Values and Media in US-Russia Relations

The chapter introduces the topic of the US-Russia relationship for understanding the role of values and media in cooperation and conflict between nations. These relations reflect nationwide beliefs as accentuated and radicalized by different media systems. Western nations have built competitive political systems with checks and balances and popular elections of public officials, whereas many non-Western societies, including Russia, have relied on a highly centralized authority of the executive. Over the last thirty years, US-Russia relations in the realm of values went full circle from confrontation between “communism” and “capitalism” under the Cold War to convergence, growing divergence, and then a return to confrontation that a number of observers view as a new cold war. These changes should be explained by the media’s ethnocentrism and interstate tensions that were construed by the media as challenging dominant national values.