Discussion

Until recently, Russian mediascape was viewed within a rigid two-tiered media (Dunn, 2014) with a limited interaction between the official tier (foremost linked to the state TV) and the alternative (digital media) tier. It produced paradoxes of communication due to the sustainability of the divide between the audiences predominantly consuming traditional and online media. For instance, RT’s editor M. Simonyan stated that the younger generation, who does not watch TV, knows Putin only from memes (2019). At the same time, contemporary media consumption is less driven by the factual news but rather by the social and entertainment needs (infotainment), as well as by the growing interest in the journalism that informs but also explains (Russian periodical press, 2015). In order to maintain its viewership in this highly competitive environment and to attract a ‘digital audience’, the state media diversified its news delivery by employing varying strategies such as tabloidization of news, sensationalism, references to online media celebrities, etc. The current presentation is concerned with the mediation of female celebrity figures within the two-tier media system. The study looks at the key personality of Ksenia Sobchak—a journalist, scandalous celebrity and a daughter of a late mayor of St Petersburg—who ran for the Russian presidency in March 2018. Her nomination was met with various reactions ranging from confusion to a glimmer of hope (Miazhevich, 2018). The paper investigates how Sobchak was portrayed prior to 2018, during and after her campaign and what it tells us about mediation of the talent female celebrities by the state TV. The case is particularly telling due to the sexualisation of politics (Sperling, 2014) and negative attitudes towards feminism in Russia. This insight will also inform our understanding of the degree of the media disconnection/or possible increasing convergence and the limits of infiltration of the online narratives within the Russian state mediascape.