Ethnic and Confessional Relations Coverage in the Mass Media of the Republic of Tatarstan

Roman P Bakanov,Liliia Egorova,Angelica Khasanova,Diana Tyabina,Dmitrii Tumanov

doi:10.7596/taksad.v7i4.1863

Abstract

The article reveals the key ideologemes in the sphere of interconfessional relations in the Republic of Tatarstan – one of economically developed regions of Russia. The authors analyzed different articles of newspapers with various typological background – “Respublika Tatarstan” (“The Republic of Tatarstan”, the official gazette of the Republic of Tatarstan), “Vremya i Dengi” (“The Time and Money”, the edition for business circles), “Vechernyaya Kazan” (“Evening Kazan”, mass media edition claiming to be an independent one). Applying the methods of substantive (quantitative and qualitative levels of cognition of reality), comparative, and discourse analysis of the newspapers on religious issues published in the Republic of Tatarstan, it was concluded that the republican press sought to adequately reflect the situation in the Republic of Tatarstan for the research period. In addition, the article discovers that a number of regional social problems of religious nature were to be muted in the local newspapers selected for the research. However, if such problems were still discussed, journalists and newspapers’ editors always focused on the settlement of any conflict situations in interconfessional relations. Moreover, in 2000-2017 the local press openly supported the manifestations of interconfessional tolerance, trying to deal with the activities of representatives of Islam and Orthodoxy in equal measure. The image of the “enemy” by faith in the research chronological period was not formed in the mass media, instead, journalists often spoke about the existence of an interconfessional dialogue. The results of our study supplement the findings of W. Gudykunst (1997), M. Kim (1994), M. Bennet (1998) and M. Maruyama (1970) through studying the practice of the print media functioning in one of the polyethnic Russian regions – the Republic of Tatarstan.

Highlights

IntroductionThe purpose of the article is to reveal the degree of tolerance of publicistic texts devoted to interconfessional relations in the printed publications of the Republic of Tatarstan.The identification of the social context behind oral or written speech, the study of the interconnection between a language and social processes allowed us to consider the texts published in the mass media not as a set of universal or constantly redefined meanings, but as a field of action through which people have an impact on behavior, thoughts and emotions of others in everyday practice, emphasizing the close relationship between actions performed in words and their social context of use.We propose this approach to analyze and study the creation of the image of the "other" based on real political, economic, social and cultural realities, and psychological, intellectual, emotional features of the perception of adherents of other faiths
The study made it possible to identify the key ideologemes in the field of interconfessional relations in the Republic of Tatarstan
The analysis of the texts of the government edition the “Republic of Tatarstan” enables to note that the materials published on the pages of the newspaper are aimed at maintaining the opinion of the Republic of Tatarstan as a region of conflict-free coexistence of confessions, which is part of the national idea: the state policy in the Republic of Tatarstan is aimed at maintaining the balance of interests of Islam and Orthodoxy and the equality of all religions under the law

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of the article is to reveal the degree of tolerance of publicistic texts devoted to interconfessional relations in the printed publications of the Republic of Tatarstan.The identification of the social context behind oral or written speech, the study of the interconnection between a language and social processes allowed us to consider the texts published in the mass media not as a set of universal or constantly redefined meanings, but as a field of action through which people have an impact on behavior, thoughts and emotions of others in everyday practice, emphasizing the close relationship between actions performed in words and their social context of use.We propose this approach to analyze and study the creation of the image of the "other" based on real political, economic, social and cultural realities, and psychological, intellectual, emotional features of the perception of adherents of other faiths. The identification of the social context behind oral or written speech, the study of the interconnection between a language and social processes allowed us to consider the texts published in the mass media not as a set of universal or constantly redefined meanings, but as a field of action through which people have an impact on behavior, thoughts and emotions of others in everyday practice, emphasizing the close relationship between actions performed in words and their social context of use. The designated concept helps to explore ways of forming stereotypes in the perception of the image of the "other" and understand the process of designing ethnic and confessional relations in the mass media

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Conclusion