Our Crimea or Our Can of Worms? (Крым Наш или Нам Крыш?): A Russian media portrayal of the 2014 Crimean crisis

This Independent Study analyzes the Crimean crisis through the comparison of Russian Kremlin owned/influenced media newspaper articles to the Russian independently owned news journals in order to gain understanding of how the Russian media portrays events. This is based on the understanding of the historical relationship of Ukrainian, Crimean, and Russian and the media-government-public relationship, which will first be explained. Then, the news sources will be analyzed, and last a conclusion will be drawn as to how the government-owned Russian media portrays events versus the independently owned media during the Crimean crisis of 2014. Key words: Russia, Crimea, Ukraine, media, history, Crimean crisi