The Image of Democracy in the Context of Authoritarian Manifestations of the Modern Political Regime in Russia

The democracy in various states, the dynamics of democratization processes and authoritarian tendencies cause discussions in the socio-political sciences, due to their volatility, risks and opportunities for social well-being and individual quality of citizens’ lives. Western research centers write about the decline of the 3rd global wave of democratization, the degradation of democratic institutions, and the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies in dozens of countries.

Russia is a transitional country, moreover, many political scientists interpret it as a country that is rolling back from a democratic form of government. We will present the results of our quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the Russian media for the period 2003-2023. We revealed how the structure of the image of democracy represented by the Russian media changed, as well as the emotional tone of the articles – from the predominance of positive connotations at the beginning of the period to the predominance of negative ones at the end. Support or criticism of the democratization processes in the period under study were updated in accordance with the current domestic and foreign policy situation. The studied period started with the prevailed groups of "voting", "legal guarantees" and "socio-political stability" discourses; further, groups of "social well-being" and "interparty competition" discourses were added; since the middle of the period, the discourses of "socio-political stability" and "voting" have become predominant. At the end, only the groups of "socio-political stability" and "freedom of expression" prevail. At the same time, the number of publications related to the political system has gradually decreased in the studied period; currently, the discussion of democratization is definitely not among the leading topics in the informational agenda in Russia.