Enregistering the pandemic into Russianness

The current research has analyzed the COVID-19-related communication on the Russian media source RT, formerly known as ‘Russia Today’. The medium was chosen due to its significance in the maintenance of Russia’s image abroad. RT is often perceived as “the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Kremlin” (Yablokov, 2015). The government-owned media source is one of a few satellite news networks available in multiple languages “which has been relatively successful at promoting the Kremlin’s framing of Russian and international news” (Oates, 2016). Governmental financing of RT and similar sources from the taxpayers’ money has comparable strategic importance to supporting the Defence Ministry, and is one of the key weapons in ongoing times of war, according to Margarita Simonyan, the source’s editor-in-chief (Nimmo, 2018). In line with the social life of cultural values in pandemic times, hybrid media system theory, the medium is active both in online and offline domains. RT is originally a television network, created as an informational weapon ready to defend the position of the Kremlin in the world’s politics (Nimmo, 2018). At the same time, RT materials often circulate online, speculating false information and spreading misleading content. The medium has an official online website, and is, in addition, active on social media, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.