How can one efficiently find primary sources of propaganda in order to research it?

Question

Global affairs analyst Susan Glasser encourages studying Putin's ~17 March 2022 speech in its entirety:

It's really gone in the other direction. Rather than oligarchs having a say over Vladimir Putin, he seems to have put more and more power onto himself personally. (Putin's) speech was absolutely chilling. I would recommend to anyone to listen to a translation of that, it's almost Stalinist in his promise of a new purge inside Russia.

I tried this advice to find a full, unedited version, but...

Search engines make it hard to find

Obvious YouTube searches like this:

putin speech full after:2022-03-16 before:2022-03-18

and google searches such as this:

putin speech full after:2022-03-16 before:2022-03-18

don't provide the full speech. Probably to avoid spreading it.

Western media also avoids spreading it

Western media outlets also don't provide a full version (that I could find) - they're probably also reluctant to spread mis/dis information. This video suggests:

(the) speech was not mentioned in many places, especially in the media in the UK

Question

Although I'm trying to find a particular speech unedited and in full (with English subtitles), this is a good opportunity to learn how to research propaganda more generally. Hence I hope for a general solution (i.e. search tools, methods) that will allow me to find and research other speeches, advertisements, interviews and materials that contain or are considered to be propaganda, misinformation, or disinformation, which might otherwise be hard to find (i.e. through traditional means).

Answer 1

I find Russian propaganda by searching on YouTube for новости (Russian for news). I then sort by time. This gives the most recent Russian news in the original language, Russian. This is how I found "Putin's ~17 March 2022 speech" specifically, as well as all of his speeches from December 2021 until present. Keep in mind that YouTube rather opaque search algorithms may keep only the latest Putin's speeches or other propaganda at the top; older speeches may need other methods to find.

I also search on Google or DuckDuckGo for Russian Channel 1. This gives me the real time broadcast. If this fails, then yandex it.

Both methods utilize a simple fact. Propaganda is never labeled as propaganda. It is always labeled as news.

Answer 2

I guess you mean what the Western press called the "traitors" and "scum" speech. That one was apparently on the 16th, not the 17th. Full English transcript published by the Kremlin: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67996 It's pretty long, but the Kremlin didn't try to paper over those words... Just the most fiery parts:

We still remember how they supported separatism and terrorism by encouraging terrorists and bandits in the North Caucasus. Just like in the 1990s and the early 2000s, they want to try again to finish us off, to reduce us to nothing by turning us into a weak and dependent country, destroying our territorial integrity and dismembering Russia as they see fit. The failed then and they will fail this time.

Yes, of course, they will back the so-called fifth column, national traitors – those who make money here in our country but live over there, and “live” not in the geographical sense of the word but in their minds, in their servile mentality

I do not in the least condemn those who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, who cannot make do without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom as they call it. That is not the problem, not at all. The problem, again, is that many of these people are, essentially, over there in their minds and not here with our people and with Russia. In their opinion – in their opinion! – it is a sign of belonging to the superior caste, the superior race. People like this would sell their own mothers just to be allowed to sit on the entry bench of the superior caste. They want to be just like them and imitate them in everything. But they forget or just completely fail to see that even if this so-called superior caste needs them, it needs them as expendable raw material to inflict maximum damage on our people.

The collective West is trying to divide our society using, to its own advantage, combat losses and the socioeconomic consequences of the sanctions, and to provoke civil unrest in Russia and use its fifth column in an attempt to achieve this goal. As I mentioned earlier, their goal is to destroy Russia.

But any nation, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth, spit them onto the pavement. I am convinced that a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society like this would strengthen our country, our solidarity and cohesion and our readiness to respond to any challenge.

As for the title question, I'm not sure how to answer that other than: "try the original source first".

Answer 3

If you are a journalist or a researcher intended to study propaganda, try to reach some Russian academic institutions with journalism or similar profile. Say you want to do comparative study of American and Russian propaganda, explain the situation and they likely will share some public media, independently from they views. Likely photos make the most room for research: you could work for pinning the exact location by checking the details in the background against the map of the location, for instance.

If you just want to know the truth, I do not really think you can get the real picture by just mixing and "generalizing" the propaganda of the two sides that are at war. You need to work with sources that may still be biased but somewhat less dependent.

Answer 4

First of all, I think this is a reference to the March 16th speech rather than 17th. Well, at least the earliest tweet that I saw of it was from March 16th. There is no date on the screen, but it shows the starting time as "16:48".

It's 2 minutes an 9 seconds long. I don't know if there is a longer version.

The "self-purging of society," alternatively translated as "self-purification of society," is mentioned at 2:01 in the audio and at 1:98 in the subtitles.

In case you don't speak Russian, "self-purification" is too generous a translation. The original says "самоочишение." It can be translated as "self-purification." However, in a political context it is too reminiscent of the word "чистки," usually translated as "purges," which was used by Stalin's regime as a euphemism for violent repressions.