CC BY
16
UDC 070.15
DOI 10.24147/2413-6182.2022.9(4) .800-816
ISSN 2413-6182 eISSN 2658-4867
MEDIA FRAMING AND MEDIA DETECTIVES CONSTRUCTION: A CASE ABOUT CORRUPTION
N.K. Radina1, K.R. Iakupova2
National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia)
Abstract: This study analyzes how media narratives about investigating corruption crimes are created. It is assumed that such a media narrative is built according to the rules of a detective story in fiction. The theoretical framework of the research is frame analysis in media research. Materials for the research are the texts of Russian media sources that participated in covering the story of the ex-minister Alexey Ulyukaev corruption crime (2016-2018). The results show that contemporary media sources use frames typical of literary works to represent events to the audience (detective frame for this case). Using media framing, the topic of corruption crimes in the media is transformed into a detective story and turns into entertainment. The study proposes to consider the modern media detective story as a narrative distributed among several media. The study develops the idea of combining news and entertainment in the media discourse in order to manage the opinions of readers (distract them from political problems).
Key words: media framing, media detective story, frame analysis, media narrative, news.
For citation:
Radina, N.K., Iakupova, K.R. (2022), Media framing and media detectives construction: a case about corruption. Communication Studies (Russia), Vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 800-816. DOI: 10.24147/2413-6182.2022.9(4).800-816.
About the authors:
1 Radina, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, Prof., Professor of the Department of General and Social Psychology
2 Iakupova, Karina Rustemovna, Master of Linguistics Corresponding authors:
12 Postal address: 7, Universitetskii per., Nizhny Novgorod, 603022, Russia
© H.K. PaduHa, K.P. RKynoea, 2022
1 E-mail: rasv@yandex.ru
2 E-mail: yakypic24@mail.ru Received: March 9, 2022 Revised: May 16, 2022 Accepted: October 10, 2022
1. Introduction
Over the last several years, Russian media sources have continuously covered the news of corruption scandals and crimes in the economic sector. Once an inconsistent robust crime story covered in the media sources comes to an end, yet another one appears. Different media sources join the coverage of the crime stories narrating about the illegal actions of civil servants and politicians. There are almost no periods in the media narrative when elements of investigation or crimes are not cited. This way the Russian audience who read papers or monitor electronic media sources can always be aware of the current criminal acts and investigations. "The case of ex-minister Ulyukaev" is one of the most appealing cases of media narratives covering the crime of a federal civil servant.
Alexey Ulyukaev, former Minister for Economic Development of the Russian Federation (in service 2013-2016], was accused of corruption on November 15, 2016 and on the same day he was placed under house arrest and removed from office. According to official sources, Ulyukaev demanded money from a Rosneft company representative for positive feedback on the deal of Bashneft shares acquisition1. Ulyukaev was arrested at the moment of getting a $2 million bribe.
Starting from the arrest of the minister until the final sentence was announced, Russian media sources regularly covered all new details of the investigation, interviewing the ex-minister's colleagues and collecting the most peculiar facts and news about the criminal.
Collaborative work of journalists let a detailed and at the same time controversial story of the ex-minister's crime emerge. As a result, the narrative of Ulyukaev's criminal act was distributed and split among various Russian media sources. The high level of journalists' and readers' interest and popularity of such materials in the mass media allows to assume that media narratives function as a fiction literature genre that lets readers decipher media narratives and predict further events on their own, according to an existing detective pattern in literature.
1 Mukhametshina, E., Kornya, A. (2017), The case of the former minister Alexey Ulyukaev goes to court. He is accused of taking a bribe on an especially large scale. Vedomosti, July 27, available at: https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2017/07/27/726234-delo-ulyu-kaeva. (in Russian).
Media narratives and "tell stories"
The activity of mass media in the field of information is closely connected with the creation of narratives that influence the way society perceives events covered by the media. Journalists put the news into a form of structured messages which aim to attract the audience to the informational source and implicitly influence the readers [Morstatter et al. 2018].
The idea of a narrative nature of knowledge and the function of narrative as a means of perceiving reality was put forward by researchers in the realm of mass communication in the 1970s [Jameson 1981]. The very structure of the narrative is typical of the media coverage. In the framework of the structural paradigm, the mass media narrative is defined as a media text, consisting of a complicated interwoven narrative whole that includes an author's narrative, a narrative of the witnesses of the event, an expert narrative and a character narrative [Klushina 2015]. Every type of narrative is represented in the key story on a different scale as the choice of a certain narrative dominance is conditioned by the objectives of a media agent. To have impact on the target, mass media reconstruct the reality, applying genre patterns of storytelling.
Media narratives can develop various genre patterns like drama, tragedy, detective, etc. [Algavi et al. 2019] but their principal unique feature is the destruction of borders within one text. Hence, narration of a drama or detective story initiated by one media source and later continued evolves from a number of other sources. As a result, the media narrative becomes a split narrative distributed between media agents. It integrates diverse interpretations created by a number of different authors and has an "open ending" with no control of the "final remark".
The media in the modern information field "tell stories", thereby engaging readers.
Research Capabilities of Frame Analysis
Application of frames in a narrative (to be more exact, the frame organization of a detective narrative] requires the explanation of the nature of frames and their capabilities in the process of narrative analysis. Nowadays, frame analysis is used by researchers from different fields of humanities [Cacciatore, Scheufele, Iyengar 2016]. Despite the diversity in frame application, the researchers build up their theories on the basic principles that were defined in the 20th century (G. Bateson, E. Goffman, M.L. Minsky, etc.]. The definition "frame" was introduced into scientific discourse with the artificial intelligence theory, where the frame itself represents a structure-based situation representation (the structural unit of a frame is a slot].
In the field of psychology, G. Bateson used frame analysis in the 1950s when conducting an experiment on monkeys in order to distinguish structural peculiarities of communication [Bateson 1972]. In linguistics, the term "frame" was introduced by M. Minsky who defined it as a framework of reality perception engraved in a person's mind, which changes its configuration under di-
verse conditions. In other words, a frame, according to Minsky, is a data structure for "stereotyped situations" representation [Minsky 1975].
In linguistics, the idea appeared to be the most productive. Ch. Fillmore used frames to create the linguistic concept of frame semantics [Nikonova 2007]. T. van Dijk interprets frame from the point of view of discourse as both concepts supplement one another when denoting exact principles and functions or collaborate in filtering and expressing the material. According to T. van Dijk, a message can be successfully interpreted only when the discourse is correctly perceived. Frames that bear knowledge which is widely known in society and typical of communicants facilitate correct understanding of the situation [Van Dijk 2000]. In comparison with Ch. Fillmore who attributed general knowledge as well as facts about an exact situation to frames, T. van Dijk believes that frames carry information about stereotyped situations only, defining frames as elements of social memory.
Frames are also widely used in sociological and socio-psychological fields of studies. E. Goffman interpreted frames as micro sociological descriptions that are altered under the influence of social reality [Goffman 1974]. The researcher believed that systems of frames do not represent strict algorithms of perception, as "ideal" frame patterns can change when corresponding to the reality. Borders of frames also change due to subjective perception of reality and external conditions occurring where the interaction is taking place. Goff-man's frame possesses a quality of two-facedness as a frame represents the "matrix of possible events" and "scheme of interpretations" that is a distinctive feature of every perception. In other words, the representatives of a social group perceive the message within the frame of their "traditional worldview" [Persson 2018].
Frame analysis in literature and media research is of particular importance for this study. In the modern literary field the term "frame" is used when describing the basic structure of this or that genre of a piece of literature [Durkina 2013]. Literary writing is a text, consisting of the main plot line (core) and slots of competing frames. The audience perceive information by applying the basic frame and filling in variable slots with new information. When every new scene is introduced into the narrative, slots with new information pile up on previous episodes, engendering diverse connections such as historical, causal and logical ones. Perception of the text occurs when the situational slots that initially belonged to different frames are activated. In other words, variable frames compete with each other, as the same slot might appear in diverse frames.
Nevertheless, literature researchers claim in their papers that a few genres, including detective stories, are considered to have a set of fixed frames. As a rule, the invariable structure of a detective narrative is represented as a frame which consists of the following elements (slots): the crime, the investigation, the detective, the offender and the victim [Ermolenko 2015]. It should be
noted that this frame is a complicated unity as it combines a role subframe (the roles: a detective, a criminal, a victim] and an event subframe (a crime, an investigation).
Frame analysis is popular in media studies. Topic frame analysis is chosen to investigate news reports devoted to climate change, global warming, drug addiction, elections, political debates as well as current news [Santos, Tainsky 2013].
The process of framing assists the media in shaping a particular frame of mind among their audience as the reaction to the news being covered by structuring the information in a special manner and accentuating essential facts [Sogelola 2018].
The analytical potential of frame analysis explains why it is often used:
• to identify the strategy of conflict, broadcast in the news narrative [Garcia-Perdomo 2017];
• to study media representation of any crisis - political, financial or military [Makhortykh, Sydorova 2017], or pandemics crisis COVID-19 [Mutua, Ong'ong'a 2020].
In media framing research, there is no single common way of frame analysis. Media frames are studied using both qualitative and quantitative methods with modern software [Garcia-Perdomo 2017].
2. Methods and Materials
This study analyzes how media narratives about investigating corruption crimes are created. It is assumed that such a media narrative is built according to the rules of a detective story in fiction, therefore, a frame of a literary detective story can be identified in a media narrative about a crime. The research question is to reconstruct the frame of the distributed transmedia narrative about the crime and punishment of the ex-minister and compare the resulting frame with the frame of the detective story which is used in fiction.
The theoretical framework of the research is frame analysis in media research (and literature research of the detective narratives]. In this study, frame analysis is used to study the characteristics of media narratives covering the prosecution of Russian ex-Minister of Economic Development A. Ulyukaev. The goal of this research is the identification of the frame of judicial proceeding narration in the discourse of Russian media sources, covering the arrest and judicial proceeding against Russian ex-minister A. Ulyukaev and the analysis of the extracted frame in the context of a literary detective story frame. The research stages include:
• creation of a text collection (search and identification of media texts by keywords], distribution of texts by periods (reconstruction of the fabula of the crime and investigation];
• identification of slots (slots were identified based on frequent bigramms], reconstruction of the role (actors] and event (action list] subframes
using of the computational linguistics methods (for all texts and periods of the history of the investigation);
• comparison of the obtained frame with the frame of a literary detective.
A number of Russian media sources covered the "corruption case" - arrest and judicial proceeding against A. Ulyukaev. This fact corresponds to the given definition of media narrative that is split and distributed between various actors and storytellers. Materials for the research have been compiled from the texts of Russian media sources that participated in covering the story of the federal civil servant corruption crime. The empirical base of the research is represented by Russian electronic newspapers and information platforms "RBK", "Komsomol'skaya pravda", "RIA Novosti", "Gazeta.Ru", "Lenta.Ru", "Glavnoe", "Kommersant", "Novaya gazeta", "Vestnik 24", "Zagolovki.ru" (and others, 15 media in total). The news reports have been selected according to the keywords occurrence: "Alexey Ulyukaev", "arrest", "criminal case", "exminister for Economic Development of Russia".
A collection of news reports was compiled from November 2016 until January 2018. The total volume of the selected texts is 77 (68 380 words, 497 600 characters with spaces). All the reports were distributed into 4 periods: "Before trial process: Ulyukaev's arrest", "Trials", "Ulyukaev's case media narratives between trials", "Ulyukaev's case media coverage after the verdict". The following periods chronologically correspond to real stages of A. Ulyu-kaev's arrest and trial hearings that provide a temporal pattern of the media narrative plot frame. The factual nature of media coverage is expected to unite a constructed frame with the sociological understanding of frame as a matrix of possible events.
Distribution of the texts into the periods has been carried out in accordance with the changes happening with the status of A. Ulyukaev during the entire judicial proceeding. The first period reflects the minister for Economic Development as a criminal, the second represents the civil servant as a defendant, the third period describes the investigation of Ulyukaev's case, and the last period represents the accused ex-minister. The next step has been taken to reconstruct the plot frame of the judicial proceeding description. It is recommended to construct a plot frame applying the following scheme. According to the research, the plot includes a stage of identification of the situation, a stage of typical roles distinction, conditions of a typical and non-typical situation input and the order of the happening episodes [Polatovskaya 2013]. In other words, when constructing a frame of any event or process, a researcher should identify role composition slots of the frame (the slots which describe the main characters) as well as action and events slots. The conducted research uses the classical main character taxonomy (a protagonist, antagonist, pursuer and witnesses) represented by the actors of the judicial proceeding to reflect the role composition in the reconstruction of the judicial proceeding media coverage. To reflect action and events slots, we used traditional judicial vocabulary that
represents the procedure of crime identification, investigation, court defeat/winning and conviction/acquittal.
Slot identification and further construction of role and event frames on its basis have been conducted with the methods of computational linguistics (concordance, collocation corpus search, n-gram search in AntConc corpus manager] and the statistics methods (instances per million (ipm) coefficient which characterizes the ratio of a word usage to the million words of the corpus and correlation coefficient PMI (Pointwise Mutual Information]].
3. Results: Temporal logic of a frame
In the process of data analysis, all the media texts were classified according to the time of their release and later matched with the defined periods of "Ulyukaev's case" (Fig. 1].
40
12 3 4
Fig. 1. Media coverage of Ulyukaev's case in the media sources: number of articles: 1 - Pre-trial publications; 2 - Publications during court hearings (August 8 and December 15, 2017]; 3 - Media publications between court hearings;
4 - Publications after sentencing
The crime itself (bribe acceptance] in media was covered in a retrospective manner. On the whole, the interest of the mass media to the story was relatively high and had positive dynamics.
The ending of investigation process (solution to the "mysterious bribe acceptance"] after the verdict was not heavily covered in media sources and the number of texts revealing the details of "Ulyukaev's case" after the conviction verdict was extremely low. According to Fig. 1, the case of ex-minister was mostly covered in media before the trials and between them (34 publications, 221059 characters with spaces].
$2 million in $100 bills equals 20 kilos of cargo. According to the prosecution, Ulyukaev carried 10 kilos in one bag (others define it as a briefcase) to the "Rosneft" parking lot himself while the leftover 10 kilos (in another bag or
briefcase) were carried by the head of "Rosneft" Igor Sechin ("Courtier ricochet. Who will be the main loser in the Sechin vs Ulyukaev trial"; Inosmi.ru, 20.08.17].
As former minister for Economic Development A. Ulyukaev was denying his guilt, the court placed the defendant under house arrest several times. The judicial proceeding against the minister stretched out for a long period of time and, consequently, the case was being embellished by the media sources with new details after every new trial. As a result, the media interest in covering the corruption scandal was increasing when real actions were happening.
Despite the fact that a federal minister appeared on the bench for defendants for the first time in the modern history, the process became even more entertaining when a new "delicious" detail as a basket of sausage labeled "From Ivanich" (presumably a standard "Rosneft" company treat for VIP clients, which consists of the hunting trophies of the oil company CEO) popped up in the case ("This is such a sausage", Gazeta.Ru, 06.09.17].
The key sources covering the story of A. Ulyukaev's arrest and conviction were "RBK" (a business news web-portal], "Komsomol'skaya pravda" (a daily Russian tabloid newspaper], "Kommersant" (a leading liberal business broadsheet] and "Gazeta.Ru" (a Russian news site based in Moscow that covers politics, business, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, culture and sports]. These media sources cannot be formally attributed to any definite homogeneous group (Fig. 2].
35
30
25
20
15 10
5 0
III.I........
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Fig. 2. Representation of the case in the media sources: number of articles: 1 - RBK; 2 - Komsomol'skaya pravda; 3 - Kommersant; 4 - Gazeta.Ru; 5 - Novaya gazeta; 6 - Lenta.Ru; 7 - RIA Novosti; 8 - Argumenty i fakty; 9 - Kompromatl.info; 10 - Glavnoe.io; 11 - Inosmi.ru; 12 - Spektr.press; 13 - Vestnik 24; 14 - Zagolovki.ru; 15 - Moskovskii komsomolets
In the periods of the case, media coverage before and between the trials "RBK Group" was the most active source (7 news reports, 33150 characters with spaces 15 news reports, 59965 characters with spaces respectively]. Informational platform "RBK" (31 news reports, 115537 characters with spaces], electronic newspaper "Komsomol'skaya pravda" (12 news reports, 98034 characters with spaces] and "Kommersant" (7 news reports, 28044 characters with spaces] were rather constant in covering the case at every defined step. It should be noted that the informational platform "Gazeta.Ru" (7 news reports, 64640 characters with spaces] was also active in covering the details of the notorious case of Ulykaev, but the activity of the source stopped when the court announced the final verdict.
Overall, the mass media appeal to the case after the jury's verdict was significantly decreasing. Only three media sources "RBK" (5 news reports, 28379 characters with spaces], "Komsomol'skaya pravda" (1 news report, 5945 characters with spaces] and "Kommersant" (1 news report, 7805 characters with spaces] continued to inform the audience about the ex-minister's fate after the final trial.
Identification of the basic slots (frequency combination of words/bi-gramm)
Typical roles and situations for the media narrative under study were identified on the basis of n-gram (in this case bigrams were used].
The analysis of the collection of the texts from the moment of the minister's arrest until his conviction and media coverage of the judicial proceedings results allowed the researchers to identify the following most frequently used bigrams (combinations of noun + noun or noun + verb or noun + adjective], describing the main plot of the events (Fig. 3]:
• "Alexey Ulyukaev" (I period - 625 ipm, II period - 582 ipm, III period -533 ipm, IV period - 593 ipm],
• "Ulyukaev's case" (I period - 138 ipm, II period - 138 ipm, III period -221 ipm, IV period - 284 ipm],
• "Ex-minister" (I period - 59 ipm, II period - 570 ipm, III period -398 ipm, IV period - 593 ipm],
• "Bribe acceptance" (I period - 203 ipm, II period - 230 ipm, III period -135 ipm, IV period - 213 ipm],
• "House arrest" (I period - 85 ipm, II period - 133 ipm, III period -94 ipm, IV period - 0 ipm],
• "Igor Sechin" (I period - 72 ipm, II period - 194 ipm, III period -321 ipm, IV period - 71 ipm].
At every period of the media coverage, the bigrams typical of the period under question were defined. The stage of Ulyukaev's arrest is unique by its bigrams "Loss of trust" (46 ipm], "Mister Ulykaev" (65 ipm], "Oil company" (46 ipm].
700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0
Alexey Ulyukaev The Ulyukaev case Ex-minister
Bribe acceptance House arrest Igor Sechin
Fig. 3. Identification of the basic slots: dominant bigrams
Mister Ulyukaev is placed under house arrest in his own apartment in an elite apartment block "Golden Keys-2" ("Alexey Ulyukaev waited for the Zamoskvoretsky court"; Kommersant, 26.07.17].
The period of hearings is characterized by the usage of specific bigrams "Zamoskvoretsky court" (327 ipm], "Deprivation of freedom" (109 ipm], "Ulyu-kaev's defense" (72 ipm], "Big size" (133 ipm].
Ulyukaev's last plea was a phrase stating that for a 62-year-old person a 10years sentence in a high-security prison was similar to a death penalty ("The court found Ulyukaev guilty"; RBK, 15.12.17].
Distinctive bigrams in the period of Ulyukaev's case media coverage between the trials are "Evil libel" (45 ipm], "Sofiyskaya embankment" (45 ipm], "Case files" (45 ipm], "Investigation theory" (54 ipm], "Oleg Feoktistov" (104 ipm].
It is not just a libel, I'd say it is an evil libel' - he said back then, pointing out that such a libel was provoked by 'a corrupted part of management and corrupted part of security service', but he didn't give any details ("Two million, oil, Goa"; Lenta.Ru, 08.16.17].
The list of the bigrams can be split into two groups. The first one is represented by role bigrams, which describe the characters that take part in the events (Ulyukaev, ex-minister, Sechin]. The other group consists of event bigrams, which describe the episodes of the case (bribe acceptance, house arrest, loss of trust, etc.]. The results give the researchers a reason to conclude that the dominant bigrams of the media narrative serve as key slot elements of the role and event frames which form the plot frame of the media narrative of judicial proceeding against the civil servant.
Reconstruction of the Role and Event Subframes
Part of the identified bigrams contain the indication of the participants of the story. The analysis of the "cast" of the constructed story of the crime allowed the researchers to extract the main character who is a criminal (Ulyu-kaev as a protagonist] and a victim (Sechin as an antagonist].
Period I
Period II
Period III
Period IV
... Minister for Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev was arrested on Monday, November the 14th. He was accused of extorting a considerably sized bribe ("A blow to the government: how the case against Ulyukaev will turn out"; RBK, 15.11.16).
Was Sechin planning to show up at the hearing, expected to be open to public, and argue with the ex-minister? ("This is such a sausage", Gazeta.Ru, 06.09.17).
In the period of the case description between the hearings, apart from Igor Sechin a new antagonist Oleg Feoktistov appears.
I disagree with the charges and consider myself not guilty. The FSB [Federal Security Service] has attempted to tempt me into receiving a bribe on the basis of a false report made by the chief executive officer of the Rosneft corporation, [Igor] Sechin, and the head of Rosneft security department [Oleg] Feoktistov ("Sechin himself called and persuaded him to come to Rosneft"; Novaya gazeta, 08.18.17).
Formally, court representatives are covered by the media sources as detectives in the criminal case, even though the media sources themselves acted as investigators. As a result, the role frame of the Ulykaev's case media narrative corresponds to the role frame of a classical detective story ("the criminal" and "the victim").
The bigrams typical of all the periods of media coverage of the notorious corruption case ("Ulyukaev's case", "ex-minister", "bribe acceptance", "house arrest") shape the slots "crime" ("Ulyukaev's case", "bribe acceptance") and "conviction" ("ex-minister," "house arrest").
Bigrams, which are specific for an exact period of media coverage also represent the slots "crime" ("big size") and "conviction" ("loss of trust", "deprivation of freedom", "Zamoskvoretsky court") as well as the slot "investigation" ("Ulyukaev's defense," "evil libel," "Sofiyskaya embankment", "case files", "investigation theory").
As the media narrative, which is split and distributed between diverse sources, does not have a linear structure, a causal sequence of slots typical of a classical detective (crime-investigation- punishment) is deconstructed in the media narrative. Consequently, some elements of punishment of a "criminal" might occur during the investigation process long before the final verdict is announced. In the narrative under study, for example, such a situation happens when the protagonist loses his reputation and status before the trial. In spite of its peculiarity (non-linear structure), the reconstructed subframe that reflects the episodes of the story is analogous with a classical detective event subframe ("crime" and "investigation").
Frame of Judicial Proceeding Media Narrative in Russian Media Discourse
Media space that covers stories about the current events happening in the world construct around the audience a continuous narrative whose patterns
and criteria are interpreted in this research. How is the narrative being constructed when the civil servant "caught red-handed" is the core of the story? The data in the table below describes every step of the media coverage (table].
Steps of the judicial proceeding media narrative
I period II period III period IV period
Slots "the criminal / protagonist" ("Alexey Ulyu-kaev"]; "crime" ("bribe acceptance," "Loss of trust"]; "punishment" ("house arrest"] "investigation" ("Ulyukaev's case"]; "the victim / antagonist" ("Igor Sechin"]; "punishment" ("house arrest," "deprivation of freedom"] "investigation" ("Ulyukaev's case," "Ulyukaev's defense," "evil libel," "Sofiyskaya embankment," "case files," "investigation theory"]; "the victim" ("Igor Sechin"]; "punishment" ("house arrest"] "the protagonist's defeat and ordeal" ("Alexey Ulyu-kaev"], "punishment" ("deprivation of freedom"]
Step Identification of the crime: arrest Identification of the crime: hearings in court Media investigation Punishment
Number of texts 20 16 34 10
At the exposition step ("arrest"], the crime is identified (at the same time the topic of local punishment is mentioned, a case in point, "house arrest"] and the key character of the narrative (protagonist], who committed a crime, is identified. This step is the second most popular if rated according to media appeal (20 news reports out of 77].
The step of crime details investigation ("trials"] is characterized by the media acting as detectives as they collect clues and evidence of the case and introduce the antagonist to the audience (in our case the antagonist also acts as a victim]. The question of punishment is relevant for this period too.
The climax step describing the events between the hearings manifest media investigations that actively cover the questions of the protagonist's ("criminal's"] guilt and the role of the antagonist ("victim"] in the case. This period is the most significant and appealing one to the media who devote 34 news reports to covering it. At this period the crime is represented in more detail, supported by some facts from the archives and a few interviews of Ulyukaev's colleagues, who advocate that the former minister is innocent. This period gives the media a chance to intrigue the audience with the help of extra facts. In other words, the media facilitate their audience to become detectives companion themselves. Supplying the readers with various perspectives of the criminal case, journalists create the illusion of "mystery", which is expected to be solved by collaborative work of the audience and media agents.
The final step of the judicial proceeding when the verdict is announced depletes the interest in covering the story. The key message of this period is conviction.
In literature a prototypical model of detective frame is represented by invariable slots that constitute events and "cast" of the detective: event slots (a crime, investigation, revealing of the crime] and role slots (a detective, criminal and victim]. The media narrative of a judicial proceeding against the civil servant is constructed according to the literary detective patterns. Although, the event subframe is of non-linear nature (co-existence of "crime" and "punishment" slots] and the role of a "detective" is perceived by a number of media agents as their own one. In other words, a few media sources consider themselves to be responsible for the investigation.
To conclude, the most significant distinctive feature (if not the only one] of detective media narrative and classical literary detective is the text structure. The text in a traditional detective is written by one author or a collaboration of writers with a certain intention. The text of mass media narrative, in contrast, is a jigsaw of different texts similar to each other in some context but created by diverse authors. The news reports of media narrative are constructed as a reaction to some current events. Integrated with the texts from various media sources the common pattern of the "crime and punishment" story is restored.
4. Discussion and conclusions
The problem of the media influence on the public's understanding of crime and justice is one of the most popular in media research [Rios, Ferguson 2020]. The features of the media construction of the "reality of crime" are studied, including the representation of the fight against corruption crimes [Mo-reira, Araujo, Sousa 2019]. Media research focuses on the role of the media in identifying corruption crimes [Trifonova Price 2019] and analyzes the peculiarities of framing media discourse on corruption crimes and the perception of news [Charron, Annoni 2021].
The idea of news representations about corruption crimes in the context of a scandal (entertainment topic] is the closest and most productive for this study. E. Kramer, describing the discourse on corruption constructed by the Indonesian media, suggests that the topic of scandal in the news replaces the analysis of political conflicts [Kramer 2013]. Consumers of media discourse find themselves involved in entertainment, but not in the discussion of political problems.
This study suggests that news reports about corruption crime investigations can be recreational if constructed as a literary detective story. Using media framing, the topic of corruption crimes in the media is transformed into a detective story and turns into entertainment. Media framing has proven to be an effective tool for influencing readers' perceptions.
Media framing uses the frames which already exist in the audience's conscience as they are shaped within the social environment and traditions of the target. In the process of news construction, the media apply special methods to activate cultural frames in the text to manipulate its diverse interpretations. According to a number of studies, the media often succeed in reaching their objective to create brand new media reality based on the real facts that meet their requirements [Ogola 2020; Poirier et al. 2020].
The results of the conducted research show that contemporary media sources use frames typical of literary works (a case in point, a detective frame] to represent notorious events to the audience. By doing this, the media create the works of new genre-media detective stories. Due to the literary reception of readers, such frames turn real events into interactive media narratives that can be observed and tailored, for instance, by commenting in social networks. Sympathizing with the characters or accusing them of the deeds, the audience adds an element of "reality" to interactive theatricality. The reader him/herself gets engaged in the processes taking place in the world of politics by interpreting detective frames in the media coverage.
The detective plot, applied in media narratives, embellishes the events with extra literary features that are later framed on the micro level and entertain the audience, turning real events into stage props and a real person into a literary character.
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МЕДИАФРЕЙМИНГ И КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЕ МЕДИАДЕТЕКТИВОВ:
ДЕЛО О КОРРУПЦИИ
Н.К. Радина1, К.Р. Якупова2
:'2 Национальный исследовательский Нижегородский государственный университет им. Н.И. Лобачевского (Нижний Новгород, Россия)
Аннотация: Представлено эмпирическое исследование, посвященное анализу создания медийного нарратива о расследовании коррупционных преступлений. Предполагается, что такой медийный нарратив строится по правилам детектива в художественной литературе. Теоретической основой является фрейм-анализ в медиаисследованиях. Материалом послужили тексты российских СМИ, участвовавших в освещении истории о коррупционном преступлении экс-министра экономического развития РФ Алексея Улюкаева (2016-2018 гг.). Результаты проведенного исследования показали, что современные медиа при освещении событий используют фреймы для представления событий аудитории - типичные для литературных произведений (в изучаемом случае - фрейм литературного детектива). С помощью меди-афрейминга тема коррупционных преступлений в СМИ трансформируется в литературный детектив и превращается в развлечение. В исследовании предлагается рассматривать современный медиадетектив как нарратив, распределенный между несколькими СМИ, а также развивается идея объединения новостей и развлечений в медиадискурсе с целью управления общественным мнением (отвлечения читателей от политических проблем посредством развлечения).
Ключевые слова: медиафрейминг, медиадетектив, фрейм-анализ, медианарратив, новости.
Для цитирования:
Радина Н.К., Якупова К.Р. Медиафрейминг и конструирование медиадетек-тивов: дело о коррупции // Коммуникативные исследования. 2022. Т. 9. № 4. С. 800-816. DOI: 10.24147/2413-6182.2022.9(4).800-816. (На англ. яз.).
Сведения об авторах:
1 Радина Надежда Константиновна, доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры общей и социальной психологии
816 N.K. Radina, K.R. Iakupova. Communication Studies, 2022, Vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 800-816
2 Якупова Карина Рустемовна, магистр лингвистики
Контактная информация:
12 Почтовый адрес: 603022, Россия, Нижний Новгород, Университетский пер., 7
1 E-mail: rasv@yandex.ru
2 E-mail: yakypic24@mail.ru Дата поступления статьи: 09.03.2022 Дата рецензирования: 16.05.2022 Дата принятия в печать: 10.10.2022
