Public information: The shifting roles of minority language news media in the Buryat territories of Russia

In ‘multinational states’ such as the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russian Federation, minority language media have been developed for diverse ends. This article examines the changing roles of minority language news media over a century of language shift in the Lake Baikal region, where generations of Buryat speakers have been shifting to Russian. Drawing on archival materials and ethnographic research with media personnel and audiences, I show how linguists, journalists, and policymakers have directed minority language media practices in response to their own shifting conceptions of an existing, emergent, or contracting Buryat language public—and of media’s ideal or actual relationship to it.

► I examine the historical relationship between media and imagined publics in Siberia. ► Minority language news media are developed for diverse purposes. ► Buryat media in Russia have targeted a changing minority language public. ► As language shift progresses, news’s purpose shifts from informational to symbolic. ► The imagined Buryat public has shifted from nascent, to parallel, to a subpublic.