The Crimean Conflict on Russian and Ukrainian TV: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach

2021. No. 6.

Semykina K.

The paper explores discourses on Russian and Ukrainian television related to the Crimean conflict of 2014. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory serves as a theoretical framework of the study. The study contributes to academic debates on two levels: on a substantive level, it provides insights into the logic of the Crimean conflict; on the methodological level, it suggests the method of corpus-assisted semantic network analysis for empirical analysis in discourse-theoretical studies. News reports devoted to events in Crimea on a Russian TV channel Channel 1 and a Ukrainian TV channel Inter, which were broadcasted from 28.02.2014 to 16.03.2014 served as empirical data for the study. In total, 390 news reports, accounting to 19 hours and 20 minutes of coverage, were analyzed. The analysis showed that the Russian channel’s discourse emphasized decision-making processes in Crimea, Crimean residents and Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, as well as Ukraine’s relations with the West. Ukrainian channel’s discourse emphasized military actions in Crimea and Russia’s involvement in the events in the region. Both sides’ interpretations were based on hegemonic discursive constructions: it was anti-Westernism for the Russian discourse, and ‘Russia as a potential enemy’ for the Ukrainian discourse. At the methodological level, the method of corpus-assisted semantic network analysis proved useful for empirical research in a discourse-theoretical study. It allowed to analyze an extensive corpus of texts and make conclusions about prominent patterns in discourses based on parameters of semantic networks.

Keywords: Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, semantic network analysis, discourse theory