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This article concerns collective identities in the context of EU enlargement and the post-Soviet transition of Estonian society, particularly of the two main ethno-linguistic groups: ethnic Estonians and the Russian-speaking population in Estonia. The empirical basis of the study is formed by factor structures of self-identification. The data were obtained from nationally representative surveys carried out in 2002, before Estonia joined the EU, and in 2005. The thinking patterns behind the structures of self-categorization are discussed mainly on the basis of theoretical concepts of individualization and transition culture. For background information, comparative data collected in Latvia (2006) and in Sweden (2003) are used. The survey results reveal that in the post-communist transformation, EU integration and spread of global mass culture have homogenized the mental patterns of the Estonians and the Russians. It is characteristic of post-communist Estonia that both minority and majority groups have utilized trans-national and civic identity and individualistic patterns of self-identification in terms of (sub)culture and social and material achievement, extracted from social norms and existing structures. Surveys confirm that for political actors in both Estonia and Russia it is hardly possible any more to create a common umbrella identity for the Russians in Estonia—the self-designation patterns of the Estonian Russians have been emancipated during the transition period.

This article contributes to the scholarly discussions about the self-responsibilization, defined as a configuration of understandings and action strategies oriented to compensate the (perceived) dysfunctionality of the media system, of audience members in East European societies. The authors argue that audience members' sceptical and self-reliant stance towards political news, which were planted in Soviet times, continue today in the context of mediated geopolitical conflicts. Based on a mixed methods study of Baltic Russian-speaking audiences' behaviour in the context of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the authors explore audience members' media repertoires aimed to "fish out" reliable information from the political news by searching for unspoken clues or identifying ideologically biased messages. The authors introduce six political news repertoires based on the varied degrees of plurality of information channels and conditional trust. Then, they characterize audience groups exercising these repertoires and explain how audience members rationalize the chosen repertoires as a part of their agency in the context of geopolitical turbulence. They suggest that media audiences' self-responsibilization is a worthwhile object for further study and call for a shift in East European media research away from a structuralist approach and towards an agency-centred one.

The article discusses the much-debated issue of collective identity among the Estonian Russian-speaking population from a different prism – based on representations of the past in the local Russian-language press in 2009. Assuming that representations of the past offer references for present-day identity construction, the study is aimed at revealing which identity patterns were supported and which were rejected by journalists and other speakers in the press. The analysis suggests that the "memory divide" is not only connected with WWII, as is widely believed in Estonia, but runs further down at the imaginary time-scale. Although the analysis revealed a strong prevalence of local-scale events, the mode of representations could not help to develop "own" local identities, either in a civic or emancipatory form. By the evaluation of events, actors and the stylistic means, the Russian-language press rather constructed the identity of the imperial diaspora. The existing State Integration Program aims at strengthening civic identity and activity, but it does not have a say in history politics. However, the latter is needed in order to give more space for private memories, critical reflection and the search for ways to (re)define the group in relation to space, time and other groups.