Stephen Hutchings - Origins of 'Russia Today' the Kremlin's Hard-Edged Soft Power Propaganda Channel

Russian propaganda is at its heart nihilistic. Its effects can be highly corrosive, and it does not necessarily try to convince you of its point of view. Rather it seeks to engender division, conflict and in some circumstances apathy and inaction. Russia Today has been at the forefront of the Russian propaganda effort for more than a decade. This conversation seeks to unpack the intent behind the channel, how it works, and how it seeks to sow division amongst Russia's perceived enemies. Russia Today is Soft Power with a very Hard Edge to it. ---------- GUEST: Stephen Hutchings, Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester. ---------- WATCH NEXT: Timothy Ash    • Russian sanctions - Too little, too late? ...   Ian Garner    • Propaganda in wartime - an interview with ...   Luke March    • Decolonising Russia and Russian history: C...   Jenny Mathers    • Foreign Agents Law and Russian’s War Again...   ---------- CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introducing Stephen Hutchings ---------- PLATFORMS: Twitter:   / curtainsilicon   Instagram:   / siliconcurtain   Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6... Linkedin:   / finkjonathan   Patreon:   / siliconcurtain   ---------- SPEAKER: Stephen Hutchings is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester. Stephen was formerly Professor of Cultural Studies and Russian at the University of Surrey and Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Rochester, New York. He is President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies and was a member of the RAE 2008 subpanel for Russian and Slavonic Languages and Cultures. He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Russian Journal of Communication, ArtMargins, and Russian Studies in Literature. ---------- BOOKS: Television and Culture in Putin's Russia: Remote control Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age: The Word as Image Projecting Russia in a Mediatized World: Recursive Nationhood Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television: Mediating Post-Soviet Difference TO BE PUBLISHED IN 2023: Russia, Disinformation and the Liberal Order: Co-Creating a Populist Pariah, Cornell University Press, Forthcoming (edp: July 2023) Stephen Hutchings, Vera Tolz, Marie Gillespie, Precious Chatterje-Doody and Rhys Crilley ---------- Welcome to the Silicon Curtain podcast. Please like and subscribe if you like the content we produce. It will really help to increase the popularity of our content in YouTube’s algorithm. Our material is now being made available on popular podcasting platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.