?
Освещение выборов президента РФ 2018 в прессе и блогосфере
The study analyzed the coverage of candidates for the Russian presidential election in 2018. We selected the month preceding the voting day as the analysis period, since election campaign was most active at this time. The participants of the pre-election race received uneven attention from the media. Putin was much more often than other candidates mentioned in both blog posts and in federal print media, and often appeared in media reports in the main role. The candidates, excluding Grudinin, were mostly covered positively or neutral. In case of Grudinin negatively colored articles prevailed over positive news. However, the coverage of the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation can hardly be called unfavorable, since he often appeared on the news in the main role and was mentioned separately from the rest of the candidates, and not in the general list of participants in the race. Sobchak is more often mentioned separately from other candidates in blogs, and Zhirinovsky, on the contrary, in the press. Candidates with fewer votes are less likely to be discussed in the media. In addition, the candidates-outsiders are highlighted mainly in articles containing references to other elections participants. An analysis of joint mentions of candidates in the press shows that Putin is the main opponent for the four participants in the election. Grudinin was the main opponent for Putin and Suraykin. While the candidates who did not get to the top half of the list of voting results, were not the main opponents for any of the participants in the race. We can assume that the candidates-outsiders preferred to attack the leader, and not each other.