Potential for Measuring the Information Field of Regional Policy in Southern Russia on the Internet | South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences
Potential for Measuring the Information Field of Regional Policy in Southern Russia on the Internet
Vol. 25 (2024) No. 3, Southern Russia: People, Society, Politics
Vol. 25 (2024) No. 3
Southern Russia: People, Society, Politics

Potential for Measuring the Information Field of Regional Policy in Southern Russia on the Internet

Runaev T.A.
Kuban State University
ORCID ID 0000-0002-0154-6959
PDF (Russian)
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-25-3-69-82
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-25-3-69-82

How to Cite Array

Runaev T.A. (2024) Potential for Measuring the Information Field of Regional Policy in Southern Russia on the Internet. South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences, 25 (3), pp. 69-82. DOI: 10.31429/26190567-25-3-69-82 (In Russian)
Submission Date 2024-06-07
Accepted Date 2024-08-15
Published Date 2024-09-30

Copyright (c) 2024 Тимофей Александрович Рунаев

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The contemporary digitalization of politics carries an inherent risk of aggravating the influence of marginalized and extremist groups in the online domain, which disseminate destructive ideologies. In the southern regions of the Russian Federation, this issue assumes particular significance in light of the proximity of these territories to areas characterized by interethnic and interstate tensions. It is therefore necessary for regional political elites to consolidate their position in order to create and disseminate meaningful narratives that portray current events and processes in a positive light at the macro-­regional level. The objective of this article is to examine the structure and thematic content of the online activities of regional leaders in southern Russia. In order to achieve this, the author clarifies the concept of the information field of politics as a domain in which political actors construct a news agenda with the assistance of online resources and explain reality through a shared repertoire of images, cognitive schemas and narratives. Subsequently, the RStudio computer application, which is based on the R programming language, was used to web-scrape 11,000 recent posts from the official pages of regional leaders of Southern Russia in the “VKontakte” social network. Natural language processing methods, specifically text mining, were then applied to these posts. These methods included latent semantic analysis (LSA), sentiment analysis, content analysis with the author’s dictionary, and word match analysis. As a result, it can be observed that the online activity of regional leaders in southern Russia is currently characterized by a notable degree of consistency. This suggests the existence of a stable information field, with the semantic core centered on themes of assistance to newly-­established constituent entities of the Russian Federation, family support and the advancement of local urban environments.

Keywords

regional elite, public policy, digitalization of politics, text-mining, information security, online communication

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