ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the broader historical and current political context of the region within which Vesti-Buriatiia's coverage. It explores the representational strategies with which Vesti-Buriatiia deals with the republic's actual and symbolic borderland position and negotiates its cultural and religious diversity. The author attempts to make sense of the complex balancing act by analysing Vesti-Buriatiia's broadcasts through the perspective of marginality theory, which explores strategies with which groups and individuals tend to address their real or perceived, symbolic or physical status of being on the border between two or more cultures. Buddhism, which is virtually ignored by the federal channels, is identified in the dominant public discourse in the republic as the national religion of the Buriat people and receives attention from Vesti-Buriatiia. The chapter argues that furnishes a model for negotiating the relationships between unity and difference, and between centre and periphery, that is both surprising and enlightening for the appreciation of the broader issues of representation and nation-building.
