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Биополитические стратегии противодействия пандемии COVID-19 в медиадискурсах России, Германии и Франции
The aim of the present study is to compare how the media of three countries ‒ Russia, France and Germany ‒ described the events taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis comprised three stages. Firstly, actors of biopolitics were compared (who exactly, from the point of view of the media, implements government biopolitics). Secondly, ideologemes of biopolitics (how willingly the media support the government’s biopolitical programs and participate in biopolitical propaganda) were scrutinized. Thirdly, the spheres of biopolitics’ implementation (what spheres of society’s existence are mainly captured by biopolitics, from the point of view of the media) were analysed. The theoretical and methodological basis of this study constitutes the theory of biopolitics of M. Foucault, the propaganda model of E. Herman and N. Chomsky, and the concept of (in) securitization of D. Bigo. The texts about the COVID-19 pandemic in four “waves” (January 2020 - March 2022), extracted by the keywords “pandemic”, “covid”, “coronavirus” from the archives of “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “Kommersant”, “Novaya Gazeta”, “Le Figaro”, “Le Monde”, “Le Parisien”, “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Die Zeit”, “Die Tageszeitung” were scrutinized. The total volume of the analyzed material is 67.62 million words. It was hypothesized that the focus on preserving the population in the context of a pandemic and uncertainty brings together the strategies of various states reflected in the media discourse. We also assumed that the propaganda orientations of various non-state media in one country during a pandemic can vary significantly, and the broadcast of government biopolitical programs in the media discourse of non-state media can be presented locally and fragmented. The results obtained allowed us to draw the following conclusions. In all media under study, the state power acts as a key subject of biopower and biopolitics represented by its actors. Thus, the media discourse constructs the traditional scheme of subjects of biopower following M. Foucault. In addition, all the media studied in one way or another took part in the biopolitical propaganda of vaccination, which was carried out by the governments of Russia, Germany and France. The insecuritization of public life on the pages of the media, as a rule, affects social relations, the economy, health care and education. The problematization of insecurity in the field of biopower or the existential sphere (as a struggle between life and death) is also presented in a number of media. In general, a comparative analysis of the media of the three countries shows that the media discourse share a number of characteristics, but country-specific (and, possibly, cultural) features in the media construction of the “pandemic worldview” have also been identified. The informativeness of comparative studies of media discourse in the process of constructing "social knowledge" about the world around can be assessed as high.