Peculiarities of Mediatization of Politics under Autoritarian Regimes: Practices of Interaction between the Authorities and the Media

Scholarly debate on mediatization of politics has mainly focused on a western-based and linear model of mediatization process. The given research pertains to a newly evolving branch of studies originating in the domain of mediatization in countries with the authoritarian political regime. The research is intended to elucidate the issue of the mediatization process illustrated by the case of Russia. The problem the research lies in the ambiguity of mediatization in authoritarian states. Under the authoritarian regime the mediatization process is put under control, thus its practices distorted. Examples of this can be a huge amount of laws constraining media functioning adopted in Russia in last decade. In this case, the media try to bypass the restrictions in informal practices. To bring about improvements in our understanding the practice theory methodology has been adopted in the project proposal. By conducting and analyzing eight in-depth interview with journalists, the practices regarding the interrelation of media and politics will be systematized and conceptualized. The inferences suggested by this research enrich the knowledge on mediatization of politics and shed the light on the not yet explored mediatization in Russia.