Before Oct 7, Russian TV struggled to talk about war in Ukraine while keeping viewers disengaged. The Israel-Hamas war gives it a chance to talk about war and liberation and to give viewers a comforting moral vantage point...while Ukraine smoulders off camera.

More to come!
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Note the drop in mentions of nationalist enemies in the previous slide?

Or the sudden rise in mentions of refugees and liberation since October, while mentions of the SMO and patriotism remain relatively unchanged?

Yeah, that's not about Ukraine.

It's about Israel-Hamas.

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Mentions of schemes against Russia and mentions of occupied territories have plummeted, though mentions of the SMO remain relatively stable.

At first glance, it appears to be a return to the geopolitical narratives that Russia peddled in advance of the war. BUT...
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War was mentioned on and off in 2022 until becoming a permanent fixture by mid-January.

Nationalists were mentioned throughout 2022-2023 until October.

If we zoom in on depictions of Russia's enemies, the shift is pretty stark: these days, it's all America, all of the time.
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So, what topics are consistently mentioned more often than the weather?

🔵 Year 1: Nationalists, Putin, Security, Special Military Operation, Ukraine, USA

🔵 Year 2: Putin, Security, Special Military Operation, Ukraine, USA, War

Did you spot the difference?
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To avoid artificially depressing the relative measures, we've dropped several narratives from our tracking:

✅Genocide & info warfare ceased to be salient just 2 wks into the war;

✅Denazification & demilitarization, official justifications for war, also faded quickly;

✅Remember threats of chemical-biological weapons and rumors of biolabs? Both ceased to be salient after about 1 mo.;

✅Humanitarian corridors & human shields faded in June 2022, shortly after the occupation of Mariupol.
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