The transformation of the image of V.Putin in the weekly «SPIEGEL» (on the example of the three presidential election campaigns)

The image of the head of the State as a significant factor illustrating the attitude to the country of the world community, the success of its foreign policy, is constructed by various media including the "quality press" represented by «Spiegel» - one of the most influential magazines in Germany and Europe. Over the past three presidential election campaigns involving V. Putin his image characteristics in «Spiegel» have evolved from a predominantly neutral to negative. The results obtained by qualitative methods are confirmed by quantitative indicators obtained through the method of content analysis: significant increase of lexical units that characterize the unlimited authority of V. Putin and at the same time the decrease of lexical items describing the extent of his popularity in the community. However, V. Putin's personal characteristics were polar: both positive and negative. In constructing of V. Putin's image by German journalists there has been a shift of emphasis from the problem of Chechnya during the first presidential race to shortcomings in the functioning of democratic political institutions in the other two. According to content analysis the number of articles devoted to Chechnya has reduced sharply since 2003. Modeling the image of the President of Russia «Spiegel» takes into account a wide range of opinions, rests on official statistics, uses a variety of data collection methods, which suggests a significant proportion of objectivity of both the information itself and the image created on its base. However, the German journalists are not free from biased assessments of certain activities of the Head of Russian State. The image of the leader of a foreign country as a multidimensional phenomenon is justified by a lot of reasons to be presented in a certain perspective. In this case, one of the determining factors of this is the political course of the President. Since the basic components of the negative image of V. Putin created by «Spiegel» are related to the problems of the democratic political process, human rights in Russia, so to expect the transformation of the image of V.Putin in the German weekly magazine for the better without real positive changes in the RF political sphere is hardly possible.

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