Independent Media and Initiatives in State Family Policy during the 'Pronatalist Turn'

Abstract

Nadezhda K. Radina – Dr. of Political Science, professor, Department of Social Sciences; National Research
University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. Email: nradina@hse.ru

The article analyses changes in how family relations are framed in the texts of independent mass media before and after the 'pronatalist turn' in Russian family policy in 2006. The research question problematises the whether the mass media is able to build strategies not only aimed at submission to political power, but also at resistance, especially in cases where mass media put themselves in a position of independent opposition to political influence. Culturomics, a research method geared towards cultural and social processes with the use of statistical analysis of how words and word combinations are used in a variety of texts, can be employed as a tool for gathering empirical data. Based on statistical analysis of word usage in the media, this paper considers how the frame-structure ‘sem’ya’ (family) typical of a certain period in the Russian family policy evolution is being constructed. The content of the articles depicting family relations in the media is subjected to statistical analysis of word combination (‘trigrams’) usage. The archives of a social and political online edition ‘Gazeta.ru’, the Russian daily social and
political newspaper Kommersant; the daily analytical newspaper RBK; and the Russian weekly social and political newspaper ‘Novaya gazeta’ were all analysed (2000–2015). According to the results of the study, strategies of ‘narrative resistance’ are not actually used. It is concluded that political elites in Russia do not view family policy as a space for the realization of political interests.