[Air-l] Call for research network: Stories of a bronze soldier

[Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt]

Although not solely internet research, I will still send it to here as 
well hoping to attract interest

Feel free to distribute!
Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, PhD
University of Tartu
Estonia
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*Stories of a Bronze Soldier: An internationally comparative analysis of 
the media coverage of the Estonian-Russian conflict over the relocation 
of a WWII memorial.
*

Before April 26, 2007, nobody expected that the relocation of one bronze 
soldier in Tallinn, Estonia, would escalate into a major crisis. 
Russians within and outside Estonia took the relocation of the monument 
commemorating the victorious Red army soldiers of WWII as the stone of 
contention. Peaceful protests grew and turned violent, leading to 
looting and fighting, with one dead and many injured. The protest was 
picked up by the Russian government, bringing the crisis to an 
international level. Hostilities unloaded into physical threats against 
Estonian officials, and denial of service attacks of a magnitude that 
surprised even NATO. The sudden escalation of the seemingly local 
conflict received coverage in most of Europe. By the time of the victory 
day celebrations in Russia, eyes of most of European media were turned 
on Estonia, expecting „interesting“ coverage, and supplying a broad 
range of interpretations of the events in Tallinn.

We are hoping to quickly set up an research team to conduct a 
comparative analysis of the international media coverage on the crisis 
around the bronze soldier. Combining quantitative and qualitative 
methods of analysis, we hope to use this focal event to illuminate the 
variety of stories told about the events.

*Project plan:*
- data collection – 2-3 major daily/weekly newspapers from each 
participating country and 2-3 online news sites/blogs – probably from 
period 26/4-26/5 (depending on the further developments of the conflict)
- qualitative reading of the media coverage
- develop analysis categories in co-operation
- develop analytical framework for international comparison
- do systematic content analysis
- juxtapose the cases and stories told

Possible theoretical frameworks: media war, agenda setting, framing, 
crisis news, European public sphere etc

The aim is to get bigger research project going, so that different 
analyses could be published as one or more international comparative 
publications.

Interested researchers are invited to send their contact and statement 
of interest to bronze.soldier.research at gmail.com

Dr. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (University of Tartu)
Christian Baden (University of Amsterdam)
Pille Runnel (University of Tartu)