ABSTRACT
The television zritel’ (зрumе ль, viewer) today is detached and indifferent, wrote influential sociologist, Boris Dubin, in a recent essay on the role of television in sustaining a culture of disengagement and discouraging public participation in contemporary Russia (Dubin 2005). The question of how the audience for television is perceived acquires urgency when faced with this dismal view, now pervasive in Russia, of how television, with its unprecedented growth in the last two decades, has turned potential citizens into passive viewer-subjects. Although recent anti-Putin protests in 2011 and early 2012 have justifiably modified this view of the “passive Russian” citizen to acknowledge the influential role of bloggers and others who use social media platforms, television is still seen as the medium through which a centralizing state has managed to keep potential publics in check through escapist entertainment (Kiriya and Degtereva 2010: 49). How does the construction of the television audience contribute to this view, and how can it help redefine it so we have a better understanding of how new publics are forming in contemporary Russia?
