Interfrontes mītiņu Uzvaras laukumā reprezentācija presē 1989. gada februārī

Abstract

The year 1989 in the history of Latvia is considered one of the most significant years of the independence restoration period. However, the very beginning of this year is characterised by the formation of counterforces to the idea of independence. In January, the International Front of the Working People of the Latvian SSR (Interfront) was founded; on February 23, coinciding with the Day of the Soviet Army, the Interfront organised its first public mass event – a demonstration and march in the centre of Riga. Additionally, on February 25, 1989, a meeting against granting state language status to the Latvian language was held at the Uzvaras Park organised by the Interfront. The aim of the study is to analyse the representation of two Interfront meetings in the press of that time (in the newspapers Padomju Jaunatne, Sovetskaja Latvija, Cīņa, Latvian Popular Front bulletin Atmoda and the Interfront newspaper Jedinstvo), using the media event classical approach and the discourse-historical method. The classical theory of media event developed by media theorists Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz can be successfully applied to the analysis of press publications. The fundamental contribution of this approach to communication theory has not lost its relevance till nowadays. The study’s results reveal the emotionally saturated communication tendencies in the media during the restoration of independence, which corresponds to the conquest scenario, analysed from the perspective of the media event theory. The results also demonstrate the practice of ‘coronation’ of the Soviet values and the broader discourse of the involved actors’ struggle for influence. The results of the research are also reflected in the interdiscursivity figure, which characterises the discourse-historical method.