Authors

Discussion

In recent years, Kremlin has developed a set of policies to influence Russian-speaking individuals, living abroad, commonly referred to as “compatriots” or “sootechestvenniki”. One of the largest receiving countries for the Russian speakers in Europe is Germany, which has become home to more than 3 million people from the Former Soviet Union after 1989. However, extant research on Russian-speaking migrant audiences in Germany has focused chiefly on integration practices related to media choice. By contrast, this article is the first study to offer a perspective on the Russian domestic media as creating political opposition to the mainstream media of Germany. Based on 50 qualitative semi-structured interviews with Russian-speaking German citizens of the first and first and a half-generation, this article reveals how this audience chooses which information to trust and which – not, what are their perspectives on the Russian media landscape and how do they navigate conflicting political information in the Russian and the German media. Applying uses and gratifications approach, this paper offers an insight into the motivations to consume and avoid the Russian media by the Russian-speaking audiences abroad, as well as their strategies of finding the “truth” in two radically diverging media fields within the context of international conflict.