Russia is the only country in the G20 group of nations where Donald Trump is the preferred choice for the next President of the United States. This article examines a hypothesis that Trump owes his popularity in Russia to the way Russian media frames his image. The media content was analyzed by quantitative parameters and then, these parameters were further complimented with a discourse analysis which, in addition to examining the texts themselves, also appeals to the reality beyond the texts, including social and political circumstances that surround the issue. The results demonstrate that the discourse about Trump in the Russian media possesses all the necessary typological characteristics of propaganda. Russian official media actively supports Donald Trump and deliberately creates favorable opinion of him.
This paper examines the problem of social media special operations and especially induced support in social media during political election campaigns. The theoretical background of the paper is based on the study fake activity in social networks during pre-election processes and the existing models and methods of detection of such activity. The article proposes a methodology for identifying and diagnosing induced support for a political project. The methodology includes a model of induced activity, an algorithm for segmenting the audience of a political project, and a technique for detecting and diagnosing induced support. The proposed methodology provides identification of network combatants, participants of social media special operations, influencing public opinion in the interests of a political project. The methodology can be used to raise awareness of the electorate, the public, and civil society in general about the presence of artificial activity on the page of a political project.
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