Attitude of Russians to the topic of material well-being: analysis of comments in social media

2023.

Fabrykant M., Magun V., Милкова М. А.

The current study is a content analysis of news comments posted on the Russian social network VKontakte to investigate the expression of opinions on material well - being. Based on NLP methods, we analyze the main groups of expression, which are considered in the context of formulating evaluations and appealing to social norms. We analyze the content of discourse at the micro - level; analyze how attitudes towards the topic of material well - being are expressed through evaluative and normative statements; and identify the key actors of the discussions. The analysis shows the prevalence of generalized statements, which consider their country and people as a w hole, opposed to the outside world. The most significant problems, such as price growth, unemployment, are not actively discussed. One's own situation is usually characterized by neutral or positive assessments, while a generalized judgment about the life of the "Russian people" is predominantly assessed negatively. It is shown that on the basis of a negative assessment of the current state of affairs a person appeals to the social norm. A significant share of normative statements are prescriptions, which a re less connected with references to specific individuals or organizations. Thus, the discussions do not show any tendency for Russian citizens to impute to the country's leadership the obligation to take measures to change life for the bes

Keywords: sentiment analysis, материальное благополучие, анализ тональности, material well-being

Publication based on the results of: Basic human values and subjective evaluations of living conditions: their evolution in cross-country perspective (2023)