Messages in the Media - University of Toronto

in total) in Russia in 2011. 7 Despite being a radio-station,
transcripts of its programs are available online, as well as
blogs, surveys, news, and notable articles from foreign
press sources (in translation).
Lenta.ru
www.lenta.ru
Lenta.ru is one of the most popular internet-based news
resources in Russia. It gets 100,000 hits a day on average,
with approximately 30,000,000 hits in 2011. 8 Extensive
research yielded no information indicating any sort of political
bias on its part. Its high popularity in the blogosphere
(evidenced by the frequency of its articles appearing
on blogs, Facebook, and other types of social media)
also testify to its objectivity and esteem among the
readership. It is updated 24 hours a day.
Izvestia
www.izvestia.ru
Izvestia is another widely read daily newspaper. In 2011 it
was the third most-cited Russian newspaper. 9 It is available
in print, with a daily circulation of 234,500, 10 and
online. It is also considered a trusted source.
These three sources were searched for the combination of
the words “European Union” and “Russia” for the period
from 1 January 2011 to 1 January 2012. Ekho yielded 320
results, of which 55 were relevant to this study; Lenta.ru
returned 364 results, of which 28 were found pertinent;
Izvestia produced 570 results, of which 36 were used for
the current analysis.
FINDINGS:
Over the course of 2011, media outlets were dominated by
the following topics, which particularly influenced Russia-
EU relations in that period:
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