Framing Russia as threat in the Lithuanian media: corpus analysis

ENThe article analyzes how Russian foreign politics is framed in the Lithuanian media. The analysis is based on a case study of the biggest news portal in Lithuania delfi.lt. The article presents a corpus driven analysis of news on Russia from March 2014 (annexation of Crimea) to February 2015 and employs corpus analysis tools of keyword and collocation analysis. Analysis reveals the dominant frame of Russia as aggressor and potential threat to Lithuanian national security. The threat of Russia is perceived as a threat to the whole region and is regarded as an issue of a broader transatlantic community, while the possibility to defend is projected on collaboration with international partners. This construction of Russia strongly rests on the events in Ukraine, which are used as a justification, or an argument, for security claims. Survey data show that the majority of the Lithuanian population also think of Russia in terms of threat. [From the publication]