Gender and Sexual Diversity Research Group Reporting Russia: Putin's war on the LGBTQIA+ community Research and knowledge exchange

On 8 February, Assoc Professor Wendy Sloane and Senior Lecturer Dr Sasha Raspopina, both part of London Met’s Journalism BA team, presented two talks about reporting on LGBTQIA+ issues in Russia, following President Vladimir Putin’s heightened war against the community. The Rainbow Room and the Gender and Sexual Diversity Research Group (GSDRG) sponsored the talks.

Assoc Prof Wendy Sloane worked as a journalist in Moscow from 1989 to 1995 and became a magazine editor in 1996 shortly after moving to the UK. She is an associate professor, principal lecturer and journalism course leader at London Met, is working on a PhD on press freedoms in Russia, and is a member of the GSDRG's Steering Committee. Dr Sasha Raspopina is a researcher and lecturer interested in Russian post-Soviet journalism, political communication, alternative media, propaganda, post-truth and ‘fake news’; her PhD thesis was on RT (Russia Today). 

Wendy’s talk, 'Reporting on trans issues in an intensely transphobic Russia', centred around legislation signed by Putin in July, 2023, banning members of the transgender community from changing their gender “officially or medically”. This means trans Russians will not have access to hormone treatment or gender-affirmation surgery, be able to legally adopt children or have legally recognised marriages. Some people have already have had their children taken away from them as a result of the legislation, and there has been a rise of black market hormone sales. Some worry that backroom gender reassignment surgeries will rise, and say that trans men and women conscripted into the army are at risk.

This talk, which points out that Russia has been using the queer community as a scapegoat for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, investigated the latest crackdown on the rights of trans people in Russia and the impact of these new restrictions, and examines expanded laws deeming it illegal for both journalists to report on and organisations to disseminate information about trans issues - and queer issues in general - in a positive light. It featured anonymised interviews with trans Russians, living inside and outside the country, as well as interviews with reporters who either cover Russia today or have covered Russia in the past.

Sasha’s talk, 'The "New Normal": Russian media and state-sanctioned homophobia' explored the coverage of LGBTQ+ topics in 10 mainstream Russian media outlets before, during, and after the adoption of the homophobic laws restricting information that can be provided on LGBTQ+ topics and the rights of LGBTQ+ people in 2013, 2022 and 2023. The project took a mixed methods approach, first quantitatively examining the amount of coverage in selected media outlets, and then qualitatively analysing the nature and tone of coverage with reference to style guidance on appropriate coverage from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and charities.

The talk presented the main findings of the research project, which indicate that both the amount and tone of coverage changed over the years as each bill entered the public discourse as a law proposal – there was significantly more coverage, and the tone of media publications grew increasingly hostile in both quality publications and tabloids, while voices of LGBTQ people were excluded from the coverage and voices of homophobic politicians and activists were features more widely instead. However, surprisingly, coverage was not focused on the bills themselves, which points both at the agenda-setting function of Russian media and that heightened public anti-LGBTQ rhetoric goes hand in hand with hostile media coverage.