Dr Dmitry Chernobrov
BA (MGIMO); MPhil (Cambridge); PhD (MGIMO); PhD (St Andrews); SFHEA
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
Senior Lecturer in Media and International Politics
Director of Research and Innovation
+44 114 222 2542
Full contact details
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
C643
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Dmitry joined the department in 2015 and is currently Senior Lecturer in media and international politics and the department's Director of Research and Innovation. He is also Co-Director of the Digital Society Network, Research Fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). His work focuses on international crises and public opinion, public diplomacy and humour, diasporas and conflict, and digital technology in humanitarian response. Dmitry is the author of Public Perception of International Crises, which received the Furniss Book Award for an ‘exceptional contribution to the study of international security’. His has secured research funding
from the British Academy, Fulbright, University of Southern California, and Scottish Funding Council.
Dmitry discusses what he loves about teaching, why he joined the University of Sheffield, his new book, his next research projects, and how history can help us understand political communication.
- Research interests
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Dmitry's research focuses on four interconnected strands: public perception of international crises, public diplomacy and humour, diasporas and conflict, and digital technology and humanitarian communication. Dmitry specialises in research on public perception of international politics. In his work, Dmitry explores how societies idealise themselves in imagining distant crises and argues that public attitudes to international events are based primarily on local anxieties, memories, and hopes. His award-winning monograph explores British and Russian public attitudes to the Arab uprisings and asks three principal questions: How do people make sense of international crises? Why are some representations more appealing than others? And most importantly, what do the resulting opinions mean for how societies imagine themselves? This research offers an interdisciplinary integration of international relations, political psychology, memory and media studies. An overview of the book is available here, and Dmitry has also published an article on ontological security and public perception of crises in Political Psychology.
Currently Dmitry is leading a British Academy-funded project that develops the concept of strategic humour in foreign policy and explores audience reception of humour about contested international events. He is particularly interested in the persuasive applications of humour in public diplomacy and its connection to post-truth politics. Dmitry recently completed two research projects on diasporas and conflict, exploring the transmission of war memories to new generations and diaspora involvement in online information warfare when their homeland is at war. Dmitry has advised and held knowledge exchange activities with a range of diaspora organisations and conflict resolution NGOs such as the Armenian Institute and International Alert. Dmitry has also written about the use of digital communication in humanitarian crisis response, interviewing and collaborating with major international humanitarian agencies for this project.
- Publications
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Books
- Public Perception of International Crises: Identity, Ontological Security and Self-Affirmation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Journal articles
- Humor and Foreign Policy Narration: The Persuasive Power and Limitations of Russia’s Foreign Policy Pranks. Global Studies Quarterly, 4(1).
- Strategic humor and post-truth public diplomacy. CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, 3(Paper 3), 1-48. View this article in WRRO
- Diasporas as cyberwarriors: infopolitics, participatory warfare and the 2020 Karabakh war. International Affairs, 98(2), 631-651. View this article in WRRO
- Strategic humour: public diplomacy and comic framing of foreign policy issues. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 24(2), 277-296. View this article in WRRO
- Competing propagandas: How the US and Russia represent mutual propaganda activities. Politics, 42(3), 393-409.
- Diaspora Identity and a New Generation: Armenian Diaspora Youth on the Genocide and the Karabakh War. Nationalities Papers, 48(5), 915-930.
- Growing up with a long-awaited nation-state : personal struggles with the homeland among young diasporic Armenians. Ethnicities, 20(3), 520-543.
- Who is the modern ‘traitor’? ‘Fifth column’ accusations in US and UK politics and media
. Politics, 39(3), 347-362. View this article in WRRO
- Semi-structured non-elite interviews : public perception of an ongoing international crisis. SAGE Research Methods Cases Part 2. View this article in WRRO
- Digital volunteer networks and humanitarian crisis reporting. Digital Journalism, 6(7), 928-944. View this article in WRRO
- Ontological Security and Public (Mis)Recognition of International Crises: Uncertainty, Political Imagining, and the Self. Political Psychology. View this article in WRRO
- The spring of Western narcissism: A psychoanalytic approach to western reactions to the ‘Arab Spring’. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 19(1), 72-88.
- The Other in modern conflict: A constructivist lens. Journal of MGIMO University, 1, 58-67.
- Identity in contemporary international conflict: Typology of the history of conflicts through the prism of an Other. Vestnik MGIMO, 30(3), 86-91.
- Evolution of the Other in modern conflict: A constructivist experience of conflict. Vestnik MGIMO, 27(6), 47-53.
- Image management in cross-identity conflicts. Vestnik MGIMO, 20(5), 21-26.
Website content
- No laughing matter? How states use humour in public diplomacy. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2021/07/09/no-laughing-matter-how-states-use-humour-in-public-diplomacy/.
- Why language matters in the ‘Disinformation’ Age.
- Digital humanitarians: a new source for crisis reporting? https://blogs.city.ac.uk/humnews/2018/06/19/digital-humanitarians-a-new-source-for-crisis-reporting/.
- Traitors List: ‘traitors’ in political and media rhetoric today. http://politicsblog.ac.uk/2018/06/21/traitors-list-traitors-political-media-rhetoric-today/.
- How states use humor in public diplomacy.
- Diasporas as Cyber-Warriors and Cyber-Diplomats.
- The clash of images: humorous vs. serious politics in public diplomacy reception.
- Strategic humor and post-truth public diplomacy.
- Public Perception of International Crises.
- Public Perception of International Crises.
- Aid organisations and media: a new look at the problem of ‘branding’. Retrieved from http://siid.group.shef.ac.uk/blog/aid-organisationblem-of-branding/ View this article in WRRO
- Public Perception of International Crises: Identity, Ontological Security and Self-Affirmation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
- Teaching activities
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Dmitry’s teaching situates media representations into the wider political and societal contexts. He encourages students to be critical and reflexive about perception and representation of global issues and teaches using interactive formats such as debates, crisis modelling, film discussions, and student-led research projects.
Dmitry is the module leader for:
- JNL6041 Media, Society and International Crises (core on MA IPPC)
- JNL6027 Journalism, Globalisation and Development (core on MA Global Journalism)
He also supervises undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations and contributes to a range of other modules.
- PhD supervision
Dmitry is interested in supervising doctoral students in the following areas:
- Media representations, identity, and public opinion
- Humour, public diplomacy, and foreign policy
- Emotion and collective memory
- Diasporas and conflict
- Participatory warfare and conflict infopolitics
- Humanitarian crisis communication
- Critical conceptions of security/insecurity in media and politics
Current PhD students
- Zhong Zhang: The Civil Power of Nonprofit Journalism in China