COVERAGE OF THE 2018 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN RUSSIA IN THE PRESS AND BLOGOSPHERE
Keywords:
presidential election, election campaign, Russia, media, press, agenda-settingAbstract
The study analyzes the coverage of candidates for the 2018 presidential election in Russia. For the analysis, the author selected the month preceding the voting day as the most active period. The participants of the pre-election race received uneven attention from the media. Putin was mentioned much more often than other candidates, both in blogs and in the federal print media, and he often appeared in media reports as the main participant. The candidates, excluding Grudinin, were covered for the most part positively or neutrally. As for Grudinin, negatively colored articles prevailed over positive news. However, the coverage of the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation could hardly be called unfavorable, since he often appeared in the news in the main role and was mentioned separately from the rest of the candidates, not in the general list of participants in the race. Sobchak was more often mentioned separately from other candidates in blogs, while Zhirinovsky, on the contrary, was mentioned separately mostly in the press. Candidates with fewer votes are less likely to be discussed in the media. In addition, outsider candidates were highlighted mainly in articles containing references to other election participants. Analysis of joint mentions of candidates in the press shows that Putin was the main opponent for four election participants, Grudinin was the main opponent for Putin and Suraykin, and candidates who did not get to the top half of the list of voting results were not main opponents for any of the participants. The author assumes that the outsider candidates preferred to attack the leader rather than each other. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17072/2218-1067-2018-4-35-50References
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