Venemaa humanitaarabi meediadiskursus kui strateegiline narratiiv: semiootiline analüüs
Media discourse of Russian humanitarian aid as a strategic narrative: a semiotic analysis

Summary/Abstract: The crucial components of contemporary conflicts (including military conflicts) are the spectators and the audience, who have a role in how the conflict plays out. One possibility to consciously govern information conflicts is to design strategic narratives. Strategic narratives create a context (that organizes various information fragments) and guides the meaning-making of the media audience. In this context it is criucial to ask: how should the intentional structuring of narratives, targeting of audiences, and the manipulative intentions of the designer be researched? The premise of the article is that we can speak of a strategic narrative in cases when it is possible to detect an aim presented in it. The framework of strategic narrative and Umberto Eco’s concept of the Model Reader and Model Author are relevant in this context. In order to guide the audience’s interpretation process, the Model Reader, or the ideal receiver, as it were, is shaped in the narratives, actualizing the codes and intertextual references that the author has strategically planned into it. Eco’s theory helps us to explain the techniques of manipulating the audience’s preconceptions and analyzing the unity of strategic narratives. The article analysis the Kremlin-sponsored media discourse (RT, Pervõi Kanal and NTV) of Russia’s coronavirus aid to Italy.

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