2024/12/23 by Antal Wozniak, Zixiu Liu, Fabienne Lind · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #International Relations and Foreign Policy #European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies #Media Studies and Communication
paper · doi:10.1177/17506352241302244
openalex publication_date 2024/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/27
How closely does news coverage in independent media outlets in non-Western countries follow domestic political elites’ interpretations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? And how much attention do newsrooms pay to geopolitical aspects of the issue compared to domestic considerations? This study moves beyond a still prevailing Euro- and US-centric perspective by focusing on Brazil, India and South Africa, three democratic countries with close economic and political ties to Russia. The authors systematically compare the wording used by elite politicians to describe the events in Ukraine with that in mainstream news reports. They also analyse the salience of political leaders and geopolitical entities (countries and intergovernmental organizations) in news coverage. For the use of descriptive terminology, they find no evidence for news reporting to be indexed to government wording. Their analysis of references to geopolitical actors shows news media’s strong propensity for domesticating the war for their respective national audiences.