RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism (Mar 2023)
Representation of Russia and the USA in the global online information space and on Russian and American resources
Abstract
For the first time the quantitative representation of Russia and the USA in 2021 is considered: in the global online information space on the corpus of texts of the monitoring system Factiva, numbering over 106 million publications, posted on more than 23 thousand online resources in 26 languages; on the sub-corps of Russian media in Russian (over 1,000 online resources); on the sub-corps of American media in English (over 5,000 online resources). It was found that in the texts in 26 languages publications mentioning Russia were the most frequent, publications mentioning the USA came second. In terms of agenda theory (M. McCombs, D. Shaw), this fact is interpreted as a manifestation of a higher importance of Russia for the world press than the USA. In the sub-corpus of Russian Russian-language texts, this trend has been maintained. In a sub-corpus of US English-language texts, the US was on the first place, while Russia was ranked only 13th, which indicates a relatively low importance of Russia for the US press. The thematic areas that were most frequently associated with Russia and the US in 2021 were established. Factiva is strongly oriented towards economic information, and therefore topics such as company profiles, corporate and industry news were the most frequently encountered in a total of 26 languages. Next in line are stories about the domestic politics of countries. Similar trends can be observed in the analysed sub-corps of texts from Russian and US resources. At the same time, there is an asymmetry in the topics of materials mentioning Russia and the United States. Thus, in Russian sources in Russian language Russia is more frequently mentioned in the context of economic content, while the US is more frequently linked to international politics. In the US sources in English the US is more frequently mentioned in the economic context, while Russia is more frequently mentioned in the materials related to scientific and technical developments, as well as domestic and foreign policy.
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