Stanislav Budnitsky
Research Description
The project hypothesizes that George Soros-funded multifaceted information initiatives contributed to the evolution of information environments worldwide, especially across post-Socialist Europe in the 1990s. As such, the project argues that we cannot fully understand the region’s post-Cold War media and political landscape without attending to Soros-led information ventures and diverse societal responses to it. To begin filling this gap, this research examines the information-related activity of the Cultural Initiative (1988–1995) and the International Science Foundation (1992–1996), two of the three Russian charitable institutions established by George Soros alongside the Open Society Institute-Russia (1995–2003).
Bio
Stanislav Budnitsky is a scholar of global and Russian media politics. His book-in-progress examines the post-Cold War struggles between Russia and the West over global telecommunication governance. Most recently, Budnitsky was a James H. Billington Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Before that, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Indiana University in Bloomington, and the University of Pennsylvania. Budnitsky’s work has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Internet Policy Review, and European Journal of Cultural Studies, among other academic venues. His media commentary has recently been featured in The Conversation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, and Poland’s Rzeczpospolita. Budnitsky received his PhD in Communication from Carleton University in Ottawa. He holds Master’s degrees in Nationalism Studies from Budapest’s Central European University and in Journalism from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. Before graduate studies, Budnitsky was a Moscow-based media writer and producer.
