- okovalev@ucsd.edu
-
9500 Gilman Dr
La Jolla , California 92093
Olga Lazitski
Doctoral Candidate
- Bio
- Education
- Research
- Publications
Bio
Olga is a media scholar and a journalist. Her academic work encompasses issues of propaganda and populism within the contexts of the post-truth era, production of national subjects and nationalist sentiments, public resistance to the hegemonic discourses and oppressive regimes, practices of alternative professional journalism and its role in the public spheres.
Olga’s broad scholarly interest relates to the concept of media endarkenment - the term she coined attempting to name the processes of media influence and practices of media production and media consumption, by which the number of informed, critical-thinking and active citizens decreases.
Currently Olga is a Ph.D. candidate at UCSD Communication department. She is teaching courses on propaganda and persuasion and media systems within different political regimes.
Olga has been working as a reporter, producer, anchor, and news writer for the Russian national networks in Moscow and the local broadcasting companies in Siberia and the Russia’s Far East. While living in Russia, she also worked as a contributor for CNN.
You can download a PDF of Olga’s Curriculum Vitae here:
Olga’s broad scholarly interest relates to the concept of media endarkenment - the term she coined attempting to name the processes of media influence and practices of media production and media consumption, by which the number of informed, critical-thinking and active citizens decreases.
Currently Olga is a Ph.D. candidate at UCSD Communication department. She is teaching courses on propaganda and persuasion and media systems within different political regimes.
Olga has been working as a reporter, producer, anchor, and news writer for the Russian national networks in Moscow and the local broadcasting companies in Siberia and the Russia’s Far East. While living in Russia, she also worked as a contributor for CNN.
You can download a PDF of Olga’s Curriculum Vitae here:
Education
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (USA)
Master of Arts in Communication, University of California, San Diego (USA)
Master of Arts in Journalism, Amur State University (Russia)
Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, Amur State University (Russia)
ACHIEVEMENTS
UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, San Diego, CA, awarded in 2021
UCSD Summer Graduate Teaching Scholar, San Diego, CA, awarded in 2017 and 2019
Friends of the UCSD International Center Fellowship, San Diego, CA, awarded in 2016 and 2018
Ruth Newmark Scholarship, San Diego, CA, 2016
Fulbright Scholarship, Boston, MA, 2012 – 2013
Russian Journalists Union Award, Moscow, March 2006
Research
In her research, Olga uses comparative approach to study social issues within different national, cultural and political contexts, comparing contemporary Russian and U.S. nationalist sentiments, populist styles of Trump and Putin, propaganda techniques of the U.S. partisan media outlets and the Russian national broadcasting networks.
In her most recent project, Olga studies alternative professional journalism. She proposed this term to describe a community of Russian journalists that challenge the state’s propaganda efforts and provide the Russian public with the counter-narrative to the official discourse.
Her dissertation, Combating post-truth in the neo-authoritarian context: Alternative professional journalism in Putin’s Russia, uses a mixed-methods approach to examine how post-truth has been weaponized by the Russian state and how those attempts have been challenged by the recently emerged community of Russian journalists.
Olga’s dissertation offers a new post-truth configuration of the Russian media system, identifying a new – post-truth - iteration of propaganda and its techniques, and revealing a new powerful force that is very important to acknowledge and understand for combating post-truth not only in Russia and other (neo)-authoritarian regimes, but also in the (neo)-liberal regimes of the West.
Her project focuses on the complicated relationships of three collective actors: the state, APJs and the audience/citizens. Olga’s methodology includes newsroom ethnography, audience ethnography, discourse analysis, content analysis, situational analysis and grounded theory approach.
Olga is dedicated to empowering journalists and citizens to challenge post-truth and committed to media literacy. During her years at UCSD, she has developed and taught her own course entitled “Media Systems in the Post-truth Era” that encompasses useful tips on healthy media consumption practices, promotes critical thinking and highlights democratizing work of journalists in the U.S. and across the globe.
Keywords: media endarkenment, alternative professional journalism, journalistic norms, journalistic practices, ideology of objectivity, media systems, hybrid regimes, authoritarianism, propaganda, public spheres, populism, nationalism, ethnography, discourse analysis, situational analysis, grounded theory
Publications
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Breaking through endarkenment: alternative professional journalism in the contemporary Russian public spheres, chapter in the book Public Sphere in Russia, Moscow: New Literary Observer (forthcoming)
Alternative professional journalism in the post-Crimean Russia: Online resistance to the Kremlin propaganda and status quo, article in The Journal of The International Symposium on Online Journalism, Vol. 10, number 1 (2020) https://isoj.org/research/alternative-professional-journalism-in-the-post-crimean-russia-online-resistance-to-the-kremlin-propaganda-and-status-quo/
Media Endarkenment: A Comparative Analysis of 2012 Election Coverage in the U.S. and Russia, American Behavioral Scientist, XX(X) I-30, 2013 SAGE Publications. DOI: 10.1177/0002764213506219
Book Review of Media and the Ukraine Crisis: Hybrid Media Practices and Narratives of Conflict by Mervi Pantti. DOI: 10.1177/1077699018812780
Book Review of Russia’s Liberal Media: Handcuffed but Free by Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova. DOI: 10.1177/1077699019847773
Book Review of This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev. DOI: 10.1177/1077699020946445 SELECTED PRESENTATIONS,
SPEECHES, LECTURES & PANELS
“Alternative professional journalism in the post-Crimean Russia: Online resistance to the Kremlin propaganda and status quo,” paper for the International Symposium on Online Journalism, April 2020, Austin, TX
"Genealogy of Contemporary Russian Nationalist Sentiment: The Role of Media," paper presented at the Association of Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies Conference, November 2017, Chicago, IL
“Populist Media Practices in the Contemporary World: An International Perspective,” panel organized for the ICA Preconference Populism, Post-Truth Politics and Participatory Culture: Interventions in the Intersection of Popular and Political Communication, May 2017, San Diego, CA
“Learning to Deal with the Authoritarian Populist Leader: U.S. Journalists in Post-Truth Era,” paper presented at the ICA Preconference Populism, Post-Truth Politics and Participatory Culture: Interventions in the Intersection of Popular and Political Communication, May 2017, San Diego, CA
“Political subjectivity in Putin’s Russia: Potential of the demos and a ripple effect it causes,” paper presented at the 2016 California Slavic Colloquium at University of Southern California, April 2016, Los Angeles, CA
“Russian State Propaganda: New Appearance and Consequences,” paper presented at the Association of Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies Convention; participant of the roundtable “Information Control in Post-Communist Eurasia” (chair: Ellen Mickiewicz). November 2015, Philadelphia, PA
Cold War Again? Examining the genealogy of the recent tension between Russia and the U.S., paper presented at the 2015 California Slavic Colloquium at Stanford University, May 2015, Stanford, CA