“The Unknown Land”: the Image of Africa in the Minds of Modern Russians

Abstract

Over the past few years, the multi-vector nature of Russian politics, declared as an alternative to a unipolar world, has taken on a more specific dimension. In the political discourse, the images of allies and friends “forgotten” in the 90s are actualized. However, these countries and related events are very weakly reflected in the minds of ordinary Russian citizens. To a certain extent, this situation can be explained by the lack of any systematic information about this region in the Russian media. In this regard, a more detailed study of the image of Africa as a whole and individual countries seems relevant both from a theoretical and an applied political point of view. It is so since today; there is a need to provide the task of expanding the space of interaction between Russia and these countries with adequate information policy. In this context, the study aimed to identify and analyze the main factors of formation and the specifics of the figurative and symbolic representation of the image of Africa and individual African countries, their place in world politics as a whole and relations with Russia in the minds of Russian citizens. The theoretical basis of the study was the political and psychological approach to the study of political ideas of citizens, developed at the Department of Sociology and Psychology of Politics, Faculty of Political Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University. This approach involves not only rational but also unconscious aspects of the perception process. This approach requires the use of a combination of qualitative political and psychological methods that make it possible to identify images and associations that are not fully understood by the respondent.