Political Storytelling in Digital Culture: a Tool for Post-Truth Politics?

Communications. Media. Design. 2017. Vol. 2. No. 1. P. 77–88.

Chernenko Y.

The following article presents the results of an individual academic research, dedicated to the analysis of structure, functions and effects of political storytelling in terms of so-called “era of post-truth politics”. 
The author would like to introduce some concepts and approaches to storytelling from the points of view of Russian literary studies and comparative literary criticism, which includes ideas and insights of major literary historians of Russian Empire and Soviet Union. The author claims these ideas important, adaptable and relevant for the key ideas about storytelling that were drawn by Western social studies, as literature has a unique position and approach in Soviet Unioin, being regarded as “ideological add-on of society”.
The following analysis leads to schemas of deconstruction of the acts of political communication worldwide through the lens of so called “shared narratives” (in Western tradition) and “wandering (migrating) plots” (in tradition of Russian Empire and Soviet Union literary studies` tradition).
The last part of the article presents narrative analysis of three cases of modern political communication in Europe, Russia and U.S.A. The intention of the author was to show three of so called “wandering plots” elements in political communications of international leaders. Case of Europe covers political communication of Iens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway, during the election rally in 2013. Case of Russia covers political communication of current president Vladimir Putin during the reconstruction of his biography in 2015. Case of U.S.A. covers political communication of Donald Trump, the elected president of U.S.A., during the election rally in 2016.

Keywords: Владимир Путин, США, Россия, USA, политическая коммуникация, political communication, Norway, Норвегия, modern Russian politics, digital Culture, цифровая культура, сторителлинг, political PR, storytelling, Дональд Трамп, post-truth politics, политический PR, пост-правда