Image of feminism in Russian media

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to analyze Russian news content about feminism from the point of view of the event structure that is presented in the news. The research material is a corpus of headlines of Russian media publications demonstrated in the media news aggregator smi2.ru from 2014 to 2021. News headlines related to feminism (8,954) are automatically extracted from the entire array of texts to study the representation of feminism in the news agenda. The resulting subcorpus is analyzed in the IS Semograph, which allows carrying out a multilevel classification of content and automatically obtain data on the frequency of certain classes and their connection closeness. A three-level classification based on the analysis of events indicated in the news is created as a result of the material thematic analysis. It has been established that events in which the interacting parties are social groups, are covered most often. Actors oppose something (specific people, performances, etc.), and the news is mainly associated with coverage of actions and reactions of media people and the field of art. Frequency analysis of connections between event components allows modeling the event structure associated with feminism: the most typical structure of an event includes either feminist movements as a protagonist, or cultural and media figures who act for feminism and/or against specific individuals and organizations, trying to influence society as a whole, and these actions take place in the media space or in the cultural sphere. Therefore, the feminism image, which core is not the real problem and women rights, but mainly scandalous and illegal actions related to the field of art and media people, is constructed in the media.