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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Faculty of Humanities

BACHELOR'S THESIS

Field of study: 45.03.02 Linguistics

Degree programme: Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication

MOSCOW PROTEST ACTIONS AND ITS MEDIA COVERAGE: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Sivalneva Ekaterina

Supervisor Senior Lecturer,

Candidate of Sciences in Germanic languages

Chanturidze Y.M.

Moscow, 2020



Contents

1. Introduction

2. Discourse

2.1 Political Discourse

2.1.2 Political Language

2.2 Media Discourse

2.2.1 News Production

2.2.2 News Values: Language and Subjectivity

4. Critical Discourse Analysis

4.1 Fairclough's model of CDA

5. Comparative Discourse Analysis of English-language and Russian-language popular web news outlets

5.1 English-language news media outlets

5.1.2 Vocabulary, Representation, and Identification

5.1.3 Quoted Sources

5.1.3 External Relations

5.2 Russian-language news media outlets

5.2.1 Vocabulary, Representation, and Identification

5.2.2 Quoted Sources

5.2.3 External Relations

6. Model of information assessment

Conclusion

References

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3



1. Introduction

Nowadays the news media is considered to be one of the key factors of modern life. It sets the stage for political news and its agenda and also regulates the flow of information. Serving as a gateway into the outside world, it has a direct influence on public knowledge, perceptions, and social behaviors. The news media sways human emotional responses, taking a toll on the ability to cognitively evaluate the political events and its significance.

Political discourse is a phenomenon that affects millions of people in their daily lives. Gaining and retaining power are the main topics of political discourse and the implicit purpose of this type of communication. The more democratic and open-minded society is, the more attention is given to the political language and its tacit goals (Sivalneva, 2019).

According to statistics, media consumption habits are rapidly changing (Westcott, Loucks, Ciampa & Srivastava, 2018). The onset of the digital age led to young generations abandoning television, making people aged 35+ the primary audience. This generational shift resulted in the change of strategies of how to present information to the recipients. Recent years have demonstrated the emergence of new reporting policies. These contemporary models are more overly opinionated and contradict the long-standing tradition of objective, neutrally informative news' description (Loker, 2018).

The debate about whether, how and to what extent the media bias has an impact on news content started decades ago. All media outlets have been deemed de facto prejudiced. Despite this, media sources have received approbation in political, economic, and cultural spheres over the years. Nevertheless, academia mostly abandoned the empirical research of news media institutions and power-gaining mechanisms, the subjectivity has not yet been the primary focus of discourse studies (Sivalneva, 2019).

The relevance of this study subject corresponds to the need for a more in-depth investigation. Linguists' works, which touched on this issue, have been criticized and considered to be incorrect. In specific, R. Fowler (1991) had been the target of much criticism in presenting the hypothesis that there is a straightforward and definable connection between any linguistic choice and a particular ideology, but subsequent research revealed a more profound intervention of external factors whose effect had not been considered before (Luke, 2002; Martin, 2004).

The significance of this study is that it will bring to the attention of linguists the issue of media discourse and political discourse, contribute to the linguistic and social discussion of the subject under consideration and promote further research. Moreover, the results could contribute to a favorable change in society by establishing a certain strategy to assess news materials and identify biased information. In particular, it might be valuable in further analysis of Russian political discourse due to the fact that Moscow protest rallies of summer 2019 became the second largest in Russia's history after the 2011-2013 protests. None of the mentioned events have been researched apart from historical and social points of view.

This study aims to investigate the difference between reporting styles of various famous Russian-language and English-language digital news outlets by distinguishing their discursive characteristics, specific traits and paradigms, as well as linguistic features, that necessarily imply the subjectivity of objectivity of the material presented. language web new linguistic

The research questions are the following:

RQ1. Can certain linguistic devices be indicative of bias in political and media discourses?

RQ2. What linguistic strategies are typical of Russian-language and English-language digital news media outlets?

RQ3. Do the reporting styles of Russian-language and English-language digital news media outlets differ? In what way?

RQ4. Can political and media discourses be considered to be absolutely objective?

This research aims to study the media articles to reveal certain comprehensive practices and different linguistic figures that can be used in media and political discourse to manipulate someone's power acquisition and opinion.

The research strives to devise a certain linguistic strategy for an ordinary recipient of news media information, by utilizing which a person could distinguish untruthful information and comprehend the implicit reasoning behind the news story.

Literature Review

There exists a very extensive literature on the topics of discourse and discourse analysis, ranging from the early 1970s. Much of the early discourse theory stems from the studies of Teun A. van Dijk (1993), Norman Fairclough (1992), and Ruth Wodak (1989). They proposed major concepts of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and made an immense contribution to the research of political and media discourse. Most of their research focused on language as a tool of acquisition and maintenance of power relations. The researchers shared similar principles and their methods varied inconsiderably: they all agreed that social institutions simultaneously shape discourse and are shaped by it.

Teun A. van Dijk (1993) posited that particular features of the text are specifically utilized to implicitly embed an idea considered acceptable by an authoritative figure, thus making this idea of 'common sense'. To analyze discourse, Van Dijk (1995) devised a three-dimensional framework. The three-dimensional framework views discourse as a language text, a practice, and a sociocultural practice. Therefore, Van Dijk (2000) noted that discourse and practice are 'interdependent' and 'interlinked' networks.

Similarly, N. Fairclough (1995) distinguished three levels of discourse: social conditions of production and interpretation, production and interpretation, meaning in what manner the text was created and how it affects the interpretation of the text as the final product of the previous stages. In his works, Fairclough (1992, 1995) examined how the ways in which people interact are limited by the social institutions within which we live and work.

To analyze discourse, Ruth Wodak (2009) developed the discourse-historical approach (DHA) which is also considered three-dimensional. Like Van Dijk and Fairclough, Wodak (2009) describes the relationship between discourse and social practices, but highlight the significance of the historical aspect.

In previous studies of media discourse, it has been found to be related to political discourse as both spheres of research regard the same concepts (`critique', `ideology', `context', and others) fundamental (Bell, 1991; Fowler, 1991). A. Bell and R. Fowler's works focused on media discourse and the characteristics of news media discourse. As stated by A. Bell (1991), news production is a multi-layered process that requires a group of people. Both authors similarly defined the concept of news values, factors determining which news sources are worthy of being portrayed to the society (Bell, 1991; Fowler, 1991). A. Bell (1991) indicated that the implicit opinion of the source is embedded in news articles. A familiar concept was mentioned by Teun A. van Dijk (1993) when stating that a hidden meaning will always be conveyed in a message made by an authoritative figure (this way news media outlet is regarded as such).

In further support of this finding, Thompson and Hunston (2000) interpreted the concept of news values as ``evaluation of anything compared to or contrasted with the norm'' and came to the conclusion that news values are primarily influenced by cultural values and attitudes. Thompson (2000) investigated the fundamental aspects of CDA in mass communication. He noted that `ideology' does not only exist in the political realm, and, in fact, is a sociological set of composed metal representations and evaluations about the outside world.

Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple (2012) proposed that news values can be analyzed in the textual form by examining discourse, context, and media. The data presented in Bednarek and Caple's research shows that the news values are tied to the concept embedding. It was pointed out by Bednarek (2006, 2010) that attitudinal expressions make certain storylines newsworthy, so emotional evaluation is thought to be the reason why evaluative language devices appear in news. They introduced a new theoretical framework called Discursive news values analysis (DNVA) which is devised to analyze the newsworthiness of an event as constructed by discourse or evaluated by a source (Bednarek & Caple, 2014).

Despite being of great significance, the above-mentioned works are mainly focused on the theoretical part of discourse studies. Specific frameworks were devised but were mostly described as concepts rather than being applied empirically. This study is intended to fill this gap and apply the fundamental research methods of CDA practically.

Methodology

To provide a broad discourse analysis of the aforementioned events, Fairclough's framework of CDA was utilized in the practical part of the research.

Following a three-step process, the research tried to address the questions put.

First, on the basis of popularity and credibility ratings 10 English-language and 10 Russian-language media outlets were chosen. Then the articles of those media outlets covering the protest movements taking place in Moscow of summer 2019 were cross-referenced. Data was gathered and analyzed by applying qualitative and quantitative research methods. While examining the texts the number of times certain linguistic units describing the particular categories were counted. The statistical data was later presented in the tables.

Alongside with statistical analyses, individual reports of each news media outlet were carried out. The frequency and quantity of a lexical unit would be crucial in finding discursive predispositions that determine the reporting style taken up by one or multiple media outlets. The discursive strategies that manipulate objectives and information are identified.

Second, the external factors of the discursive events were analyzed to identify the other ways of creating a certain narrative as well as determining the reasons for this. Social practices and structures play an important role when evaluating an event, thus, the outlook of people from different cultural and linguistic settings might differ. Social structures of English-language cultures (the United States of America and the United Kingdom) and Russia were analyzed and juxtaposed. Moreover, the visual aspects presented in the articles were analyzed.

Third, both data for qualitative and quantitative analyzes were gathered and evaluated to identify the discursive strategies used by various English-Language and Russian Language popular digital media outlets. Drawing from these strategies, a model of information assessment was devised. There is a systematic process that ought to be followed to assess the information present in news outlets. The proposed model can be used in the development of societal critical thinking and minimize the number of individuals that believe biased information or fake news.

Results Anticipated

Once the data has been collected and accurately analyzed, it is very possible to establish certain discursive forms. It is easy to identify the differences in the reporting format of English-Language and Russian Language digital media outlets. These differences are likely to have been influenced by political and sociocultural factors. Furthermore, it is not a guarantee that the same language media outlets will always use the same reporting styles. This is according to the contents of political views and news articles of the same language media outlets.

Research suggests no media outlet is fully objective because of the human's inner tendency to be subjective. Unless the media outlet presents evaluative figurative speech in a published article, it will be regarded as objective in some respects.

It is possible to devise an information assessment model to help distinguish factual information from that which is biased or highly opinionated. The model is possible to be created depending on the discursive strategies used in manipulation that have been extracted from news articles.



2. Discourse

Over the 20th century, the concept of `discourse' has received considerable attention in the scientific community and has been the topic of interest in a number of disciplines. Discourse is the subject of examination in linguistics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, political science, and other scientific fields. Thereof, to date, there is no clear and generally accepted definition of `discourse' as every science offers its own explanation of the phenomenon.

The International Linguistics Encyclopedia suggests to define discourse as "a coherent text in conjunction with extra-linguistic, pragmatic, socio-cultural, physiological and other aspects; an event-driven text; speech, considered as a targeted social action, as a component, participating in the human interaction and as the basis of man's cognitive control mechanism" (Frawley, 2003).

Social psychologists Potter & Wetherell approached discourse as: "all form of interactions, formal and non-formal, including written texts of all kinds" (Potter, Wetherell, 2010). Traditionally, it is believed that discourse exists in the center of action and consciousness, as all three aspects stem from extra-linguistic factors. Consistency and continuity are significant characteristics of discourse: it does not have a beginning or an end; moreover, it cannot be confined to a particular event only (Sivalneva, 2019).

Applied linguist and a leading scholar in Discourse studies, Norman Fairclough, connected discourse to its social purposes. He claimed that discourse is a social process and a text is just a part of it (Fairclough, 1989).

Discourse is also viewed as a complex cognitive process. The key components of discourse are the author (speaker) and the addressee (recipient). Thus, discourse studies focus on the cognitive processes of both partaking sides and examine how both sides understand the message.

Despite the numerous interpretations of the concept, all researchers agree on the fact that discourse cannot be limited to exist only in the form of a text because it is a multi-layered structure. Discourse is a far broader notion than a text. Text is understood as a verbal form of a speech act, while discourse is also concerned with extra-linguistic elements, historical and cultural settings of the communicative act, information about the participants. For instance, oral speech implies the use of prosodic elements such as intonation, tempo, rhythm, and non-verbal means of communication such as gestures, posture, and mimics; written speech implies the use of specific formats, fonts, imagery, etc. These are also the subjects of discourse analysis. Moreover, the text is considered to be the final product of a communicative act, whilst discourse is the process of this very act.

2.1 Political Discourse

There is a large interest in studying political discourse from various perspectives. Political discourse is a dynamic social phenomenon that has attracted significant attention from the 20th century onwards. A considerable amount of literature on the subject and numerous methodological approaches for studying this category have been published. Political discourse is an interdisciplinary concept that is of interest to linguists and political scientists, sociologists, cultural scientists, and psychologists. The first works of linguists on the issue started to emerge at the beginning of the 1950s. T. van Dijk (1984) R. Wodak (1989), N. Fairclough (1989), A. Bell (1991), R. Fowler (1991) were among the first scholars who brought the attention of the linguistic community to the topic of political discourse.

Political discourse has long been considered a form of a public communicative act performed by political figures aimed at gaining and retaining power. However, political discourse is not only governmental statements and politicians' speeches. It is a combination of political discussions taking place within a society. Nonetheless, there is a tension in the acceptability of social institutions taking part in political discourse.

In the book "Language and Power" (1989) T. van Dijk questioned which social institutions are the parts of political discourse and considered authoritative figures and whether the media can be regarded as such. According to the author, the media and its output contribute to the dissemination of political discourse, facilitate the access to the public, but cannot be considered as political discourse itself.

In contrast, a number of scholars argue that political discourse includes all forms of linguistic activity linked to political discourse, whether it be the author, the recipient, the subject of the content of a discursive act. E. Sheigal points out that "the media is an intermediary between politicians and people" («посредником между политиками и народом»). Therefore, the media is considered as an actor of political discourse, meaning that the overall perception of political events depends on the way these political events are presented in the news, on radio or television. Consequently, it is undeniable that various countries portray the same political occurrences on a world stage differently.

There is a popular characteristic that affects the control of certain aspects, such as keeping a particular belief in society. This depicts the main aim of a political discourse, which is to ensure there is regulation.

The main aims of political discourse are information dissemination (the own view of a recipient is eliminated by the suggestion of shared beliefs); agenda-setting; projection to future and past (contemplating the past and envisaging the future). All of the listed characteristics share one common feature. They all relate to control of certain things (for example, retaining a certain point of view within society). The key role of political discourse is, therefore, legislative.

We proceed in this research from the assumption that political debate is focused primarily on the struggle for power. In this regard, politicians, political parties or/and political movements are based on establishing a discursive atmosphere in which the key components will adhere to a certain audience's core values. That is the way control is acquired and retained. For this reason, certain cognitive strategies are intentionally used by the subjects of political discourse. Another essential feature of political discourse, therefore, is manipulation, which can later be distinguished into legimatisation, coercion, solidarity, etc.

Scholars distinguished the following functions of political discourse:

· incentive function;

It can be expressed differently in political discourse, either explicitly in the form of direct appeals or implicitly in the form of certain emotions

· communicative function;

Serves to disseminate information about significant political events and agenda

· emotive function;

It is crucial to express a particular emotion for the speaker in order to awake the same emotion in the recipient. The persuasiveness of speech and the right choice of stylistic means are able to evoke a whole range of emotions in the addressee. It is important that the addressee shares the author's feelings because only both sides can work together to achieve common goals.

· phatic function;

It is associated with establishing and maintaining a communicative contact. This way the contact between the parties will be established and communication will be successful only if the same views are shared.

· metalanguage function;

It helps you correctly convey the meaning of a word or phrase. Thus, politicians often resort to explaining certain terms, concepts, and ideas of the world of politics, because their meaning may not be completely clear to the audience.

· aesthetic function;

It is aimed at creating expressiveness of speech since the use of stylistic means makes the speech memorable.

The functional features of political discourse leave an imprint on its meaningful and formal components. One of the features of political discourse is that it simultaneously implies standardization and expressiveness. The former is required to make the discourse accessible to a wide range of recipients. It consists of observing certain sequences of production of discourse, as well as the rules of choice of vocabulary. The latter allows you to convey the author's emotional state and attitude towards the topic. Being expressed with the help of stylistic figures of speech, expressiveness also makes the text interesting for perception, which is extremely significant in the political scene, since the more thoughtful the discourse, the greater the impact it can have on the audience.

Political figures tend to pay significant attention to the presentation of information and linguistic expressiveness. This approach uses speech to reach out and persuade a certain audience. It can be said that political movements use linguistic features to interact and impact certain ideologies into voters in a bid to rise to power. This research aims to identify the mechanisms of political discourse and argumentative strategies that are used in persuading the audience.

2.1.2 Political Language

Political language is also an integral part of political discourse. It is characterized by ambiguity, often expressed by words with abstract meanings and polysemy. At the current stage of development of political discourse, many researchers are studying the language features of political discourse, called "political language", which means a special style, manner of communication with the addressee. Political language is in a two-way relationship with extralinguistic reality. On the one hand, it has a significant impact on the political situation on the world stage, because it reflects the life of the country with its values, traditions, and priorities. Thus, language plays a crucial role as all political speeches are comprised of implicit language devices that serve a specific purpose. Usually, the messages are syntactically complex, conventional, ideological and intertextual.

Political discourse is defined as the interaction between institutions, which applies a well-defined system of professionally oriented signs unlike peer-to-peer communication (Sivalneva, 2019).

Sheigal's (2000) formula can be used to explain why political discourse is important below:

Discourse = sublanguage + text + context

Language is used to create a particular ideology/mentality to either strengthen or jeopardize an existing structure in society.

It involves the use of linguistic devices such as lexis, language features, and special grammar to create a political discourse. However, linguistic features tend to have varied pragmatic and frequency orientation from one discourse to the other.

There are several discourse devices that are used to create a political discourse. The commonly used devices include assertion, sequence, proximation, source tagging, thesis-anthesis forms, evidentiality, epistemic morality, and metaphor.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a figurative speech where a phrase or word applies to a certain action or object that is not applicable. This figure of speech relates two referents in contextual situations. It is used by politicians to detect the way society understands political issues. This encourages political discourse where multiple views are eliminated, leaving one option (Fairclough, 1989; Charteris-Black, 2011, 2018). By taking advantage of analogies, the speaker provides evidence to support the argument. The commonly used analogies include recurring experiences, patterns, containment, notions, blockage, and balance. Thus, the metaphor is used to convince the audience through inflicting a certain dealing in it (Hart, 2010). Therefore, a metaphor is a strategic and ideological linguistic device.

Proxomization

According to Cap (2006), proximization is not a discursive concept, but an abstract one that combines different linguistic constructs to create emotional coercion (Cap, 2006). It results in creating outgroups (so-called aliens, foreigners) and in-groups (locals, citizens of one country, members of one group). Usually, first-person pronouns like “us/we” and third-person pronouns such as “them/they” are used. By using the “we/us” pronouns, the audience gets the feelings of inseparableness, fellowship, and closeness. On the other hand, pronouns such as “them/ they” separate the targeted addressees from the subject mentioned, making it look fully un-relatable. Verbs are frequently used not only in the simple but also in continuous tenses. The use of continuous tenses recalls the feeling of currentness, making the addressee feel directly affected and threatened. Whereas, past tenses address past occurrences and highlight the significance of efforts that were made in the past. In politics, addressing the past and the future is regarded as a very important argumentative tactic. This has made proximization an efficient strategy in the battle for power (Cap, 2006). Once the politicians present the current issues, they will suggest preemptive actions. Since the voters' feelings have already been evoked, they will consider the suggested solutions prudent and reasonable. Besides, the politician or political movement will be regarded as trustworthy.

Assertion-based Sequences

Assertions refer to ideological principles that are in harmony with the religious, political, social, and psychological dispositions of the audience (Cap, 2006). The political class uses assertions to win the trust of the audience and assure their commitment to solving ongoing problems. According to O'Donnell and Jowett (2006), human beings have a tendency to be consistent when it comes to beliefs. Hence, they are expected to accept those assertions from politicians. This shows how an assertion is a very strong tool of coercion, legitimization, and manipulation in politics.

Epistemic Modality

Just like assertions, epistemic modality is utilized by political movements to earn trust from their audiences. According to Fowler (1991), modality refers to a commitment by an individual to achieve a certain agenda or to walk the talk. So, the political movement will aim to make subjective propositions seem like objective truth. However, according to Chilton (2004), the speaker is likely to either strengthen or weaken their obligation to honor their statements. For Hart (2010), epistemic modality refers to the evaluation of a possible suggestion or truth. A speaker with great authority will take advantage of strong epistemic evaluation, making the assertions seem reliable (Hart, 2010).

Evidentiality

There is a close relationship between epistemic modality and evidentiality. In fact, according to Hart (2010), modality is an evaluation, whereas evidentiality forms the basis where evaluation is conducted. Evidentiality and epistemic modality are closely connected. Evidentiality comprises different knowledge sources like reportative (acquired from others), inferential (alleged information), reasoned (acquired from the background information), and experiential (perceived through sense organs). From the aforementioned sources, experiential is regarded as the most reliable.

Thesis-antithesis patterns

Thesis-antithesis are both psycholinguistic and logical constructs. According to Thompson and Mann (1985) and Cap (2006), these constructs are contrastive ideological sequences that contain two types of values: those accepted by the audience and those rejected.

Source-tagging

Source tagging is where a speaker gives data but links it back to a certain source. This is a legitimization approach and scare tactic that is used less in political discourse. According to Hart (2010), it is utilized in conveying controversial information and not being accountable for its truth, thus delegating responsibilities.

2.2 Media Discourse

2.2.1 News Production

According to Bell (1991), news production involves multiple processes that need the involvement of various people. For example, the process needs an animator, editor, author, and principal. In his research, A. Bell analyzed a sophisticated communicative situation involving the audience, speaker, and source, which are crucial in helping one understand the sophisticated media language. Bell argued that reporters' stories are embedded in editors' texts, whereas source information is entrenched in news articles. Also, common perceptions that are important to this approach include decontextualization and recontextualization. The following outlines an approach that can help alter the original material lexically, semantically, and syntactically.

After analyzing the setup of those news articles, A. Bell suggested a typical structure for a normal news story. The structure contains several levels, such as Abstract level (Headline and Lead), the Attribution level (source, time, place), the Story. Last but not least is the Event, which is examined by using Background, Commentary, Actors, Action, Settings, Attribution, and Follow-up. The Lead is considered the most important of the listed structure levels. Not only does it reveal the available primary information, but it also concludes the news and recommends what should be studied later.

It can be said that news production has little objectivity because it is influenced by human thinking. Different people take up or receive news differently. Some will take in or perceive information positively, while others will perceive it negatively. This is an example of an innate predisposition that is present in every human being; this is not being biased.

2.2.2 News Values: Language and Subjectivity

Values are regarded as one of the most effective and strongest means of coercion, legitimization, and persuasion. This is why news values are widely used in creating political discourse. Language is used as a material to impose a certain ideology on people. The functioning of the evaluation forms the basis of certain ideologies and mental specifications. According to van Dijk (2000), it is interest defined, specific and group-related understanding of values which creates ideological beliefs. This is how politicians or political movements project the desired expectations on their target audience, hence forming a strong societal mindset, as stated by Karwat (1982). They present certain news in a way that they want the audience to accept it. Therefore, through their speech, political movements recognize the current needs and problems the community and citizens are facing in abide to persuade them and ascend to power. It is done through capitalizing on special forms of language.

Before examining what values are, it is important to understand its description. Often, researchers refer to news values to be codes or rules (Allern, 2002), internalized assumptions (Cotter, 2010), and intersubjective mental groupings (Fowler, 1999) that makes a particular thing newsworthy. According to the aforementioned definitions, news workers make storylines depending on their attitude. As a result, they follow a sophisticated viewpoint. A. Bell argues that news values are used in determining newsworthy facts. News values can also be defined as values that are more newsworthy (Fowler, 1999), high regard for a certain audience (Richardson, 2007), and newsworthy fact (Bell, 1991).

Even though these definitions are different, they have a similar thought where news values influence the news materials like occurrences or events considered fit for society. There are extra substitute perspectives on how news stories should be portrayed. This concept gives a chance to look into values in a more textual form to determine how media workers make their news attractive to the public. We need to assess the below aspects in order to differentiate news that is worthy vs news that is considered unworthy?

? To assess the value of a particular event will help determine whether it affects or involves people and assess their relevance to society.

? To find out which rules are used by news workers, how they select stories, and use newsworthiness.

? Use texts from news articles, to identify and appraise supplementary materials (additional texts, social media information, visual aid, additional texts, quotes, and imagery) that were used to make the story.

The three aspects address the primary issues in news media, and they include Media, Context, and Discourse (Caple & Bednarek, 2012). It now becomes easy to analyze those discursive aspects of news media outlets. News values conceptualization reveals how it affects discourse. In a discursive setting, newsworthiness is referred to as value generated by image and language in use.

The analysis of discursive news focus on how news values come from the discourse. According to Bell (1991), most of the language techniques used in news making focuses on taking advantage of the news value. In the study undertaken by Caple and Bednarek, it has been confirmed that linguists defined the interaction between news values and language by using these verbs to construe, to articulate, to embed, to highlight, to stress, to enhance and to increase among many more. In that connection, it seems like news values are anchored on the embedding concept.

According to Bednarek (2012), attitudinal expressions make particular storylines newsworthy, hence making an attitudinal evaluation. As a result, attitudinal evaluation can determine the reason behind evaluative language features such as unimportant/important figures, and positive or negative figures are used in news. Hunston and Thompson (1999, 2000) referred to evaluation as anything that is contrasted or compared with the set standard. It addressed cultural differences. Since the entire phenomenon of expression and attitude is affected by various cultural values, these cultural values also form news values. This just shows how human predisposition makes people think subjectively.



4. Critical Discourse Analysis

The main goal of discourse analysis is to discover the connections between power, thinking, and language, as well as to establish the mechanisms for managing public opinion. There have been previously established various approaches to analyzing discourse that is not mutually exclusive and rather complements each other in research. The most widely known of these approaches is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Among the scholars supporting this approach are N. Fairclough, T. van Dijk, and R. Wodak.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a study and analysis of written and spoken texts, the objective of which is to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias (van Dijk, 1998). In other words, CDA aims at explaining the connections between discourse and social practices, making them transparent and understandable. The differentiating element of CDA lies in its attribute of `critical'. “'Critical' implies showing connections and causes which are hidden” (Fairclough, 1992). Critical Discourse Analysis views language as a social practice. One of its central goals in the context of political studies is to account for the relationships between discourse and social power of the dominant institutions and members of the ruling elite. Such an analysis should provide a description and a detailed explanation of how power mechanisms are enacted and legitimized via the form of oral and written speech.

There is also a large body of work in this area considering the relationship between language and power. R. Wodak (2001) noted that CDA aims at examining the link between dominance, discrimination, and control in language. She claims that the use of language power can be challenged and/or subverted in the short or long term.

N. Fairclough (1989) proposed that by storing the information about the worldview, language is indeed an integral part of human social life and the main means of expressing power in society.

The supporters of CDA note that language is not influential itself, but acquires significance when is being used (Blackledge, 2005). The pivotal element in the process of power and dominance establishing is access to discourse. In this respect, it can be considered that everyone has access to news media outlets, whether it is TV, radio, printed newspapers, or digital publishers. The more coverage the government has in the media, the greater its social power. Moreover, political institutions have partial control over some of the mass media sources, giving them groundwork for their specific purposes.

4.1 Fairclough's model of CDA

Through his publication in 1989 “Language and Power” N. Fairclough demystifies how social institution structures affect how human beings communicate. He differentiates three discourse levels. They include identifying the origin of the text in question, how that text was developed, and that text as a product of these three stages.

This forms a basis for analyzing discourse research in political news so that no media coverage and political context can easily be examined on those levels. Newsworthiness, news values, and embedding news concepts are all used, respectively.

Fairclough's model of CDA focuses on two perspectives: internal and external. Internal is concerned with grammar and vocabulary, while external is expressed by social influences and the author's own beliefs (Fairclough, 2003).

The internal relations of discourse are divided into three categories which are action, representation, and identification (Fairclough, 2003). Action is a text's format, representation is the characteristics of discourse setting and its participants, and identification is the author's viewpoint of the discursive event.

External relations are social practices and social structures. According to Fairclough (2003), social practices are “intermediate organizational entities between structures and events”.

It is necessary to mention that Critical Discourse Analysis is not limited to one research method. It is still an evolving and expanding approach to analyzing discourse.



5. Comparative Discourse Analysis of English-language and Russian-language popular web news outlets

In the summer of 2019, Moscow City Duma elections instigated a large wave of the protest movement over the months of July, August, and September. Having seen the elections being rigged, the Muscovites protested for fair elections with independent opposition candidates participating. The rallies were accompanied by mass detentions of the demonstrators, reaching the number of thousands arrested.

Limitations

This research had a number of limitations. First, the number of articles researched might be insufficient to draw major conclusions about the reporting styles of the news outlets based on its language, moreover, the research covers a list of chosen digital media outlets. Then, it is necessary to note that the topic of the research articles is political. It can be expected that the economic, cultural, ecological, and other events are reported in a different, less opinionated style, thus the reporting styles might have differences. Second, the implementation of statistical analysis was a new methodological approach for the author of this research and might have needed more experienced influence. Third, when analyzing Russian-language texts it has been found that due to the expansive nature of the language, words with the same connotations are expressed in various forms (for example, different cases) or were substituted with synonyms. This was a major limitation while collecting the data for statistical analysis.

The news outlets for the research have been chosen on the basis of statistical surveys. The chosen news outlets are considered to be the most popular among both English speaking and Russian speaking communities. According to the data presented by Statista, the most popular English-language digital media outlets are Yahoo News, Google News, Huffington Post, CNN, NBC, FOX News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and others (Walter, 2020) (see Appendix 1). Taking into account the fact that political setting and historical relations between counties might influence the attitude toward its internal events and, thus, the narrative it was essential to include English-language digital media outlets popular and respected not only in one country (the media of the United States prevail in number) but in other countries as well. Therefore, such outlets as Reuters and DW were also included in the list of researched outlets. Considering the main focus of this research is bias, it has been significant to determine the credibility of the media outlets in advance. According to the report “Top Online News Media Bias Ratings” it has been found that the chosen news outlets differ in its evaluation and vary from being left to right (AllSides, 2020) (see Appendix 2).

The statistics about Russian language web news outlets had been ambivalent. The results of the surveys would diverge because of the differences in methodology and the age of respondents. However, the most accurate data was presented by “FOM”, an organization carrying out sociological surveys. As presented in their report, the most popular Russian digital news outlets are Vesti.RU («Вести»), RIA Novosti («РИА Новости»), Lenta («Лента»), AiF («Аргументы и факты»), Gazeta.ru («Газета.ру»), KP («Комсомольская правда»), Izvestia («Известия»), Meduza («Медуза»), Vedomosti («Ведомости»), TASS («ТАСС»), Ekho of Moscow («Эхо Москвы»), Kommersant («Коммерсант»), and others (FOM, 2020) (see Appendix 3).

Among the mentioned popular web media outlets, 10 English language and 10 Russian language outlets which have reported on the protest events of Moscow's summer 2019 have been picked. All researched articles were issued between July and August of 2019. It has been concluded that the optimal number of articles from one news outlet would be 3. The reason for that being the considerable difference in the overall number of articles on the events. To be exact, international news outlets did not issue more than 4 articles on the following topic, whereas Russian news media dedicated a dozen of articles to the following matter. Therefore, it is suggested that it can be possible to carry out the proposed analysis while studying this number of articles from each outlet. The overall number of research articles is 60. All of the chosen articles are categorized as `news only' reports, i.e. there are no expert analysis and commentaries present, which would have inevitably made the information subjective.

The texts of the articles were analyzed through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach. The three-dimensional framework of discourse analysis introduced by Fairclough (1989, 1995) was implemented while examining the texts.

The texts of the news outlet are all identical in their structure as the texts are declarative -- it is stated what had happened, how, and when. However, the remaining two aspects of internal discourse relations are unique for every news outlet and need to be analyzed individually.

The social practices of English-language and Russian-language digital news media outlets are the same -- newspaper writing. Its main goal is to sell the product of their work, which is the information presented in the articles of these media outlets. However, the social structures of the outlets differ and will be analyzed individually in further chapters.

5.1 English-language news media outlets

5.1.2 Vocabulary, Representation, and Identification

For the research drawing upon the above-mentioned ratings and statistics, the following English-language digital news aggregators, news magazines, digital newspapers, etc. had been chosen: CNN, BBC, NBC, Fox News, The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Reuters, and DW.

First, it seems necessary to look at the overall linguistic picture of the articles prior to doing an individual analysis of each outlet. This preliminary analysis shows similarities and differences in the reporting formats of the outlets. Concerning the vocabulary, it is suggested to look at the result of cross-referencing the articles. To report on the event, the news outlets had to describe the event, its actors, setting, reasoning, etc.

Table 1 presents the most popular linguistic units used by the outlets to mention the events which were taking place and the number of times they were used. It can be seen that all news outlets used a variety of synonyms while reporting the event. However, some of the outlets were inclined to evaluating the events while describing just the type of the occurrence happening. For instance, one news outlet choosing the word `crisis' instead of the neutral `protest', `demonstration' or `rally'. Furthermore, almost every news outlet utilized the word `crackdown', meaning “a series of severe measures to curb the undesired behavior” (Cambridge Dictionary, 1995). The significance of this might be implicit, but the usage of this unit shifts the focus onto the authorities and their role in the event.

The following units differ semantically. Protest is regarded as a “formal objection”, while demonstration is “the act of demonstrating”. “Rally” is the derivative of those two, meaning a “demonstration where people unite in order to protest” (Simpson, 2017).

Table 1

Vocabulary describing the events

	CNN	NBC	BBC	FOX News	NY Times	The guardian	W Post	Huff Post	Reuters	DW
Protest	55	44	32	37	47	58	33	47	39	48
Rally	6	15	14	7	7	13	14	7	15	21
Demonstration	10	14	14	10	14	9	7	6	7	15
Crackdown	2	4	-	1	-	3	1	6	3	6
Crisis	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Table 2 shows the vocabulary units used to describe the participants of the events. As it can be observed, some media outlets shifted the focus onto one particular side of the two. For instance, CNN focused mainly on the opposition, The Guardian - on police, NBC - on Putin. However, there are outlets such as Reuters, The New York Times, BBC that equally mentioned all participants of the discursive event and their input.

Table 2

Vocabulary determining the participants

	CNN	NBC	BBC	FOX News	NY Times	The guardian	W Post	Huff Post	Reuters	DW
Police	15	20	22	30	24	38	18	27	12	25
Opposition	30	17	22	13	24	22	16	14	15	19
People	13	13	19	12	11	9	11	13	13	18
Protesters	10	14	7	5	15	17	13	10	12	13
Authorities	17	14	14	2	13	9	7	8	12	12
Putin	10	22	8	5	11	5	9	12	9	3
Kremlin	6	8	2	3	4	2	3	6	5	1

The following table shows the number of times each media outlet mentioned detentions and the actions of law enforcement. As it can be seen, all of the media outlets reported on this issue. However, the articles of NBC, FOX News and The New York Times did not assess the actions of the police to be violent.

Table 3

Vocabulary with a negative connotation

	CNN	NBC	BBC	FOX News	NY Times	The guardian	W Post	Huff Post	Reuters	DW
Detain	23	14	13	11	12	16	10	11	9	12
Arrest	1	10	18	25	14	14	6	17	4	19
Violence	5	-	4	-	-	5	1	8	2	4

Table 4 presents the list of adjectives and the number of times they were used to evaluate the nature of the events. Primarily the news outlets focused on the illegality of the events, then came the mass character of the protests. Some of the outlets chose to highlight that some of the rallies were authorized.

Table 4

Vocabulary of evaluation

	CNN	NBC	BBC	FOX News	NY Times	The guardian	W Post	HuffPost	Reuters	DW
Unauthorized	-	3	8	6	1	-	2	5	-	1
Unsanctioned	6	-	1	3	-	2	-	-	1	-
Large	-	-	3	4	-	-	1	6	-	-
Mass	-	-	2	1	-	-	3	2	-	-
Authorized	-	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	1	1
Approved	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	-	-	1

To summarize the statistical analysis, the focus in the articles of the English-language digital media was placed on the participants of the discursive events. Namely, the main actors in the opinion of the research outlets were police, opposition and authorities. More immediate emphasis has been placed on the violence towards the protesters and mass character of the protests.

CNN

Compared to other digital news outlets, CNN proved to be the most free-speeched, as well as being the most criticizing of the Russian government's position.

While reporting on the events, the outlet was prone to name the event in a creatively evaluative manner, using such phrases as “a heady summer”, “Moscow's summer of discontent”, and “marching season”. Even though the outlet did not legitimize the event, mentioning multiple times the illegality of protests, CNN acknowledges them being the “biggest”.

Much attention was given to the reaction of the Russian authorities. Each article title included “Putin” or “Kremlin”: “...The Kremlin is watching…”, “Putin tried to smash the opposition…”. The reaction of the government was broadly assimilated into the “Carrots and sticks approach”. The undertaken measures were described as “last-minute street carnivals” and “dubiously titled barbecue-and-music festival”. The hyphened words are usually used for vivid writing. The use of the word “dubious” is a hedged way of expressing the criticism.

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