Russian TV, Twitter Clips and Warped Perceptions

There is a lot more Russian television on Anglophone Twitter than there is in the lives of most Russians

I am often reminded of a scene from the first season of The Thick of It. Hugh Abbott, the Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship, stumbles into another political scandal. Hanging on to his position at the end of the day, Abbott is asked how his wife will react. She won’t know, Abbott replies — she doesn’t watch rolling news because she’s a “normal person”.

I think of this scene when I log in to Twitter. It’s easy, in the maelstrom of discourse, hot takes, links to articles, videos of battlefields, to lose the sense that most people — “normal people”, to take Abbott’s phrasing — never see these things. Most people, in my experience, including friends in London and Moscow, my family in the North of England, and my wife’s family in the Urals, on the Volga and on the Black Sea are not “very online”. They do not look to Twitter, or even Telegram, for 24-hour rolling news. They have no position on the latest debate around a misguided tweet — they don’t know it exists.

I noticed this recently when I spent a few weeks in Dubai to renew my Russian visa. I had more time on my hands, which I planned to spend reading and writing. Inevitably, procrastination plunged me into the morass of Twitter. I found that, sitting in Dubai, with longer time spent on social media, I was much more aware of the latest opinions belched out by Solovyov and Simonyan than I would have been in Moscow, where I spend less time on social media.

This would be true for the media ecology of most countries. The difference, with Russia, is that our perception of the country, its people and what they think is warped by clips shared on Twitter. Since February 2022, there is a daily regurgitation of Russian TV, either subtitled or dubbed into English, which is voraciously consumed by “very online” people with no other knowledge of Russia and no Russian language skills. These clips are also, unfortunately, too often relied upon by Russia “watchers” sat in Western capitals, who may not have been to Russia for years. In the last couple of years, whole books have been published about “what Russians think” based on Telegram posts and Russian TV.

If you spend a lot of time on social media, your impression of Russia will be led by things that most Russians never see. As I wrote recently, there is a lot more Russian television on Anglophone Twitter than there is in the lives of most Russians.

This observation sparked a discussion with Marc Bennetts, who offered some useful counterpoints. As Marc pointed out, in some homes, especially in Russia’s regions, the TV is a background to everyday life. While TV news may not always be actively consumed, it can still shape perceptions. Many people I know are lost in a flood of competing narratives. They recognise that Russian TV lies, but also believe that Western media lies. Some use Russian TV as a comfort blanket, but very few regurgitate Russian TV narratives without any critical thought, despite the impression often given on Twitter.

There is an analogous media ecology in the UK. Very few people, in 2024, buy newspapers, but newspaper headlines set the agenda for morning discussions on TV and radio bulletins, and on Twitter. I have never bought a copy of the Daily Mail, but if I listen to Radio 4, watch Sky News or log on to Twitter, I will invariably be confronted with the Daily Mail’s front page. It’s possible to be trapped in a debate without realising that the debate was sparked on the front pages of the Daily Mail.

The difference, I think, is that the Daily Mail’s invective is not taken by people abroad— if we call them “Britain Watchers” we can begin to understand how strange the concept of a “Russia Watcher” is — as some essential truth about England and the English in the same way that Twitter TV analysis is for Russia and Russians.

Analysis of Russian TV or even Telegram is, rather than analysis, often a substitute for a lack of analysis, a lack of on-the-ground presence, and a lack of nuance. Clips from Russian TV and Telegram can tell us some things; as Mark Galeotti pointed out in response to one of my tweets, these clips are “a distinctive form of propaganda at the intersection of conspiracy theory and perverse entertainment”. The problem, though, is that they are too often the end point for analysis of Russia. They don’t tell us much more than what the Kremlin wants to say and, let’s be frank, what the Kremlin wants Westerners to share on Twitter. After all, they know you are watching, and they know you will, perhaps unwittingly, do more to share their propaganda than Simonyan or Solovyov ever could do on their own.