Representation of Migrants and Refugees in Russian Pro-Governmental and Liberal Media Discource

The present paper is devoted to the study of the representation of migrants and refugees in Russian liberal and pro-government media discourse. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that modern media have the strongest influence on the recipients of mass communication through the representation of certain phenomena and are one of the main levers of influence on the electorate by politicians. In view of the proven controllability of the media, it is of interest to study the representation of the same phenomenon in two media discourses: pro-government and oppositional - using the example of one of the topical issues - migration. The aim of the study is to identify the differences between the Russian liberal media discourse and the pro-government media discourse on the example of the representation of migrants and refugees. To achieve the goal, a number of tasks were carried out, including analysis of the literature on the topic under study to determine the basic concepts of work, selection of material for the study, analysis of collocates of the lexemes “migrant” and “refugee” in the corpus of articles, comparison of the representation of refugees and migrants in the liberal and pro-government discourse media. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the works of a number of Russian and foreign scholars. The theory of media discourse is based on the works of T. Dobrosklonskaya, A. Kibrik, E. Sheigal, T.A. van Dijk et al., the theory of representation is based on the works of T. Dubrovskaya, E. Kozhemyakin, L. Khismatullina, A. Garaeva, I. Akhmetzyanov, S. Hall, T. van Leeuwen, and others. The work also uses the corpus-assisted discourse analysis developed by a group of researchers led by P. Baker. This method involves a combination of corpus linguistic approaches and critical discourse analysis. Within the framework of the study, when selecting material, the method of automated collection and filtration of the material is used; when analysing the material, an automated corpus analysis (using the corpus manager AntConc), a discourse analysis, a quantitative method, a comparison method are utilized. The material of the research is the articles of the periodicals Novaya Gazeta and Rossiyskaya Gazeta published in the period from 2015 to 2018 and containing the key words "migrant" and "refugee". According to the results of the study, most means of the representation of migrants and refugees in liberal and pro-government discourses reflect the concepts associated with the relocation, registration, employment of migrants and refugees and do not affect the recipients of communication to change existing representations. However, it can be noted that a more negative representation of migrants is presented in the liberal discourse than in the pro-governmental one, but there is criticism of the authorities' actions through actualizing the problems of migrants who have dropped out of the discussion of pro-government discourse (for example, crime against migrants or living in poor conditions). Such a phenomenon can be explained by the influence of the agendas of both periodicals. The results of the study can be used to further explore the representation of migrants and refugees in political media discourse and in works devoted to the study of Russian liberal and pro-governmental media discourse.