Russia's TV coverage of the war hasn't changed dramatically in the invasion's second year.

TL;DR coverage has remained about the same since February.

Interesting note: some evidence of a different strategy for normalizing occupation of Ukraine's territory.

A short 🧵(1/9) 2/9 For new followers: this project tracks topic mentions on Russian TV using transcripts from Integrum. Reported values reflect the number of mentions relative to mentions of the weather as a measure of whether viewers are likely to notice.

More here:
ridl.io/how-russian-te…

Following on the attack on #Belgorod, the response of Russian state TV to the #KakhovkaDam was markedly different, with some important implications.

tl;dr it was well prepared (probably in advance), and #Russia's framing suggests it isn't very committed to occupied regions.
1/14

https://twitter.com/RuMOR_CarletonU/status/1666925709992796160

First, the attack was attributed to Ukraine from the start. The first couple of days it was chalked up to heavy artillery, supported by the claim that Ukraine regularly shelled the dam. Reports also suggested that US-supplied HIMARS were used to shell the dam.
2/14

The attack on Belgorod and Shebekino was an interesting moment for Russian propaganda as the media grappled with how to report an attack on Russian soil by Russian forces collaborating with the enemy in a war that can't be called a war on TV. How did it manage it? 1/9 The first and most obvious thing is that Russian TV didn't ignore it. Mentions of Belgorod skyrocketed last week, and most of the mentions concerned fighting in/around Shebekino. But predictably, what happened vs what was reported are different stories. 2/9

Approaching the first anniversary of Russia's invasion, it's a good time to take stock of the war narratives in circulation on Russian TV.

But first, back by popular demand, the spaghetti chart:
1/8 To make things a little less chaotic, we re-calculate mentions on TV relative to mentions of the weather. This provides an intuitive measure of a topic's salience: if something is mentioned more often than the weather, it's more likely to be noticed (and vice versa). 2/8

Was the Russian public primed for war by television?

Everyone accepts that TV is a cornerstone of the Kremlin's power, but usually in the sense that it tells Russians what to think about Putin and the war.

But what if it uses TV to shape *how* people think about war?
1/16 There is an indirect media effect known as priming, and it refers to the ways that ideas broadcast in the media are made more accessible. When people think about other things, they over-sample the things that were primed because they are already "there."
2/16

The vast majority of Russians live outside the capital cities, so how is the war being reported in regional media?

In short: barely.

For this, we use broadcast transcripts for ~225 TV & radio stations across Russia, measuring the # of mentions per station for each week.

1/4

https://twitter.com/RuMOR_CarletonU/status/1585457486999453698

At the start of the war, only 3 narratives rated daily mentions on regional media: Donbas, sanctions, and refugees.

By April, they all became background noise.
The lone exception was reporting on Donbas for the annexation ceremony in September.

2/4

Russia's many war narratives through Oct 16th.

There are distinct phases, marked by different combinations of narrative elements (enemies, plots, justifications).

Notable in the last few weeks: rising mentions of US & NATO, while sanctions and nationalists are dropping.
1/5 Here we can see more clearly that only the US, NATO, nationalists, and sanctions are mentioned more often than the weather, meaning Russians are more likely to notice in daily life.

Liberation used to be a prominent justification for war, but it recently faded from view.
2/5

The RuMOR project tracks Russia's war narratives in Russian domestic broadcast and online media. War narratives tell us a lot about the ways the war impacts Russian domestic politics and society, especially as they change over time along with Russian advances and losses. 1/4 The project uses broadcast transcripts from the Integrum Profi service (integrum.ru). Topics are measured by the number of mentions on a weekly basis. To estimate their salience in everyday life, they are additionally measured relative to mentions of the weather. 2/4