This case study is an example of interdisciplinary research, which couples the linguistic aspects with the study of public political discourse in social media. The purpose of the study is to identify how “realism” terms and national/global agenda are represented in Twitter discourse of leaders of countries which claim to be global powers today. Obviously, it is impossible to claim a high status in the modern world without participation in global discussions (including the level of influence on public opinion in Twitter). We collect data from official accounts of the U.S. President Donald Trump, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Then we propose a research method developed by us which contains 5 stages. The main method of research is traditional content analysis, not only selective (under this or that theory), but also “front-line” one. We are interested in the subject matter (key, most frequent vocabulary) that dominates the considered texts. We separate the same amounts of text (approximately 33 000 words) in the content of the Twitter pages of Trump, Macron, Putin and Medvedev. Then we quantify the words and identify the key concepts which are specific for political realism and political idealism. We perform a “frontal” general analysis of all the most frequently used concepts. We make a quantitative assessment of the nature of the use of political leaders’ key concepts (this stage of analysis is divided on several sub-stages). Finally we compare the frequency of concepts’ use by leaders of the West and Russia. Putin-Medvedev pair has obvious coincidences with Trump at the external level, but a significant divergence in the base level, i.e. this is another picture of the world, another choice of subjects, in contrast to Trump-Macron pair. Russian leaders are focused on domestic problems of the country. Global agenda is not sufficiently represented in Twitter accounts of Russian leaders. Trump and Macron discuss common (global) themes herewith they have different ideological preferences.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationElectronic Governance and Open Society
Subtitle of host publicationConference proceedings EGOSE 2018
EditorsYuri Misnikov, Andrei Chugunov, Dmitrii Trutnev, Evgeny Roshchin
Place of PublicationCham
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages374-383
ISBN (Print)9783030132828
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event5th International Conference on Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia, EGOSE 2018 - St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Duration: 14 Nov 201816 Nov 2018

Publication series

NameCommunications in Computer and Information Science
Volume947
ISSN (Print)1865-0929

Conference

Conference5th International Conference on Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia, EGOSE 2018
Country/TerritoryRussian Federation
CitySt. Petersburg
Period14/11/1816/11/18

    Research areas

  • Comparative analysis, Content analysis, Political discourse, Social media, Twitter, ELECTION

    Scopus subject areas

  • Social Sciences(all)

ID: 38786440