Elections to EU Parliament in 2019 as Сovered by Russian Media

Abstract

In the context of emergence of new political communication channels and new players in the international arena, the problem of perceiving actors of international politics by the public and the content of information about them provided by the media is especially relevant. Not only the exponentially growing number of publications on this topic but also their quality needs particular attention and deep analysis. The EU, whose legislative power is executed by the European Parliament, is one of the key actors of international politics. This work, being part of a full-scale research of Russian media coverage of EU Parliament elections in 2019, aims at studying qualitative and quantitative characteristics of publications on this topic and determining elements of the EU’s media image in Russian media. The quantitative analysis required studying “Medailogia” database and covered both traditional and online national and regional media whose texts mention key words on the elections between May 13 and June 9, 2019 more than twice. The qualitative analysis involved examining the content of publications in the media in the period of April–June 2019, focusing on the topics, volume and completeness of information on the elections, the dynamic of coverage and news hooks in various media, and the genre features of the publications. The results of the study show that EU Parliament elections in 2019 were not a top theme in Russian media. However, the media presented quite a wide range of opinions on the political event and demonstrated a high degree of personification of international politics.