Detecting Regime Personalisation in Media and Rhetoric in Russia

If a political regime is becoming more and more personalised, how would we expect media content to change? One could expect coverage of the national leader to refer more to the personality and private life of the leader. Or if coverage of other institutional actors, such as the national parliament or federal courts, is declining, while coverage of the leader consistently increases, then this suggests as well a shift of attention from the institutions of government to the individuals of government. Our primary data analysis in this chapter is an investigation of the frequency by which particular terms occur in regional and federal media, both in print and through radio and television. The second analysis makes use of more recent advances in quantitative text analysis and rather than looking at specific keywords in the media, we investigate the distribution of topics across a range of documented public appearances and public speeches by the Russian president, sourced from the Kremlin’s own website. The expectation under increasing personalisation would be that the president is able to divert from core government items such as the economy to either topics that are of more personal interest – pet projects or personal interests of the president – or topics where it is known that Putin has a more keen interest – such as international politics. Overall, we find indicators of personalisation in media and rhetoric eminating from the Kremlin, but to a lesser extent than expected given the level of personalisation of the regime. The personalisation and deintitutionalisation are only partially visible in the media – although there is an increased attention to international politics, sports, and military power, and a decreasing attention to political institutions and domestic politics. The irrelevance of parliament and parties relative to Putin’s private interests is eminently visible.