Coverage of the Arctic Development in Russian Mass Media Discourse (by the example of Rossiyskaya Gazeta)

Abstract

The trends in the official Russian arctic media discourse reflect a sustainable public interest to the issues of the Arctic national development, as well as to the geo-political situation and Russia’s military buildup in the North. The article analyzes the trends in the coverage of Arctic-related issues in the official Russian discourse by the example of “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” — the official print newspaper of RF government. The study covers the period of 2001–2018, which is characterized by topicality of arctic discourse. The dynamics of the discourse can be visibly divided into two stages. The first stage started in 2001 and finished in 2007 with the Russian expedition “Arctic-2007”, which planted the flag of the Russian Federation on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The discourse of the stage features low frequency of publications on the topic and neutral emotional text sentiment. The discourse of the second stage (2008–2018) exhibits a noticeably wider topical range of publications on Arctic-related issues, as well as their reactionary and agonic spirit. The analysis resulted in an inference that the publications on Arctic-related problems in the newspaper reflect the official position of RF authorities, and have a specific-reason character.