СибСкрипт (Mar 2023)
Constructing the Image of Feminism in Russian Media: A Corpus Study
Abstract
As any social movement, feminism finds its reflection in the media. Media are a full-fledged institution capable of shaping public consciousness, targeting particular social groups, setting standards of mass behavior, and determining the main directions of social development. This research featured Russian news about feminism in terms of event structure. It covered news headlines published in Russian media in 2014-2021 and retrieved via the Smi2.ru media aggregator. Feminism-related headlines were automatically extracted from a dataset of 8,954 headlines. The subcorpus was analyzed in the Semograph Information System, which made it possible to classify texts, obtain frequency data on certain classes, and establish connections between them. The frequency data analysis was represented as a graphical model of the news space in the field of feminism using the SciVi visualizer. The event and thematic analyses revealed a three-level classification. The media usually informed about events where participants belonged to various social groups that protested against something, e.g., people or performances. The news informed about the actions and reactions of media people and about art sphere. The article introduces a graphical model that shows the links between event components in the headlines. It demonstrated three main areas of action in the field of feminism: art, media, and feminist movements. Each of these fields has its own core and structure. The media sphere appeared to be closed on itself; the art-related news agenda focused mostly on social matters; the field of feminist movements was associated with counteracting and involved descriptions of radical actions. When informing about feminism, the media construct an alternative reality that differs from the real issues that feminism aims at resolving.
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