Exploitation of economic fears in Russian media publications: informational scenarios

Abstract

We consider the specifics of the presentation in periodicals of economic fears motive associated with the expression of fears by journalists about rising prices, non-payment of wages and an increase in the number of unemployed. The purpose of study is to trace the change in the presence frequency of these fears in the media texts in different periods of the functioning of the post-Soviet economy, the specifics of these fears, as well as the degree of reaction of periodicals to real economic processes associated with these fears. Based on the tools of qualitative-quantitative content analysis and philological analysis, we compare economic indicators of the corresponding nature (the volume of wage arrears, unemployment and inflation) and the measure of the information reaction to them throughout the entire post-Soviet period of the existence of modern Russian journalism, pointing to the specifics of the presence each of the declared economic fears in the informational discourse. It is concluded that the information response does not correspond to the scale of real economic phenomena, which, at most sampling intervals, turn out to be less significant for financial and social processes than they are presented in media texts.