Cold War discourse in the post-Cold War media world: Articulations of global politics in Russian and US mainstream and alternative media

This project examines the role that the Cold War discourse plays in informing and structuring the Russian and US mainstream and alternative news media narratives about international events and controversies that occur in the post-Cold War time but trace their historical roots to the Cold War geopolitical struggles and expose disagreements between Russia and the United States in the 21st century. This project also seeks to identify what other discourses of global politics and international affairs are interwoven in media narratives examined in this study and how their interactions with elements of the Cold War discourse work to create meanings for these media's audiences in the post-Cold War. Theoretically, the study brings together discourse analysis theory, Stuart Hall's theory of articulation and a set of concepts defining the debate on the forces of nationalism and globalization that shape the post-Cold War environment. The project is based on the combination of qualitative textual analysis and critical discourse analysis, and examines three case studies: the war in South Ossetia in 2008, the debate in the United Nations Security Council over the peace resolution in Syria in 2012, and the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013. The findings reveal that certain elements of the Cold War discourse continue structuring the narratives that different Russian and US media produce as they make sense of various events that occur in the post-Cold War time, raising critical questions about the persistence of powerful discourses, and about the ability of media both in Russia and in the United States to re-articulate discourses of global politics in the post-Cold War world.