Social Indicators of Conflict in the Context of Media and Journalism: Analysis of the Content of Russian Media

Abstract

Conflictology as a field of knowledge is aimed at identifying and substantiating the factors that systematically generate contradictions, social tension, and collisions in the society. At the same time, researchers recognize that media support has become an integral natural part of conflict throughout the process of its development, which gives rise to a media-centric approach to the study of sociocultural conflicts using interdisciplinary means and methodological tools. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the results of a study analyzing key indicators of conflict-related information agenda in Russian mass media outlets. The leading federal socio-political newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda, Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Kommersant, as well as online media sources Lenta.Ru and Gazeta.Ru were selected as the object of the research. The period under investigation was January-December 2020. The selection and analysis of publications by keywords was carried out using the information retrieval system for monitoring and analyzing the media "Integrum" and an algorithm based on artificial neural networks word2vec. The original methodology has made it possible to determine the ratio of publications containing conflict as the key notion in the total amount of media reports of the same period, as well as to identify key indicators of conflict-related materials analyzing their main characteristics. The results have shown that Russian media sources chosen as the study sample reveal conflict significantly a lot and the topic semantic field is extremely diverse. The present study may be prototypical for the analysis of indicators of relevant issues and resonant topics in any social sphere. This, in turn, is extremely valuable in situations when mass media becomes a tool for shaping public opinion and consciousness, in terms of both theoretical or scientific importance and quick and effective practical application.