Gruusia-Vene sõja kajastus ajalehtedes The Daily Telegraph ja Die Welt
Date
2011
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
This study focuses on researching the war between Russia and Georgia and how it was reflected in the British newspaper The Daily telegraph and in the German newspaper Die Welt.
The conflict, which started in the night before the 8th of August, when fighting erupted between Georgia and South-Ossetia, quickly escalated to a war between Russia and Georgia. About 800 people lost their lives. Over 100000 people had to leave their homes.
The war created lots of problems in the relationships of different states. Questions rose, whether Russia was as harmless as it wanted to show. The relationship between the two superpowers – USA and Russia – got far colder.
Considering, that the conflict received a lot of media coverage, and that public opinion was important to both parties – the author of this work allows himself to call the war between Russia and Georgia also a media war.
The mass media plays an important role in developing a person´s world image. People greatly depend on the media for finding information about foreigner affairs. A person adjusts his or her opinion to be more in correspondence with the opinion given in the media.
The journalist’s role writing about a conflict is rather complicated. Access to the conflict zone is a very important factor, but during war time, media is mostly put under censorship, and the access to these zones is denied. People also trust legit world leaders, if it is an urgent foreigner affair. That is why politics and the opinion of politicians are very important.
Using content analysis, the author coded 134 articles from The Daily Telegraph and Die Welt online, which were published on the 8th of August to the 14th of August. Searching answers to the questions, where the information was received in the articles, who was more represented in the articles and what was the reaction of the world leaders to the war, the author tries to answer who´s vision of the war is portrayed more in the media.
After the coding and analysis, the author found that Russia was seen more negatively then Georgia. At the same time however, the author cannot say, that one side of the conflict was more favored then the other.