Watching Russian Political News for Three Months: Experiences of University of Helsinki Scholars Studying Elections

Six years ago, New York Times journalist Gary Shteyngart spent a week in a Manhattan Four Seasons hotel exposing himself to the Russia Today news channel 24/7. He described his experience daily and in the end reported severe emotional exhaustion, fatigue, and astonishment at how people who are forced to consume highly politicized and low-quality content can remain decent human beings. This summer, from the second half of June until the 18th of September, our project team conducted media monitoring of the 2021 State Duma elections for the Movement for Defence of Voters’ Rights “Golos” – a Russian organisation established in 2000 to protect electoral rights of citizens. Unfortunately our team was not provided a 5-star hotel, but on the other hand, we were luckily not exposed to 24/7 media observation. We took up the task of monitoring the five main Russian TV channels from June to September this summer to evaluate the media coverage of all political parties participating in the State Duma elections. In this brief post, written by Elena Gorbacheva and Margarita Zavadskaya, we share our experience and observations with you.Non peer reviewe