A Comparative Corpus Analysis of the Russian-Ukrainian War Coverage in Eastern and Western English Language News Releases

Abstract

This study presents the findings of a corpus-based comparative analysis of lexical characteristics in the prevalent discourses of the Russian-Ukrainian war coverage within Eastern and Western news releases. The analysis relied on two specialized corpora comprising articles from Eastern (475506 tokens) and Western (531973 tokens) news outlets compiled to serve the objectives of this study. To examine the textual data, keyword analysis, n-grams analysis, and collocation analysis were utilized. The obtained findings revealed both similarities and divergences in terms of lexical characteristics and discourses in war coverage. Negative discourse prosodies related to the ongoing war were identified in both corpora, revealing a condemnation of the military intervention through their linguistic choices. However, notable differences were documented in the extent of emphasis on the war proceedings and related issues induced by war. The Eastern news sources displayed a degree of ambivalence in their position towards the conflict, with a tendency to present it as dependent on internal factors within Ukraine. On the other hand, the Western news sources extensively commented on the agents of the war and the war-related agenda, using emotionally-charged language to portray the war and its consequences. Furthermore, even within the context of war, the Eastern news outlets prioritized the themes of economic stability, Covid-19 pandemic, the need for dialogue, and international collaboration. In contrast, its Western counterpart paid more heed to the representation of the military intervention itself. The Eastern news coverage emphasized the region’s policy of maintaining neutrality in the conflict, which contrasted with the West’s unequivocal position in designating the aggressor side and placing stronger emphasis on the discussion of the military intervention. In sum, critically evaluating the messages encoded through linguistic means disseminated by the media can empower global readership to make more informed judgments in the discourse of war.