Communicating conflict: Russian mediated diplomacy in relation to the annexation of Crimea

Abstract

In this thesis I develop a theoretical argument suggesting that devoting attention to mediated public diplomacy and the strategic narratives they disseminate in studies of non-kinetic elements of contemporary armed conflict, will account for aspects of the working mechanisms of such conflict. Probing this argument in the case of the Russian 2014 annexation of Crimea, I find that this is the case. As this thesis is structured as a hypothesis generating case study, I formulate my findings in four hypotheses on the exact working mechanisms of mediated public diplomacy in the context of armed conflict. Empirically, I identify four narratives related to the annexation, as well as instances of enemy images and symbolic annihilation as part of the portrayal of the narratives actors. Having demonstrated that this approach has merit, I suggest that further research should take a communication model as its point of departure analysing not only the message, but also the reception and effects of various genres of dissemination.