Amid the uproar over designer Juozas Statkevičius’s remarks about Lithuania, in which, among other things, he complains about the supposedly constant propaganda that “Russia is attacking us,” the media monitoring and analysis company Mediaskopas looked into how firmly the theme of the Russian threat is actually established in Lithuanian media. Over the past two years, the media recorded 5,123 reports related to the threat from Russia. Is that a lot or a little? Knowing that other topics that frighten Lithuanians are the financial crisis or a real estate bubble, we can compare and say that the threat of a financial crisis is being escalated more in the media — 6,598 reports related to a financial crisis in Lithuania were published over the same period, while only 1,322 reports about a real estate bubble were recorded.
Looking at it month by month, it is noticeable that when the financial crisis topic becomes more active, the Russian threat is often pushed to the side. Perhaps this shows that we simply want something to fear, and what exactly it is does not matter so much. Just as long as we do not lose our self-preservation instinct? Especially since scientists recently confirmed that, for example, the fear of spiders and snakes is the result of millions of years of evolution: https://www.15min.lt/mokslasit/straipsnis/technologijos/to-the-question-of-whether-fear-of-spiders-and-snakes-is-innate-scientists-answered-by-frightening-babies-646-871422
The uproar sparked by Juozas Statkevičius was unexpectedly overshadowed by Ruta Vanagaitė’s statements about partisan leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, according to our October trend analysis.
By the end of the month, after the scandal broke, R. Vanagaitė was mentioned in 414 media reports, while J. Statkevičius appeared in 188.
