Media framing of the Russian exclave under conditions of geopolitical tension (by example of attitude towards Western sanctions)

Abstract

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the media framing of the Kaliningrad region as an example of the attitude to the Western sanctions during one of the periods of escalation of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. R. Entman's media framing scheme, which allows identifying the subject interested in constructing the news agenda, its potential audience, method of creation and social meaning, served as a reference concept. The empirical basis of the study was the entire corpus of texts obtained with the help of the platform «Medialogiya» in the period from September to November 2022 on the request «Kaliningrad region» in the Russian media (N=93586, n=11620). The research methods were content analysis, discourse analysis, correlation analysis. As a result, six media images of the Kaliningrad region were identified, their structure and dynamics were determined. It has been shown that while in the publications about the prevailing force of sanctions the desire to depersonalize the victim and denote the passive-dependent position of the region is demonstrated, in the messages about the ability of the Kaliningrad region to adapt and demonstrate economic growth, by contrast, the object of the sanctions impact is localized and concreteized, and the political elite is represented in a proactive-business context. The article also describes and explicates other features of the region's media framing rhetoric.