Media Broadcast of the Image of Russia in the Dichotomy of “Authorities – Opposition” in American, British and Spanish Media

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of the media broadcast of the image of Russia in the dichotomy “authorities – opposition” in the American, British and Spanish media. The work identifies the most frequent thematic dominants in the creation of the image of Russia in the dichotomy “authorities – opposition” in American, British, and Spanish articles. The research is carried out on the material of articles taken from modern American (“The New York Times”, “The Wall Street Journal”, “The Washington Post”), British (“The Guardian”, “The Independent”, “The Times” Financial Times) and Spanish media (El País, La Vanguardia, El Mundo, ABC). The purpose of the work is achieved by applying a comparative method and a complex method of lexical-semantic and stylistic analysis. The relevance of the research under study is determined not only by the huge influence of the American, British, and Spanish media on the mass consciousness, not only by the interest of Western media in positioning Russia in the modern world in political communication, but also by the lack of study of the problem of broadcasting the image of Russia created by journalists in the dichotomy “power – opposition” in modern American, British and Spanish media. We identified the main thematic dominants from 07.2020 to 09.2021: 1) the image of the leader of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) Alexei Navalny; 2) the image of political prisoners; 3) unauthorized rallies. An analysis of the selected 75 articles from the American, British and Spanish media confirmed the hypothesis that since August 2020, since the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, there have been more cases of mentioning the media event aspect of “power and opposition in Russia. Evaluative and emotional connotations prevail, which create an image of authorities and opposition.