The Construction of Russia’s Anti-drinking Campaign in the Russian News Media: the Rhetoric of Overcoming Alcohol Abuse and Counter-rhetorical Strategies

Abstract

Citation: Belova Y. (2019) The Construction of Russia’s Anti-drinking Campaign in the Russian News Media: the Rhetoric of Overcoming Alcohol Abuse and Counter-rhetorical Strategies. Mir Rossii, vol. 28, no 3, pp. 155–175 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-3-155-175

Through the lens of social constructivism, this article analyzes how the Russian news media portray the state anti-drinking campaign in Russia. In the first analytical stage, I consider the rhetoric of overcoming widespread alcoholism as a narrow aspect of the alcoholization of the population. In the second analytical stage, I focus on the counter-rhetoric strategies against the anti-drinking policies. By applying quantitative (N=37,903) and qualitative (N=10,002) content analysis to news media items published between 2016–2017 (using the Medialogia platform) I construct a typology of the counter-rhetorical strategies. The typology includes the following strategies: 1) ironization, ridiculing the effort of the state in overcoming alcoholism; 2) vulgarization, simplifying and distorting the meaning of the anti-alcohol measures; 3) sovietization, creating associations between current anti-drinking policies and Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign; 4) mythologizing, cultivating fictional ideas about the efficiency of the anti-drinking measures; 5) exaggeration, operating via exaggerated facts and judgments about the policies; 6) desacralization, depreciating their meanings; and 7) pathologization, questioning the adequacy of anti-drinking measures. The news media items and counter-rhetorical strategies are analyzed using the methodology developed by Ibarra and Kitsuse. I conclude that there is a contradiction between the rhetoric of overcoming widespread alcoholism and the alienating image of the state’s highly restrictive anti-drinking policies. The counter-rhetorical strategies which dramatize those policies maintain the perception that alcoholization is an overwhelming problem.