Media Images of Tycoons: Before and after Putin's Coming to Presidential Term

The project proposal describes the media images of oligarchs in two election campaigns, namely the election campaigns of 1996 and 2012. The empirical research will be set within a frame of investigating the tycoons` media images in «Kommersant», «Izvestiya», «Nezavisimaya Gazeta » newspapers. The issue raised in the report is intended to identify the effect of political conjuncture on media images. Upon examination of the media images in the election campaigns, it has been noted that the newspapers had shaped positive media images of tycoons in 1996, while the images of tycoons in 2012 could be determined as sharply negative. The hypothesis stands that media images have been permanently modified due to the nature of election campaign, political platform of the leader, his/her close political allies, his/her opponents, the main slogans of the campaign and the role of the media. The purpose of the research is to emphasize the similarities and differences of media images in the election campaigns of 1996 and 2012 and in essence investigates the role of Vladimir Putin on the way the tycoons have been represented. An additional point is to extend a research methodology and instrument to reveal the modifications of images in media. The results anticipated will show a new agreement between silogarchs, oligarchs and the society. It could change prevailing beliefs and set priorities for further investigations.