and memory studies. Even though securitization provides the list of felicity conditions that are supposed to map out the success or failure of securitization as a process, it has a number of limitations with regard to the audience and analysis of threat narratives. Thus, securitization provides a detailed account of political processes but does not address the classification of threats, even though the latter is an intrinsic notion within the securitization framework.

4. Chapter 3. Identifying Threat Narratives

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   The factors that define the success of existential threat narratives are their acceptance at a popular level and political measures aimed at combatting the threats. Using these factors, I will analyse a list of threat narratives in detail. First, I disaggregate the threat narrative into its parts, that is, establish if the threat has significant traction on the audience level and if this audience discussion makes references to personified threats—enemy images. Second, I determine whether the threat has a collective memory component. Finally, I establish whether existential threat narratives and personification rhetoric are also promoted at the governmental level.

5. Chapter 4. The USA as the Primary Threat to Russia

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   A threat coming from the West is probably one of the most collective memory-rich threat discourses in Russia. Ample visual material from Soviet times only helps to bring the enemy image back to life. Government officials seem to be giving a fresh spin on the old anti-American frames, accusing the USA of undermining Russia’s stability and being hypocritical (‘cynical’) about human rights. The attitude towards America as a personification of the existential threat is ambiguous. It’s not only a threat in itself; it is also a personification of a general ‘Western influence’ that is supposed to corrupt Russia. It is likely the USA will remain on the enemy image radar, especially in view of fulfilled felicity conditions that include strong collective memory embeddedness.

6. Chapter 5. Fascism and the Ukraine Crisis

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   Fascism is a convenient existential threat signifier for the post-Soviet space. With the larger role of the Great Patriotic War in Russian identity, it is an effective way to stir up a sense of ‘otherness’ in a variety of constructions. It is not surprising that a successful enemy image reappeared out of the media representations of the Ukrainian crisis: fascism has a very solid grounding in collective memory and received widespread attention both by high-ranking politicians and by state mass media that reverberated on social networks. Personification of the threat was also relatively easy as it relied on the picture memory of fascism and accessibility of conspiratorial, enemy image-based discourse. Thus, the enemy image of the ‘Ukrainian fascist’ dominated not only the official discourse, but also the social media, that is, the audience level. The conflict in Ukraine was largely framed in the Russian social media as a next reinstalment of the Great Patriotic War: the Russians are yet again fighting fascism, but this time its reincarnation is in Ukraine. Fascism as a narrative is deeply embedded in Russian collective memory as an existential threat discourse, so it is rather easy to manipulate public opinion into the necessity of taking extraordinary measures that effectively led to the breakdown of the post-Cold War security system.

7. Chapter 6. Blasphemy: Threats to Russia’s ‘Spiritual Bonds’

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   The cluster of enemy images in this chapter is consigned to the attacks on the ‘spiritual bonds’ of Russia; that is, the cluster of threat narratives is rather centred on the referent object. Thus, despite the geopolitical considerations in Chap. 5 on fascism, threats to the cultural makeup of Russia gain quite substantial traction on social networks and are frequently voiced by leading politicians. Social network users, regardless of their gender, resort to patriarchal narratives, either denigrating women and condoning violence against them, or affirming ‘traditional’ life choices for women, such as motherhood in lieu of political activism.

8. Chapter 7. Sexuality Must Be Defended

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   Sexuality is a perfect medium to channel an enemy image: by coupling alternative sexuality with the threat to children and personifying it with pictures of kissing men or famous gay pop idols the enemy image is sedimented in the population even on the linguistic level. At the same time, Soviet practice provides a large pool of collective memory references to ‘sins’ against socialist society that are now transformed into religious discourse. Moreover, governmental rhetoric maintains the existential threat vector directed at children by coupling homosexuality with paedophilia.

9. Chapter 8. Migration

   Elizaveta Gaufman

   Abstract

   There is an established othering discourse that is applied to migrants and is usually promulgated by the Russian mass media. The current research identity construction in Russian TV identified several patterns that are common to all major networks and conform to the binary process of ‘othering’ that has been identified by most discourse scholars. The topic of migration is a very diverse discursive landscape, where several types of discourses compete, each advancing its own primary antagonism. The official position has evolved, but it continues to juggle several contradictory discourses, combining incompatible elements as a result, such as presenting Russia as a home for peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups, but tightening migration regulation.

10. Chapter 9. Lesser Threats

    Elizaveta Gaufman

    Abstract

    In the previous chapters I discussed threat narratives that were both targeted by customized political acts and widely accepted by the public as such. What happens when one of the success criteria is not there? If a threat is not existential, does it constitute a successful securitization? If the public is no longer debating it, does it mean that securitization failed? This chapter discusses the cases that cannot be deemed as successful securitizations based on the two aforementioned success criteria: either there is no customized political act or it is not accepted as a threat by the audience.

11. Chapter 10. Conclusions

    Elizaveta Gaufman

    Abstract

    The results of this research, due to its multidisciplinarian nature, offer relevant contributions to security studies, nationalism, sociology, media studies, gender studies, post-Soviet studies, and digital humanities in general. In any climate where fearmongering is ubiquitous and permeates everyday life, there is a heightened need to critically analyse narratives. This book engages in a similar process: by pointing out the constructed nature of threat narratives it creates a normative push to perceive the phenomena already accepted by the audience as existential threats in non-securitized terms.

12. Backmatter