THE CHECHEN WARS, MEDIA, AND DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA

Abstract

Media, like religion, may create, escalate, or deescalate conflict. In the age of technology, parties to protracted conflicts often use the media for their propaganda purposes. In many cases, despite politically created discourses, individual media members struggle to reveal the truth of the violent confrontation that causes human casualties. This paper discusses Moscow’s tough media policy during the Chechen wars, especially from 1999 to 2009 during the Second Chechen War, and argues that Kremlin’s severe media policy in the course of the height of this violent conflict negatively affected the values of democracy in Russia. Nonetheless, Russia’s new media policy had affected different media means differently depending on their missions and commitment. To produce this paper, data were collected through interviewing twenty-two Chechen nationals, including media experts, and randomly analyzing the contents of the Russian media and Chechen websites available online.

Keywords

• media
• conflict
• Chechnya
• Russia
• democracy