"For more than 30 years, investigative journalism has been playing a role in Russian society much bigger than it has ever had in traditional emocracies. Gorbachev’s reforms started with Glasnost (‘Openness’), when many journalists became household names. The problem was that there were no stan
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dards for that new Russian journalism. This hit Russian journalists badly in the 1990s, when the pro fession of investigative journalism became very dangerous. This was exploited by the Kremlin in the 2000s: Putin, the new president did not tolerate any criticism of his actions, and a new narrative was romoted – that independent investigati ve journalism could not exist, and those journalists were just paid by outside actors to attack the Russian state. In 2008, the country got a new president, Dmitry Medvedev. His push for digitalization of government services led to an unexpected development - new methods of digital investiga tions emerged, along with new teams and renewed interest among the general public. But when Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, the tide turned against journalists. Matters worsened year by year, and 2021 saw the harshest repressions against investigative journa lists to days – they were pushed out of profession and out of the country by any means necessary, the most effective tool being the wide and unscrupulous usage of the Foreign Agent Law." (FNS)
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"In the late 2010s, the Internet overtook television as the most popular media format in Russia. It was also the time when Russian-speaking YouTube went political: well-known bloggers started producing political content, opposition politicians became the most popular YouTubers, and finally mainstrea
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m journalists migrated to the platform, a move precipitated by Covid-19 isolation when the demand for Russian-speaking content on YouTube skyrocketed. Therefore, it came as no surprise that when the war started it was YouTube that became the main battlefield for independent Russian journalists, including those who had moved out of the country. However, YouTube was also used by Russian propaganda for years with great effect. For that reason, the Russian government was hesitant to block YouTube, unlike other global platforms that Kremlin censors blocked immediately after the war started. That provided time for Russian users to adapt and install censorship circumvention tools. The other platform that was not immediately blocked was Telegram, and Russian journalists didn’t miss that opportunity to talk to their audience either." (Summary, page 4)
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