Author'sPost-printPleaseviewthefinalversiononhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221169581400018Xdoi:10.1016/j.dcm.2014.05.003PleaseciteasSanina,A.G.(2014).VisualpoliticalironyinRussiannewmedia.Discourse,Context&Media,6,11–21.doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2014.05.003
Visual political irony in Russian new media
Abstract
In modern Russia, official political discourse is routinely confronted by challenges from
Internet-based means of communication. Novel forms of political dialog have become
widespread in new media, especially in terms of dialog initiated by “ordinary” people, who use
irony and visual images to express their dissatisfaction with politicians’ activities. This study
suggests the characteristics of a special aspect of a computer-mediated political discourse in
Russia. It demonstrates contextual and instrumental features of a visual political irony in new
media based on a case study of the LiveJournal Internet community “Potsreotizm”. An analysis
of the instruments that members of this Internet community use to create visual irony leads to the
conclusion that in the virtual space, myths and concepts created by the political elite are being
constantly interpreted with the help of irony and humor, and people increasingly treat these
myths and concepts critically at the level of daily social routine. Reflection, context and visual
representation, which are necessary to create ironical discourse, offer original vocabularies for
organizing public dialog within new media. Community members’ worldviews are not
preordained by the state but are shaped by cultural, social and cognitive processes in virtual
forms of communication.
Keywords: Russian political discourse, visual irony, new media, Internet community
1. Introduction
An intensive development of Internet technologies, including digital media and social
networks, has been transforming the traditional model of the mass distribution of a one-way
message using television, radio and the print press. Web 2.0 creates a modern generation of
Internet communities that include not only the creation and distribution of content but also a
social element of sharing and commenting on it. Together with different forms of electronic and
mobile communication, it has enabled a huge increase in a novel form of mass interaction - new
media. As Benkler (2006) argues, the benefit of a networked communication is that it alters a
society’s media architecture by allowing multi-directional information flows in which
individuals can become active creators and producers of politically relevant information via
online participation. The Internet audience becomes involved in the creation and distribution of
meaning, thus moving from the communications model of “one-to-many” to “many-to-many”,
which changes traditional “top-down” models of communication and creates a new
“participatory” type of political culture (Landow, 1997).
New media are described as having democratizing potential, and the use of mediated
political communication is being widely cited as transformative for state-society relations
(Blumler, Gurevitch, 2001; Papacharissi, 2002; Mummery, Rodan, 2013). Kaltenborn-Stachau
(2008) stresses that this new type of political communication can potentially help improve
people’s expectations, build trust in state institutions and authorities, form an inclusive national
identity and foster an engaged and participatory citizenship and reflexivity. However, as Aday et
al. (2010) note, policymakers and scholars know very little about whether and how new media
affect contentious politics despite the obvious potential for transforming the way people think
and act, mitigating group conflict or facilitating collective action.
As a rule, political communication is viewed in analytical research as a politician-to-
audience address. The audience has minor roles as political leaders. Therefore, the most popular
subject of research in political communication studies is the speech activity of members of
authority (e.g., Kendall, 1995; Wilson, 2003; Joseph, 2006). The study of the opposition
discourse appears to be less popular (e.g., Sorokin, 2010; Sinelnikova, 2010). Furthermore, less
attention is paid to communication activities that go in the other direction – from the audience to
politicians.
This low interest by researchers can be explained by both the short lifetimes of Internet-
related phenomena and a general tendency to regard computer-mediated communication as
trivial because it primarily occurs in mass media and culture (Baran, 2012). Meanwhile, new
forms of political communication have become widespread in Internet, especially in the area
initiated by people and not politicians. For example, the role of irony and visual images has
increased in the expression of political protest and dissatisfaction with politicians’ activities.
Bennet (2008) and Chastva (2006) describe these modern forms of political protest as
having strong potential to attract media attention, educate the public and build community
among activists. The fact that visual irony can become a strong argument in politics is evidenced
by the scandal in 2005-2006 involving the caricature of the Islamic prophet Mohammed
published in the Dutch newspaper Jyllands-Posten. After this case, visual irony became a
popular object of studies in political communication science (e.g., Müller and Özcan 2007;
Lægaard, 2007; Lewis, 2008; Lindekilde, 2009).
This study analyzes a special aspect of a computer-mediated political discourse in Russia.
It demonstrates contextual and instrumental features of a visual political irony in new media
based on a case study of the LiveJournal Internet community. Irony in Russian political
discourse has its own traditions, which were already present in Russia during the Tsar epoch and
further shaped during Soviet underground communication (e.g., caricatures, anecdotes). The
recent forms of political communication appearing in new media continue these traditions while
also possessing their own ways of creating irony that are characteristic of neither a political
anecdote nor political caricature. In the following article, we will examine how this irony is
created and demonstrate the specifics of visual political irony and the instruments used by the
modern new media to create it.
2. Irony in Russian political discourse
2.1. Traditional forms of irony: anecdote and caricature
Anecdote and caricature are the traditional forms of expression of political irony that
were already widely used in Russia before the creation of the Soviet Union; however, their
popularity did not peak until the 1920s (Shmeleva and Shmelev, 2009). They depict current
social and political issues in concentrated form, either visual or verbal, whereas irony serves as a
form of self-assertion. Mocking the oppressing reality presents the anecdote storyteller and
listener with the possibility of experiencing freedom and a feeling of revenge against authorities
(Shturman and Tiktin, 1985). Anecdotes and caricatures place a nominal enemy an awkward
situation, depict him or her in bad light, distort his or her external features, exaggerate his or her
speech mannerisms, etc. Published unofficially, they mocked the authorities and reflected the
community’s opinion about the current political situation that it was otherwise not possible to
express.
During the Stalin era, one could be sentenced to up to ten years imprisonment for a
political anecdote or an ironizing illustration (Shturman and Tiktin, 1985). In the 1960-1970s
when political irony became less dangerous, it turned into a mass genre that to some degree
replaced political discussions: all types of anecdotes (about family relations, everyday life,
different ethnic or social groups) were essentially anti-Soviet (Shmeleva and Shmelev, 2005).
Anecdotes about political leaders of past and present, such as Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev,
Stalin and Gorbachev, became well-known and widespread (Andreevich, 1951; Brandenberger,
2010; Kozintsev, 2009; Narskiy, 2013).
During Russia’s first post-Soviet decade as an independent country (1991-2000),
ironizing anecdotes and illustrations that criticized Russian politicians became especially
popular. However, as the so-called Putin era began in 2000, the amount of political caricatures
and anecdotes published in the mass media dramatically decreased. Political caricatures occur
intermittently and are therefore subject to both internal censorship and the financial limitations
of mass media (Ainutdinov, 2008). Furthermore, traditional techniques of producing caricatures
and anecdotes in printed media, which originally employed caricature painters and pamphlet
writers, have become unconventional as new information technologies and new media have
become widespread. Throughout the last century, there was a rapid shift from graphic to
photographic depictions, which have now been replaced by post-photographic depictions, which
are the digital technologies that transform a personal look at any political event into virtual
dialog (Krutkin et al., 2007)
At present, demotivational posters (illustrations consisting of a picture in a black frame
and a commenting sign underneath, formatted in a special way) and photoshoppings
(illustrations edited using bitmap or vector graphics editing programs that are usually of ironic
character and based on popular photos from the news) have become increasingly widespread,
successfully challenging traditional caricatures.
2.2. Political irony in Russian new media
During the first decade of the 21st century, the Internet began to serve as an underground
hiding place for political irony. Virtual space, lack of censorship and anonymity provided an
immense expansion of ironical illustrations and texts with well-developed satirical context
related to current political situations and authorities.
Among the most popular and widespread examples of political irony with a virtual
localization are the following:
1. Caricatures and Internet blogs by caricature painters. Caricatures that appear in new
media become an independent product of information, the main aim of which is to represent
political subjects using a comical approach. Among such blogs, a blog by caricature painter
Sergei Elkin is widely known (http://ellustrator.livejournal.com). Since the 1990s, Elkin has
worked for various print media, including Izvestiya, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, The Moscow Times,
Vedomosti, Politru, The Guardian and The Economist. The subjects of his caricatures and
illustrations are primarily politicians, businessmen and government officials. As of January
2014, Elkin’s blog has more than 15000 registered followers.
2. “Political demotivators” is a specific hybrid genre that is widespread in virtual space.
A demotivator is an illustration consisting of graphic component in a black frame and a slogan
that explains the picture. The genre of demotivators can be defined as a parody of the
inspirational posters that were common in schools and offices at the end of the 1990s, first in the
USA and then worldwide, with the intention of promoting higher performance. Demotivators
have a precise composition and consist of three main elements: an image, a black frame and a
slogan, which itself represents an unexpected interpretation of the main illustration (painting).
The slogan often violates logic and has a meaning that is emotionally contradictory to the main
image itself. This often results in humorous, ironical and burlesque meanings. This sort of
contradiction (thesis versus antithesis) is central to the very nature of demotivators, which
replace the motivation that exists in real motivational posters with irony (this is why they have
also been called “fake motivational posters”; Baran 2012)
The creation of a demotivator is a very simple process that can be performed by almost
any Internet user. Although such posters can be found almost everywhere on the Internet,
including new media, most of them can be found in the form of systematized collections on
special sites dedicated to humor1.
3. The “Persident of Ruissa” Twitter account (anagram of President of Russia;
https://twitter.com/KermlinRussia) is a microblog that was registered in the summer of 2010. As
of November 2013, it had 638 700 followers. As the name of this blog suggests, the user’s tweets
regularly pick at government initiatives and daily news stories pertaining to the president. It was
created in 2010 as a satirical copy of the microblog of Dmitry Medvedev, then-President of
Russia. A real presidential microblog is an example of well carried-out communication (Leech,
1983). The ironical context of the @KermlinRussia Twitter posts is created by imitating
Medvedev’s posts. For example,
@Kremlin: Jetim letom my perezhili neprostoe ispytanie. Pozhary v nashih regionah vyjavili neobhodimost' peresmotra lesnogo zakonodatel'stva.
@Kermlin: Jetim letom my perezhili neprostoe ispytanie. Pozhary v regionah vyjavili neobhodimost' smeny vlasti, no my prosto peresmotrim zakonodatel'stvo2.
@Kremlin: Dorogi, postroennye dlja Olimpiady v Sochi , budut samymi dorogimi
dorogami postroennymi v mire. @Kermlin: Chtoby sjekonomit' 327 milliardov rublej, my reshili perenesti Olimpijskie
Igry v Vankuver, gde uzhe vse postroeno3. This strategy is reminiscent of the call by Roland Barthes (1957) to fight the official
mythology by double-mythologizing it, creating an artificial myth using an existing one. The
popularity of @KermlinRussia rests upon the fact that its tweets correspond very closely with
society’s viewpoint on social and political issues. When an official tweet by the President
defines an issue as being of high importance, its alter ego uncovers an even more problematic
issue on this topic in a joking manner. Moreover, according to the viewpoint of the creators of
@KermlinRussia, the majority of the readers of both blogs are confident that @KermlinRussia
expresses the “actual” thoughts of the President, whereas the posts in the official blog are only
an attempt to imitate the activity of the head of the state (Tyutyundzhi, 2011).
4. The “Potsreotizm” (http://potsreotizm.livejournal.com) Internet community, a virtual
community of people whose aim is to disrupt the existing notions of the beliefs and rules of
conduct regarding state and institutional relationships. This Internet journal was founded on June
22, 2006, and as of January 2014, it has more than 4 500 members registered on its LiveJournal
blog.
The majority of “Potsreotizm” content consists of pictures (photographs or collages) as
well as video clips and texts. The topics of interest to the members of this Internet community
are rather different and typically comprise well-known public personalities, common citizens and
symbolic and institutional elements. The most represented public figures in this web community
are the President and the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The
context of the representations is often ironical: Medvedev is often depicted in truant poses, such
as looking through a microscope on a visit to a research institute, looking through the gun sight
of a grenade launcher and painting a children’s toy in a recreation center for kids. Putin can be
witnessed at a young player’s hockey session, in a gym and singing a song by a fire with the
construction workers for the Sochi Olympics.
Another category of photographs comprises public behavior that shows off national
feelings or religiousness or that uses state symbols (including depictions of the country’s leaders)
in inappropriate, according to community members, forms and situations. The most popular
illustrations are representations of the “I am Russian!” sign on T-shirts, notebooks, doors, cars,
etc. Examples include depictions of the Soviet leader on matryoshka dolls, the “Patriot”
alcoholic cocktail, the “Patriot” casket, ice cream and cakes in the colors of the Russian flag,
“Made in Russia” printed on shoes, Putin’s portrait in a children’s judo studio, etc.
The comments on such posts often have not only a spoken but also a visual form. In this
Internet community, the users often interact using illustrations, and illustrations generally
contribute most of the substantial and informative character of the message itself, whereas the
words and phrases often have more of an approving, exclamation character (“Cool!”, “Great!”,
“Ok”, etc.). This unique feature of the “Potsreotizm” LiveJournal community has predefined it as
a choice for our analysis.
The evidence of the popularity of visual images and its effectiveness at bringing people
together is obvious in the online world of social media. Such Internet sites as Pinterest, Flickr,
and Instagram illustrate how people are brought together by the means of visual self-expression.
However, political pictorial interaction in its pure form suitable for research is difficult to find.
“Potsreotizm” clearly represents such a case. By analyzing it, we will demonstrate the
particularities of the visual political irony in modern Russian new media.
3. Framework
Although there is no scientific literature specifically addressing visual political irony in
Russian new media to date, this phenomenon can be contextualized through the theories of irony
and theories of pictorial interaction. Viewed as a fusion of these elements, visual political irony
can be understood as a complex of actions and conditions, such as (1) reflection on the current
political processes and problems, (2) the objectification of this reflection in illustration and (3)
the publication of these illustrations on an Internet journal in a way that transforms an ordinary
photograph into a object of irony.
3.1. Reflection and context as subjects for ironical intention
Irony acts simultaneously as an instrument for thinking and a discursive political practice,
a deliberate use of language to not only transfer meaning but also reproduce specific social
relations (Bloor and Bloor, 2007). In communication sciences, the theoretical aspects of irony
are generally studied using two scientific traditions: verbal and situational. Both are important
for our study.
Theories of verbal irony (Sperber and Wilson 1981; Haverkate, 1990; Hutcheon, 1995)
have proven that irony can contribute to the creation of political meaning at both cognitive and
emotional levels and may do so in a unique way, distinct from other communicative conventions.
In political communication, irony creates tension, as it implicitly allows the expression of one’s
viewpoint about an existing order and social values and the demonstration of a negative attitude
to the opponent. The effects of irony often depend on a subversive relationship between the
initial and alternative frames, which adds to both cognitive and social meaning (Hutcheon 1995).
Sperber & Wilson (1981) view irony as a result of metalinguistic activity: the speaker
refers to something that was said by someone previously (which is where the echo metaphor
comes from) and at the same time expresses his or her personal attitude towards what is said.
Irony is a way of distancing oneself from the cited viewpoint to laugh at it and prove its
inconsistency. Irony emerges as an echo by directing the reader to what was previously said but
in a new context. The speaker is separated from the aforementioned statement and emphasizes
his or her negative attitude towards it. That is, ironic discourse initially suggests diverse
meanings, interpretations and explanations. The meaning of ironic discourse cannot be separated
from the context of its use, which in turn means that it cannot be separated from the vocabulary
of its target.
Theories of situational irony (Littman and Mey, 1991; Lucariello, 1994; Shelley 2001)
take a different approach to ironical discourse. They are based on the assumption that situational
irony “is simply a part of the way in which humans evaluate and deal with situations, particularly
those that do not fit with their normal expectations” (Shelley, 2001: 814), and the situation is
considered ironic when it is conceived as having a bi-coherent conceptual structure and adequate
cognitive salience and when it evokes an appropriate configuration of emotions (Shelley, 2001).
That is, a sense of irony informs us of when our concepts and the world to which they apply are
saliently out of sync. The elements of situational irony are the concepts activated by a situation,
and the positive and negative constraints are relationships of coherence and incoherence
(Shelley, 2001).
Situational irony in political discourse differs from verbal irony in an important way:
situational irony is observed, whereas verbal irony is created. While the major players in verbal
irony are the ironist (the person who intends to set up an ironic relation between the said and
unsaid) and the interpreter (the person who decides whether the utterance is ironic or not)
(Hutcheon 1995), most types of situational irony merely contain an observer.
The basic mechanism of situational irony is association (Thagard, 2000), which can be
positive or negative. Two concepts are positively associated if there are objects to which both
apply (for example, the concepts of the President and nobility are positively associated because
political government is a noble service). Two concepts are negatively associated if objects that
fall under one concept do not fall under the other (for example, the concepts of politician and
inertia are negatively associated because the politician’s life supposed to be busy and
productive). When people apply their beliefs or past experience in a process of judgment in any
given situation, the correlation between positively and negatively associated concepts creates
irony.
Although verbal and situational theories of irony are quite different, each includes
reflection as a main component (the existence of previous experience) and a context, both verbal
and social. These processes make the construction of irony possible.
3.2 Pictorial interaction
The analysis of an illustration is executed via context meaning, where it is inserted within
the interaction framework, using a discourse and context (Kozin, 2009; Philipsen, 1992: 8) as the
instruments of understanding a meaning intended. This approach allows the explanation of the
creation of meanings that originate from the formation and perception of an illustration. This
incorporates pictorial and ironical patterns of communication, which, in the case of our research,
is important for understanding the instruments of irony creation in the Internet community.
Three key features determine pictorial interaction in the “Potsreotizm” LiveJournal
community. The first feature is the reflexive experience of the community members, which
allows them to perceive a given political situation as ironical. This reflection is primarily
identified by a distrust of politicians and positive changes in society as a result of authorities’
actions as well as a firm conviction in the stereotype that all authority members are corrupt and
disinterested in solving problems that are vital to ordinary citizens. The case of visual irony is
even more specific because we deal with not only a picture but also the individual and group
consciousness that shapes it. At the same time, the community members who discuss an
illustration understand the situational inconsistency as well as what the author of the post
intended to portray when he published the picture.
The second factor is the realization of an ironical situation in various art genres, mainly
photography and rarely in text form or video. The posts in “Potsreotizm” LiveJournal
community that carry a responsive character represent not only an object itself (a photograph,
text or video) but also a reaction (evaluating or critical) to the initial discourse and its subjects
(various actions of politicians). It can be assumed that those who operate within the marginal
layer in their political discourse practices activate more complex cognitive structures in
processing political information. As Gregorowicz (2009) notes, the audience of political irony is
more sophisticated and knowledgeable and has much denser connections between political
objects and more interconnected political schema than those who are exposed to more linear
political information.
The third factor is a context that makes a given visual or verbal object more
understandable in its irony to the other members of the Internet group. The group itself, starting
from its title and demonstrative “potsreotic” photographs on its profile page
(http://potsreotizm.livejournal.com/profile), represents a context that assists its members in
seeing and comprehending an irony. Nevertheless, a context in itself also suggests knowledge of
the current political situation and knowledge of the “behind the scenes” interpretation of the
current political situation by Internet sources. An ordinary reader who is not aware of the latter
two aspects will have difficulty understanding why Dmitry Medvedev is depicted as a
bumblebee and Vladimir Putin as a crab4.
The components described here not only define the specifics of the irony structure in the
“Potsreotizm” LiveJournal community but also allow the characterization of its members who
post to the community. The combination of an ironical reflection and the possibility of
witnessing a visual expression of this reflection does not allow them to be defined as either
ironists, as in the theories of verbal irony, or as observers, which is a common definition for
situational irony theories. At the same time, it is difficult to define them as creators, as their posts
are not examples of unique work but rather a reproduction of photos that were previously
published elsewhere. They can be defined as ironical observers if ironical and reflective
components of their actions when they post something are considered.
3.3. Data and methods
Given the characteristics above, we can assume that the “Potsreotizm” community is
ironic, political and primarily visual. To understand which instruments the members of this
Internet community use to create irony, we limited our study to one popular type of post:
pictures. Pictures created with Photoshop or other graphic editing programs have not been taken
into account. Videos and text were also excluded because the primary goal of this research was
to look at the media that provides ironical political snapshots, and we decided that it would be
better to start with photos or other still visual media.
The research material for this study includes material that was published over the six
years in the Internet journal (from June 2006 until October 2012) and was conducted in several
stages. The first stage included examining all of the illustrations published in the journal.
Excluding repeated images (some were published two or more times), 2989 pictures were found.
In the second stage, pictures that were not recognized as “potsreotic” by the community
members (as indicated by such comments as “I don’t see this illustration as potsreotic”) and/or
computer-edited manipulations were excluded. Based on the listed criteria, 1574 illustrations
were included in the analysis.
In the third stage, all of the pictures were checked for reliability in discussions among six
members of the research group. The questions that formed the central point of the discussion
were based on the scenario analysis guidelines (Suchar, 1997) and formulated in the following
way:
(1) How does the ironic evaluation of the objects and situations reflect an individual’s
emotions and social identity?
(2) Who is the object of the community’s attention?
(3) What are the main reasons for the attention comprising the substance of
“Potsreotizm”?
(4) What are the typical depictions of objects and situations that are recognized by
community members as negatively patriotic (“potsreotic”), and how do these depictions
characterize the specifics of political discourse in Russia?
The aim of this stage was to obtain a reasonably uniform understanding of the meanings
that the members of the community attributed to the illustrations and to formulate a general
meaning of the term “potsreotizm”.
In the final stage, we used qualitative content analysis to determine which instruments are
used in this community to create political irony. The data were grouped into instrumental
categories: verbal, situational and pictorial. Using the MAXQDA software program (VERBI
GmbH, Berlin, Germany), for each of picture, an open coding procedure was conducted, as
described below. In cases in which the same picture could have more than one code, it was
assigned to the code that was the basis for the formation of irony. Several examples for each
subcategory are examined here to explore the various instruments used for the creation of
political irony.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. The meaning of “potsreotizm”
In scientific literature, it is common to distinguish between two opposite types of
patriotism: one concerning unlimited, non-reflective and mainly subconscious love for one’s
Motherland and the other assuming that there can exist a reflective and constructive attitude
toward the state, nation, national symbols and institutes (Schatz at al, 1999; Parker, 2010).
Schatz et al. (1999) refer to these two types as “blind” and “constructive” patriotism.
“Potsreotizm” is blind patriotism reductio ad absurdum.
Open demonstration or showing off is an instrument of critics used to note incorrect
actions and behavior in the society. The community members ironically represent people and
symbolic objects, situations and actions that, according to the members, destroy the moral and
political principles of the citizens and both the rational and sensual expressions of love for the
Motherland, the desire to identify oneself with that country and the aspiration to defend its
interests. The aim of the members of the community is to reflect upon this extreme blindness, to
identify it, place it in a specific context and thereby promote the development of constructive
patriotism.
4.2. Instruments for creating a political irony
The instruments used to create political irony effect in “Potsreotizm” can be divided into
three main groups: verbal, situational and pictorial. These groups are represented schematically
in Fig. 1, and a detailed overview is provided in paragraphs 4.2.1-4.2.3. In each post, a
combination of these instruments is represented; therefore, the following classification is of an
analytical character and aims to demonstrate a set of means that specify the instrumental level of
the visual political irony in the Russian Internet language.
4.2.1. Verbal instruments
Pictorial interaction does not fully exclude verbal means of irony. On the contrary, words
often allow ironic intention to be understood and facilitate the creation of the shared context for
the ironical observer. Verbal instruments include creolized text, illustration titles, illustration
captions and verbal comments.
1) Creolized text5. Most of the posts in the “Potsreotizm” LiveJournal community have
varied specifics. One message can contain an illustration as well as a title.
The conflict necessary for the irony — the break with the context — is in this case based
on wordplay and its visual surroundings. The meaning and illustration comprise two possible but
conflicting types of reality formed by the reflexive consciousness of the ironical observer. Thus,
we can see a Cafe 1144 sign saying, “The President of Russia ate lunch here” next to a garbage
bin. On the other picture, we watch the sign on the fence says, “Spirituality is the greatest force
behind the economic development”.
2) Titles. This instrument of creating irony has something in common with demotivators,
with the only difference being that the illustration is not framed in a black frame, which is
traditional for demotivators. The title “Camments have arrived” (with a deliberate spelling
mistake) on an illustration depicting Dmitry Medvedev looking at a LiveJournal page with a
content smile, ironizes the then-President of Russia’s love for social networks. The information
motive for the post, which can be evidenced from its title and a link, is that Medvedev became
the best blogger in Russia according to the results of the contest “Runet Blog 2011”. The ironical
effect is reached by the accent on what is known (context) and what is seen (picture) with words,
as if expressing the thoughts of Medvedev.
3) Captions. A caption to the picture is located either in the title of the Internet post itself
or under the illustration and is aimed at transforming the context from its “normal” state (that in
which the photograph was initially used) to the ironical state. Classical instruments of verbal
irony are used for this purpose: wordplay, paraphrasing, quoting well-known texts or phrases and
rhetorical questions. For example, the rhetorical question “Voting bin or postbox?” is used as a
title for a photograph depicting a garbage bin bearing the inscription “To Putin”. Irony appears
via two intertextual (or intervisual) addresses: the distance between the authorities and the
people (it is so obvious that requests and complaints are not being addressed and resolved that
they might as well be submitted using a garbage bin) and the poor functioning of Russia’s postal
system, whose sluggishness and poor service have become proverbial in the Russian Internet.
Often, to create irony, an Internet lexicon is used to limit the audience to initiated
persons, namely, those who are aware of the “behind the scenes” interpretation of the political
situation. For example, the use of Internet lexicon can be observed in the title of the post “Under
crab6 hypnosis”, which depicts evidently bored politicians (deputies), who are portrayed as
yawning, with their eyes closed or staring off into space during the President's address.
4) Verbal comments. Verbal comments on the posts are not an instrument of creating an
irony but rather developing the context created by the ironical observer. This is obviously
defined by the Web 2.0. environment. As already mentioned in paragraph 2.2, most of the
comments in the Internet community are interjections. It is worth noting that profanities are often
used in such posts. As a rule, comments are used to demonstrate contempt for the depicted
subject or story, which in itself is a special communication strategy. This strategy is often used
when the subject or object of irony has higher social status and power. The commentator reveals
something that inevitably lowers the status of the subject, thereby raising his own status
(Kashkin, 2008). An example of this communication strategy is the photo of the sign “D.A.
Medvedev's playground for children”, which is located on a tree near a children's playground.
The comment remarks: “It would be worthwhile to create similar grounds for walking dogs”.
Another way of creating irony is an anecdote as a reply to an illustration. For example, in
Internet posts that depict Putin and Medvedev, a popular Russian anecdote is often used: “It’s
2023, the first day of the New Year. Putin and Medvedev wake up with hangovers. Putin asks
Medvedev: ‘Do you have any idea who is President and who is Prime Minister today?”
Examples of illustrations that use verbal irony to create political irony are depicted in Fig.
2.
4.2.2. Situational instruments
Situational theory describes basic coherent and incoherent relations that can be used as
instruments of irony (Shelley 2001 pp. 780-783). Coherent associations can exist between two
concepts that both participate in some attribute (similarity) between a person or an institution and
a code of conduct adopted by them (policy), between a concept and the characteristics that it
possesses (constitution) or between two concepts due to the conceptual structure in which they
exist (type). Incoherent associations can exist between two concepts when the first concept
stands in relation to the second concept but the second stands in opposite relation to the first
(asymmetry), between concepts that are opposite in meaning (antonymy) or between two
concepts where each concept has the magnitude usually associated with the other
(disproportion). In the following, we explore how these instruments are used in the
“Potsreotizm” community.
1) Similarity. This instrument is mainly used in the Internet community to depict the
couple Vladimir Putin-Dmitry Medvedev. Moreover, photographs depicting the Russian
President and Prime Minister (the so-called “tandem”) were most popular when Medvedev was
President (2008-2012). The more mundane, everyday content the illustration contains, the more
irony and mockery it provokes.
Putin and Medvedev constantly spend a large amount of time together and share similar
ways of holding themselves, manners, clothing and gestures. These qualities are often remarked
upon by the Internet community members to show Medvedev's weakness as President and his
dependency upon Putin. This is also confirmed by the fact that when Putin won the 2012
elections, pictures illustrating this “tandem” began to decrease and gradually disappeared.
2) Policy. This instrument concerns an element that falls under one concept due to a
policy and another concept due to its actions (Shelley, 2001). In the “Potsreotizm” community, it
is mainly used to ironically portray social and political institutes that do not perform their
functions properly and politicians who do not fulfill their promises (or, on the contrary, who
show off their ordinary achievements as remarkable). Examples include an illustration depicting
a shabby, wrecked apartment block still inhabited by people and with a façade displaying a huge
poster saying, “United Russia. Let’s carry on with the course of Putin. Go Russia!”; a photo of a
golden sign on an uncompleted children’s swimming pool saying, “To the children from the
deputies of the United Russia”; and a picture of a paper calendar on a table in police
headquarters with the title, “Do not reproach those who protect.”
3) Irony of constitution is mainly used to represent physical characteristics of political
subjects that are perceived as a result of deviation from their professional conduct. In this case,
we can see a number of intertextual (intervisual) references to the notion of authorities and
politicians as dishonest, sordid and corrupt and who do not perform their professional duties
properly. This notion is widespread among the Russian people. In the community, photos of very
obese officials, policemen and military officers are often published. Representations that focus
on Medvedev's shorter than average height are also common in this community; Medvedev's PR
managers often try to make him look taller in front of the camera by choosing shorter people to
stand near him, manipulating the foreground and background, using special platforms on
tribunes and photoshopping images.
4) Type. This irony effect is constructed by confronting different aspects of roles and
statuses due to the conceptual structure in which they exist.
First, it is a confrontation between the public and private spheres in which Russian
politicians participate. In most of the illustrations published in the community, government
officials perform non-government activities: they promenade, dance, ride their yachts, etc. We
can witness the deputies of the State Duma engaged in a discussion, most likely not concerning
the current legislation, or Putin and Medvedev at a ski resort or singing a song by the fire with
the Olympic games construction workers.
Every unofficial interaction of bureaucrats or politicians with common people is mainly
perceived as condescension or “not their business,” and this fact provokes irony. An analysis of
this type of irony establishes that the community members believe that state public figures
should not perform tasks outside their duties because (1) their public role means that they are
subject to greater attention, (2) their “state” status by default means that they have a great
number of administrative tasks and should therefore be completely occupied and (3) the
“showing off” demonstrated by state figures diminishes the real effectiveness of the state
administration.
Moreover, community members use this irony in depicting the active participation of the
Patriarch of Russia and ordinary priests in secular life. The major interest in the ironic depiction
of this group stems from the intensification of “official Orthodox discourse” and church
participation in the political matters of the country. Officially, Russia is a secular state, and
according to its Constitution no religion can be established as the main or compulsory religion.
However, a different situation is evident in the country, where Church servants have begun to
occupy privileged positions. The state pays too much attention to the church, which does not
conform to its secular status, and the church in turn interferes too actively and aggressively in
issues that do not concern it. The tendency of religion to become politically oriented and that of
official institutes to become more clerically oriented are common topics in the “Potsreotizm”
Internet community. The photos depict the christening of military and police officials, the
sanctification of military objects by priests, church services where politicians are present and
political gatherings where the Patriarch is present. Additionally, photos depicting leisure life of
the priests (such as banquets and celebrations), contradicting the ascetic principles of the clergy,
are popular.
5) Irony of asymmetry is connected to uncovering an overly showy display of patriotic
and religious feelings. “Kvass” patriotism, as mentioned in paragraph 4.1, is the main topic in
the community. Among the illustrations that use this type of irony are a man wearing Russian
flag underwear, young women wearing bikinis and tops with portraits of Putin and Medvedev, a
homeless man kissing a portrait of Putin and a young man with portraits of Stalin hanging all
over his body. Patriotic items made by people are also featured, including carpets with portraits
of Medvedev and Putin, a cake entitled, “Russia”, a chicken decorated with a Georgian bow (a
symbol of victory in the Great Patriotic War) and even a truly patriotic water closet featuring
portraits of Putin and Medvedev and a Russian flag.
The validity of the religious feelings of the Russian people is also questioned and
becomes a source of irony for “Potsreotizm” community members. On one hand, the rapid
growth in the number of religious believers after living in an atheistic country for seventeen
years can be understood in the context of a search for identity. On the other hand, this swift
move to “religiosity” raises the question of the depth of religious feelings and emotions, which
are primarily considered to be of a private and intimate nature. Therefore, each public
demonstration and mass proclaiming of religiosity also becomes an object of irony for
community members.
Uncovering asymmetrical protruding features in daily and rather private demonstrations
of patriotism and religiosity demonstrates that these feelings are associated with personal
worldview and self-searching by community members. Thus, demonstrating unity is nothing
more than showing off, which leads to pseudo-religiousness and pseudo-patriotism.
6) Antonymy. This instrument is based on comparing aspects of Russian and international
(mainly Western) lives. Thus, one can see two examples of how Presidents interact with
children: Barak Obama freely interacts with the children, whereas Putin is surrounded by his
security guards and when a boy stretches his hand out to him, a security guard pushes him away.
Another example is how top government officials go to work: the Mayor of London goes to
work by bicycle and the Mayor of New York uses the subway, whereas the Mayor of Moscow
uses a car cortege with flashing lights, and traffic is stopped so that he can drive by faster.
7) Irony of disproportion concerns an element that has a magnitude usually associated
with another element (Shelley, 2001). In the case of the “Potsreotizm” LiveJournal community,
the following type of irony is used to characterize people’s attitudes toward their authorities,
especially the worshipping of its leaders that has often been depicted in Russian literature. Irony
appears in the form of intertextual references to behavior models that were common in Soviet
and pre-Soviet society, where it was impossible to criticize authorities. The photographs in this
community feature houses and apartments of poor people that nevertheless include a carpet with
the President's portrait on the wall; an old pensioner in poor surroundings and a student in a
community residential block who are watching Medvedev's TV address to the public; and a war
veteran who kisses the hand of then-Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov. This type of irony is
perhaps the most bitter, as it reflects the specific, almost archetypal relationship between the
Russian people and authorities, which is unlikely to be cured, even when applying the sharpest
irony possible.
Examples of illustrations using situational instruments to create a political irony are
demonstrated in Fig. 3.
4.2.3. Pictorial instruments
The uniqueness of this Internet community is defined by the fact that it is not only
ironical but also primarily pictorial. Even more engaging and unique is the fact that the
comments on the topics are often also illustrations themselves. The main pictorial instruments
used in the community are the search for a prototype, historical analogs and pictorial dialogues.
1) Prototype. This instrument suggests a witty publication of an illustration in the
comments section that could become a prototype for the photograph published in the first post.
An ironical effect is defined by the visual similarity and core difference between the pictures. An
example is a post depicting Nicholay Valuev, a former professional boxer, who is presently a
deputy of the State Duma. The irony of the person who initially posted the image is based upon
the contradiction that an athlete’s job involves physical activity, whereas a deputy’s professional
work involves intellectual activities. This illustration is intensified by a strong image of Valuev
itself. The commentator on this post catches the irony and posts an image of Rodin’s sculpture
“The Thinker”. The irony in the contrast between the content and the form acquires a shared
sense.
2) Analogies that are expressed in photographs and illustrations are an even deeper
instrument that points at the succession of a feature of the political leaders of Russia. For
example, in one of the comments to a photograph that depicts Dmitry Medvedev and Nicola
Sarkozy with his wife, an infamous photograph of Nina Khruscheva and Jacqueline Kennedy
(1959) is posted. The essence of the irony here is the emphasis on the opinion that was widely
performed in the comments to the posts contained such pictures. The community members
believe that wives of Russian presidents are incapable of dressing appropriately and stylishly
when compared to their Western counterparts. Another vivid illustration compares a photo of
Dmitry Medvedev with an iPhone to the photo of Nikita Khruschev with a corn cone.
3) Pictorial dialogue. This instrument suggests a number of images within the main
topic, where the main hero is not changed. A post called “Do you want me to teach you to fly?”
can serve as an example. An initial photograph depicts Vladimir Putin holding a chick while
staring intently into its eyes with people smiling in the background. In the comments on this
picture, various people posted photos depicting Putin with different animals and people and
offering to teach each of them something: a fish to swim, a girl to read, a tiger to bite, a dog to
bark, a cow and a goat to give milk and an octopus to stick to things.
This post is reminiscent of the photographs that were distributed from the onset of 2008
on the President’s official site in a section called “Without a tie”. In the photos published on the
site, Putin is depicted as a heroic, muscly horse-rider, sportsman, hunter and fisher, among many
other roles. The photos portray Putin riding a horse bare-breasted, shooting an Amur tiger with a
tranquilizer with a rifle, inspecting the body of sedated tiger, swimming across a river in Siberia
and in a jet next to a flock of rare birds (Grus leuGogeranus). A pictorial dialog is carried out
using a principle of a mute irony: the community members have a common reflective
understanding of the situation, and the meaning of the illustrations does not need to be clarified.
Examples of illustrations using pictorial instruments to create a political irony are
featured in Fig. 4.
Concluding remarks
Visual irony is one of the important indicators of how a country’s current situation is
perceived by its people. It is especially significant when political changes are taking place, e.g.,
during election campaigns and reforms. Reflection, context and visual representation, which are
necessary to create ironical discourse, offer original vocabularies for organizing public dialog
within new media and between Internet communities. Creating social relations in this case
occurs implicitly: with the help of visual irony, the participants in political discourse mark their
social status and designate their own positions. These features make the new forms of irony
discourse that appear in new media more similar to traditional types of irony, namely, anecdote
and caricature. The posts in the Internet community “Potsreotizm” are also in a sense a mockery
of the oppressing reality, a so-called touché addressed to the authorities. The worldview of the
community members is not preordained by the state but is shaped by cultural, social and
cognitive processes in virtual forms of communication.
However, in reality, ironical actions are of a passive nature. One can agree with Faris’s
(2008) conclusion that new media make citizens more passive by encouraging them to confuse
online rhetoric with substantial political action, diverting their attention away from productive
activities. Thus, the community that was examined, as well as other form of ironical discourse
into new media, are considered examples of the phenomenon of “slacktivism”, or “feel-good
online activism” (Morozov 2011). “Revolutionaries on the sofas” are a new occurrence of the
XXI century, and “it doesn’t really matter if the cause they are fighting for is real or not; as long
as it is easy to find, join, and interpret, that’s enough” (Morozov, 2011: 187).
At the same time, the variety of instruments (verbal, situational and pictorial) used by
community members to create irony reveals a wide spectrum of problems uncovered by ironical
observers, which are understood and accepted by the readers. In the virtual space, myths and
concepts created by the political elite are being constantly interpreted with the help of visual
irony, and people increasingly treat these myths and concepts critically at the level of social daily
routine. As a result, these visual ironical messages present good sources for understanding the
mechanisms of contemporary political communication. Moreover, the role of reflexivity and
context is important for the identification of social and political identity as well as social moods
and public opinion. It is simpler to analyze visual irony that has taken on a life of its own in
Internet communities using its associations in this context. Thus, discussing the democratic
potential of new media and the new forms of Internet interaction in promoting trust in state
institutions and authorities is only possible when both policymakers and scholars consider the
various ways of expressing public opinion, including irony.
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Footnotes 1 Websites featuring Russian political irony include
http://demotivators.to/p/tag/политика, http://vk.com/info_kriminala_net and http://vk.com/polit_dem.
2@Kremlin: This summer we experienced a difficult series of events. The fires in the
region demonstrated the necessity of modifying the legislation regarding forests. @Kermlin: This summer we experienced a difficult series of events. The fires in the
region demonstrated the necessity of replacing authorities; however, we will only modify the legislation.
3@Kremlin: The roads being built for the Olympic events in Sochi will be the most expensive roads ever built in the world.
@Kermlin: To save 327 billion roubles, we've decided to move the Olympic Games to Vancouver, where everything is already ready.
4 The meme “Putin is a crab” became widely known in the Russian Internet community after a spelling mistake was made in a 2008 article quoting Putin: “I am not embarrassed in front of my fellow citizens who voted for me twice…. During these eight years I worked hard as a slave [in Russian: ka crab (the correct spelling is “kak rab”)] from the morning light till night…” In Russian language, the word “rab” means “a slave”, whereas a “crab” is a marine species. In turn, Dmitry Medvedev was labelled a bumblebee in March 2008 when Delovoy Peterburg newspaper published an article that quoted Medevedev’s university mates, who reported having never noticed any leadership qualities about him but remembering well how he dressed as a gypsy at a friend’s wedding and passionately sang the Russian song “Furry Bumblebee”.
5 At present, no unified term exists for text that incorporates natural language with the
elements of other semiotic systems. In Russian political linguistics, the term “creolised text”, introduced by Sorokin and Tarasov (1990), is used. Creolised text is text whose content consists of two inhomogeneous parts: verbal (language, spoken) and non-verbal (belonging to systems other than natural language). This term is synonymous with the term “multimodal text”, which is widely used in Western linguistics as one of the central notions of social-semiotic theory of representation (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996).
6See the footnote number 4.
