Description
This book examines how Russian and American media narratives inform the ways individuals in both countries consume and construct collective memories of one another in an age of media distrust. Using research on collective memory, media, and the individual mind, this book applies an interdisciplinary sociocognitive framework to study seven 21st century political events involving Russia. With each event, this book analyzes how ideological bias, distortion, and schemata in both Russian and American media outlets work to reestablish a Cold War-like narrative--and by extension, reignite perceived enmities in the individual minds and collective memories of both nations. The book examines this old phenomenon at the interface of conscious media distrust among individuals who subconsciously embrace these constructs, forming memories along the ideological lines promoted by the same institutions they question.By bringing together content analyses of media texts and empirical data, Reenacting the Enemy serves as an interdisciplinary study of psychological mechanisms behind Russian and US media to uncover both old and new patterns of collective and individual memory constructs in the two societies.
Table of Contents
Introduction Part I: Theoretical backgroundChapter 1: Group memory: Construction, reconstruction, and distortionChapter 2: Collective memory, journalism, and news makingChapter 3: How the mind processes text, media news, and misinformationChapter 4: Socio-cognitive approach to the construction of memory: At the intersection of media, memory, and the mindPart 2: Collective memory construction in Russian and U.S. mediaChapter 5: Media, the mind and the reenactment of the enemy: MethodologyChapter 6: Takeover of CrimeaChapter 7: Conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the MH17 downingChapter 8: Civil war in Syria and the 2016 U.S. electionsChapter 9: The 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 poisoning of the SkripalsChapter 10: How the mind constructs a memory of recent political eventsPart 3: Reenacting the enemy in media and in the mindChapter 11: Memory, media, and the mind: Revisiting the frameworkConclusion
