University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Communication
Research Master's programme Communication Science
Master's Thesis
Who is the target? - American, British, Russian and Arab news media coverage of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian conflict
Dane Franulović
Student number: 10841717 Supervisor: Jonas Lefevere* 3 February 2017
Abstract
With differing political interests at stake and a complex net of political alliances, the Syrian conflict became a strongly contested issue fought both on the battlefield and in the media. This study combines several theories in investigating how was the Russian military intervention into Syrian Civil War framed in the Russian, UK, US and Arab news media. More importantly, news media analyzed in this research are based in countries that are directly involved, on the opposing sides, in the Syrian conflict. While the Russian news media presented the Russian intervention in Syria as a legitimate military campaign, efficient in fighting the IS and other terrorist groups, and not causing collateral damage in the process, the non-Russian media coverage was more critical of the campaign. Furthermore, Arab news media portrayed the Russian military campaign in a more negative light than the US and the UK news channels. The findings add another case to the argument that national identity and cultural proximity influence the news media coverage.
Keywords: Syria, war, Russia, military intervention, framing, news, national identity, cultural proximity
Introduction
The media have focused on the events in Syria for years already. Initially reporting on the 2011 Syrian civil unrest, which is now considered as a part of the Arab Spring, news media soon found themselves covering a full-blown civil war. Over the years this war
escalated into one of the deadliest conflicts in the world with consequences that are felt across continents on a daily basis and which involves global military powers. Research has shown
that conflicts are played out in the news media as much as they are fought in various political or military arenas (Scheafer and Gabay, 2009; Scheets, Rowling and Jones, 2015; Wolsfeld, 1997). The purpose of this study is to investigate international news media coverage of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War. To be more specific, the focus of our interest is on explaining cross-national and cross-cultural differences in the news media framing of the Russian intervention. Hence, the main research question in this study is: How was the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War framed in American, British, Russian and Arab news media?
A complex net of political alliances in the Syrian Civil War led to a chaotic situation on the battlefield. This in turn resulted in often confusing news media coverage of the events taking place in this war, where it is often difficult to discern who is fighting who, and what is happening on the ground. Perceiving ''the competition over the news media as part of a larger and more significant contest among political antagonists for political control'' is the central premise of Wolsfeld's (1997, p. 3) political contest model. With differing political interests at stake, the Syrian conflict became a strongly contested issue - although the IS is recognized as the common enemy, Russia is involved as an ally of the Syrian Government lead by Basar al-Assad, while the US, UK and Qatar openly support the Syrian Opposition. Different
perspectives entail attempts to impose a different framing of the events through the media, that is, to present events and actors in a way that benefits one sides' interpretations at the expense of the other side (Entman, 2003). Put simply, ''where large political influences are involved there are very active efforts to determine how events are framed'' (McQuail, 2000, p. 344).
This thesis combines several theories in exploring the characteristics of the news reports on the Russian military intervention into Syria. Through the synthesis of the social identity and cascading activation theory as well as the mediated public diplomacy concept, I
develop a broad theoretical rationale to understand media framing of the international power play involving different political interests. These theories account for political and
sociocultural factors influencing media framing of politically contested issues. They have been recognized in previous studies as the basis for investigating the implications of cultural and national contexts in the news media coverage of the international political disputes (Aday et al., 2005; Entman, 1991; Jones and Sheets, 2009; Nossek, 2004; Rowling et al., 2011; 2015; Schaefer and Gabay, 2009; Sheets et al., 2015). This research will enable us to test whether framing patterns discovered by Sheets et al. (2015) can be applied beyond the case of the US drone program media coverage. It thus adds another case in further theory building regarding international conflict framing.
Previous studies perceived media framing patterns as concerned with cultural resonance of frames among domestic audience (Entman, 2003; Rowling et al., 2011, 2015; Sheets et al., 2015). This is a reasonable approach since the news media channels analyzed in those studies primarily cater for the domestic audience, though their scope is international. Drawing on Shaefer and Gabay's (2009) mediated public diplomacy postulates, in this thesis I consider that the international news media besides catering for the domestic audience, also aim at the worldwide (English-speaking) audience. There are several reasons underlying this approach: 1) The Syrian Civil War adopted characteristics of a globally relevant conflict and each actor directly taking part in it needs not only to justify their actions in the eyes of the domestic, but also of the worldwide audience. Nye (2008) defines soft power as an ''ability to shape the preferences of others'' without the use of any type of coercion (p. 95). The purpose of state's public diplomacy is to exert their potential ''soft power'' by influencing foreign nation's public opinion as well as foreign policy to their own advantage (Sheafer and
Shenhav, 2009); 2) This seems especially relevant in the context of this research since states whose news media we are analyzing are directly involved, on opposing sides, in the Syrian
conflict; 3) International news media channels can thus be observed as a tool in public
diplomacy. For instance, Russia Today and Al Jazeera English are specifically tailored for the international English-speaking audience considering they originate from countries where English is not the main language. In other words, their messages can directly reach foreign (English-speaking) audiences, bypassing in this way domestic media channels as mediators of the message.
Empirically, this study analyzes the following news channels: Russia Today (Russia), BBC (United Kingdom), CNN (United States) and Al Jazeera (Qatar). Besides being amongst the most viewed world news channels, their countries of origin differ along cultural and political lines. As I explain below, these states support opposing sides and it is therefore expected that the previously mentioned news media will present the events occurring in Syria from different perspectives according to frames that are most resonant among each countries' citizens and most emphasized by each states' political elite. This study will show us which frames were salient in conveying these perspectives.
Considering numerous (para)military groups of different ethnic and political
background that are taking part in the conflict, the net of alliances between main belligerents in Syria is quite complicated with circumstantial armed clashes occurring between the parties involved. The United Kingdom and Qatar got involved into the Syrian Civil War as a part of the US led Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF - OIR), a military force whose main objectives are providing support for ''moderate'' anti - Assad groups as well as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in fighting ISIL. On the other hand, invited by Basar al-Assad, Russia entered the Syrian conflict with an official intention to fight the IS and ''other terrorist groups''. Although Moscow repeatedly stated that they only target IS and other groups recognized as terrorist by the UN and Russia, they were often accused in the Arab, British and US news media of hitting positions held by the so-called Syrian "moderate
rebels"1. Considering Moscow's open support for Assad it is highly possible that these claims are credible. There is a constant dispute caused by some of the groups categorized as
"moderate rebels" mixing with terrorist organizations (such as the al-Nusra Front).
Nevertheless, they are officially regarded as illegitimate target since they also fight the IS, are not designated by the UN as a terrorist organization, and are participants in the Syrian peace talks. Consequently, by executing military actions against those groups Russia got into an indirect conflict with the CJTF. For these reasons, the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War caused a lot of controversies since it is portrayed (at least in the Western media), as the least neutral compared to the other world powers (the UK and the US, military activity in the Syrian conflict is exclusively directed towards fighting the IS, not forces loyal to Assad). This study focuses on clarifying how was Russia's role as one of the main actors in the conflict framed across different news media channels, that is, across different national and cultural contexts. Communication scholars agree that although journalists are highly reliant on political authority (because of political and economic uncertainties), they do have the final say in the news production or can even be as influential as political elite in disseminating ideas that could be critical to superior frames (Cook, 2006; Entman, 2003; McQuail, 2000). As Entman (2003) argues, sometimes the news can create ''impressions that the idea is held widely and intensely by large swaths of public'' which can consequently influence leaders' strategic calculations and activities (p. 420). The findings of this research will, therefore, also generate insight into a range of political and journalistic outlooks as well as the socio-political climate regarding the Syrian Civil War in countries that have an important role in the conflict.
1 See: Syria crisis: Russian air strikes against Assad enemies (2015, September 30), BBC News. Retrieved
fromhttp://bbc.com;
U.S. official: Russia airstrikes didn't target ISIS (2015, September 30), CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com;
Theoretical background
The purpose of this study is to investigate the predominant frames featured in the international news media coverage of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian conflict. The focus will be on discovering the differences in framing and consequently perspectives that the news media conveyed in relation to the aforementioned topic. Framing, as defined by Entman (1993), is a process of selecting ''some aspects of a perceived reality'' and making them ''more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation'' (p. 52). Similarly, McQuail (2000) defines framing as ''a way of giving some interpretation to isolated items of fact'', noting that it is ''unavoidable for journalists to do this and in so doing departing from pure 'objectivity' and introducing some (albeit unintended) bias'' (p. 343). A certain bias in the information is already present when the information reaches the news media since it is already framed in a way that it suits the purpose of the source (McQuail, 2000). What is particularly relevant for this study is Entman's (1993) suggestion that ''the words and images that make up the frame can be distinguished from the rest of the news by their capacity to stimulate support of or opposition to the sides in a political conflict'' (p. 417).
Two approaches to framing research can be discerned - one is labelled as the ''emphasis'' framing and the other as ''equivalence'' framing (Scheufele and Iyengar, 2012). ''Equivalence'' framing tradition of framing research perceives framing as ''differential modes of presentation for the exact same piece of information...The information that is being
presented is informationally equivalent across different frames'' (Scheufele and Iyengar, 2012, p. 5). On the other hand, this study takes ''emphasis'' framing approach based on Gamson and Modigliani's (1987) definition of frames as ''a central organizing idea or story line that
provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events...'' implying ''a policy direction or implicit answer to what should be done about the issue'' (p. 376). Put simply, Entman's (1991)
suggestion that ''the essence of framing is.... magnifying or shrinking elements of the depicted reality to make them more or less salient'' (p. 9), can be taken as the central premise behind ''emphasis'' framing. Congruent with the tradition of ''emphasis'' framing is ''valence'' framing - a principle of emphasizing positive or negative aspect of political issues and situations (de Vreese, 2005; Schuck and de Vreese, 2006). As it was previously mentioned, stimulating domestic and international public support or opposition for respective political causes is crucial during political conflicts. It is not surprising then that findings of previous research suggest war reporting is permeated with evaluative and emotionally charged frames, that is, ''valence'' framing is characteristic of the news coverage of war events.
In this study we focus on the extent to which four frames emphasize or downplay positive or negative valence components in the international news coverage of the Russian military intervention into Syria. These frames are: legality, collateral damage, strategic value and technological sophistication/accuracy of the Russian military actions. Sheets et al. (2015) recognized these frames in their analysis of the influence of cascading activation in the US and foreign media news coverage of the drone warfare. The legality frame refers to whether Russian military actions are in accordance with the international law. This frame emphasizes either legal or illegal aspects of the undertaken actions, thus providing (or denying) a
justification for them. For instance, Butler (2012) noted that in the post-cold war era ''just war'' frames permeated rhetoric of the US presidents after the decisions to go to war have been made. These frames present the war as a fight for a just cause, waged by a competent authority with the right intentions (Butler, 2012)2. News items conveying ''just war'' frames
2 The ''just war theory'' (JWT) was a theoretical rationale that underpinned these frames. For more on JWT look
which reaffirm positive deeds and intentions of a respective nation's military force tend to be picked up by the national news media (Rowling et al., 2011; 2015). The issue of authorization (by the country where war actions take place or by the UN Security Council) has been
considered in the media as an important aspect of legality - portraying the intervention as unauthorized presents the antithesis to the 'just war' argument (Sheets et al., 2015).
The collateral damage frame relates to the toll of civilian casualties caused by the military actions. It was previously noted that whether the violence is portrayed as ''ours'' or ''theirs'' influences the intensity of criticism in the media. Foreign media are inclined to take a more objective and critically oriented perspective, while the media of the state whose
representatives perpetrated violent acts use frames that support positive national self-image, that is, mitigate the extent and severity of the events as well as disassociate the perpetrators from the nation as a whole (Entman, 1991; Nossek, 2004; Sheets et al., 2015, Rowling et al., 2015).
The strategic value frame concerns the effectiveness of Russian military actions in regards to fighting terrorism. Sheets et al. (2015) found the strategic value frame to be the second most prevalent frame (after collateral damage) present in the news media coverage of the US drone warfare. Stressing national security benefits gained from the military operations are crucial for obtaining public support for such actions (Sheets et al., 2015). Finally, Sheets et al. (2015) introduced the technological sophistication/accuracy frame. Kellner (2004) argues that in the case of the First Gulf War military actions were visually presented ''with dramatic techno-images'' conveying ''hi-tech precision bombing and the aerial war over Baghdad'' (p. 10). ''Hi-tech war'' was presented as the ''clean'' war (Kellner, 2004). Accuracy, as a benefit of the advanced technology, implies lower collateral damage and higher efficacy of military strikes. On the other hand, technical malfunctions can also serve as an excuse
when the wrong targets have been hit - emphasizing ''technical mistake'' frame diverts the attention from the moral dimension of a controversial military policy which, in turn, might threaten the positive national self-image (Entman, 1991; Sheets et al., 2015).
Explaining cross-national differences in framing
The main argument of this research is that depending on the country news media will frame the Russian intervention into the Syrian conflict differently. Several theories underpin these expectations. Firstly, based on the social identity theory, we assume that the frames employed by the news media in regards to Syrian War will serve the purpose of justifying respective countries' military actions, emphasizing its socio-political values and preserving a high perception of the national self-image. The concept of social identity has been recognized in the communication science as one of the main influences on media agenda setting and framing (Nossek, 2004, Scheafer and Gabay, 2009; Jones and Sheets, 2009, Rowling et al., 2015, Sheets et al., 2015). Social identity is defined as a ''part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership'' (Tajfel, 1974, p. 69). The social identity theory itself can be considered as a concept through which we can analyze intergroup relations and social conflict - the main argument is that ''people are motivated to seek positive social identity by comparing in-groups favorably with out-groups'' (Turner and Oakes, p. 240). Language, race, religion or nationality can, for example, provide the basis for a between-group comparison. The necessary prerequisite is that individuals internalize these relational attributes as an aspect of their self-concept (Tajfel and Turner p. 41). Turner and Oakes (1986) conclude that social identity can be seen as ''a mechanism whereby society forms the psychology of its members to pursue its goals and conflicts'' (p. 250). Research has
shown that during wars and nationally dissonant events a tendency to preserve a positive national self-image becomes a priority for the media (Entman, 1991; Rowling et al., 2015, Sheets et al., 2015; Jones and Sheets, 2009). In other words, when a country is involved in an armed conflict and controversial international events, national identity takes the most
important position over other types of social identity among citizens at the time. This type of identity implies ''cultural and political bond'' by ''uniting in a single political community all who share an historic culture and homeland'' (Smith, 1991, p. 14, 15). Nossek (2004) argues that national identity takes precedence over professional norms whenever an event in a foreign country is defined as 'our' political violence'' and that journalistic norms ''take
precedence whenever political violence is defined as 'theirs' (p. 363). Studies on the American news frames on the My Lai massacre (Rowling, Sheets and Jones, 2015), Abu Ghraib prison torture (Jones and Sheets, 2009) and on KAL and Iranian Air Incidents (Entman, 1991) support this notion.
Secondly, considering Entman's (2003) cascading activation theory and
Bennett's (1990) indexing theory we also expect that news media from different countries will apply different frames in covering the Russian military campaign in Syria. This is supported by the fact that countries whose news media are involved in this research have opposing political interests in the Syrian Civil War. Scholars continuously emphasize that news-making should be observed in the light of interdependence between journalists and politicians (Cook, 2006; Entman, 2003; Bennett, 1990). The main premise behind Entman's (2003) cascading activation model is that the ideas behind news frames spread from the governing elites to the media and consequently to the public, while a condition of a political ''elite discord'' is designated as a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of new frames that challenge the imposed governmental frame (Entman, 2003). Similar to the cascading activation theory, Bennett (1990) developed indexing theory which argues that journalists mold their news
according to the official political consensus even in spite of the general public opinion. Otherwise, in the circumstances of ''elite discord'' they maintain a public debate with public opinion compressed (''indexed'') into a range of diverse institutional power blocks. Research on the news media coverage of certain war events show that although the cascading effect can be diminished through the frame contestation by those close to the top of the cascading hierarchy, the frames offered at the very top are the ones that prevail in the news discourse (Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston, 2006; Jones and Sheets, 2009; Sheets et al, 2011, 2015; Rowling et al., 2015). Studies have also found that cascading activation is especially bolstered during wars and nationally dissonant events when official representatives of a nation are involved in controversial events of political violence (Jones and Sheets, 2009; Rowling et al, 2015). In those circumstances a tendency to preserve a positive national self-image becomes a common motive among both the political establishment as well as journalists; even if the challenging frames do appear among the political elites the importance of national identity diminishes their strength (Jones and Sheets, 2009; Rowling et al, 2015). Finally, states involved in an armed conflict use propaganda techniques to influence media coverage, and generally try to get a grip on the mass media as much as possible during wartime (Griffin, 2010; McQuail, 2003).This further supports expectations that the same events in which
Russian military was involved in Syria will be portrayed (framed) differently across countries.
Hypotheses
The legality, strategic value, collateral damage and accuracy/technological sophistication are four frames whose components can emphasize positive or negative perspectives on the Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict. Regarding legality, research has shown that the media have recognized the frames stressing legal (''just war'') rationale
behind the military intervention as those that highly resonate among the public whose country is implicated in the conflict (Butler, 2012; Sheets et al., 2015). It is, thus, expected that the Russian media will stress the legal aspect of their military operations since this resonates with the domestic government's stance that they initiated them in accordance with the international law, that is, on the invitation of the democratically elected state leader. Contrary to the
Russian media, we anticipate that other news channels will present it as illegal activities with the purpose of sustaining a dictatorship:
H1: Frames presenting the Russian military intervention into Syrian Civil War as legal will be more prominent in the Russian news media compared to the American, British and Qatari news media.
Sheets et al. (2015) found that the collateral damage frame dominates in the news media coverage of the US drone warfare compared to the other three frames. In comparison with the foreign media, the US media constantly downplayed the number of civilian deaths (Sheets et al., 2015). These findings suggest that media tend to mitigate the extent of civilian casualties caused by their country's military intervention. In the case of media reporting on the Russian foreign military operations we hypothesize that downplaying collateral damage would resonate among Russians since this framing is necessary for preserving the positive national self-image. Conversely, we expect that other news channels will be more inclined to report on civilian casualties of Russian actions since journalistic norms take precedence over national identity when violent events in foreign countries are perpetrated by foreign states (Entman, 1991; Nossek, 2004; Rowling et al., 2011; Sheets et al., 2015; Jones and Sheets, 2009):
H2: Frames downplaying the collateral damage of the Russian military actions in Syria will be more prominent in the Russian news media compared to the American, British and Qatari news media.
Frames conveying the strategic value of military operations in eliminating (global) terrorist threats have been found as the second most dominant frames in the case of the US drone program media coverage (Sheets et al., 2015). Stressing security benefits is an
imperative in attaining public support for the policy (Sheets et al., 2015). Besides recognizing IS as the common enemy, there is a dispute between Russia on the one side, and Qatar, Britain and the US on the other as to which other groups can be defined as ''terrorist''. Russian officials repeatedly stated that they solely support the Syrian government in their fight against terrorist organizations IS and al-Nusra. Contrary to this, representatives of the American led coalition frequently accused Russia that their main mission is to stabilize the Assad regime primarily by fighting Syrian Opposition forces which pose greater threat to the regime than the IS. Because of fighting the Syrian Opposition, Russia was blamed for further escalating and prolonging the violence in Syria. The same issue occurs with the legality frame since there is often a dispute between the parties arising from differing claims about which target was actually attacked - ''terrorist'' or ''moderate opposition''. We argue that the Russian media will convey Russian government's arguments justifying military intervention as an effective method in fighting IS, and terrorism in Syria in general, which has global effects:
H3: Frames presenting the Russian military actions in Syria as having strategic value against the IS/terrorists will be more prominent in the Russian news media compared to the
Images of capabilities and advantages of sophisticated weaponry have become an inseparable part of the modern ''hi-tech'' warfare reporting (Kellner, 2004). We, hence, introduced the technological sophistication/accuracy frame. Reporting on the power and precision of technologically advanced modern weaponry is crucial in presenting military actions as ''clean'', implying high efficiency and low collateral damage (Kellner, 2004). Accuracy can be considered as an aspect of technological sophistication and usually goes hand in hand with lower civilian casualties. It is thus a frame that implies a more positive coverage of the military operations, even though reality might be different3. The expectations are that the Russian media will present the Russian military as technologically advanced and capable of inflicting a significant damage on the 'terrorists' while containing collateral damage to minimum:
H4: Frames emphasizing the accuracy and technological sophistication of the Russian military actions in Syria will be more prominent in the Russian news media compared to the American, British and Qatari news media.
Besides the fact that Al Jazeera is a Qatari news channel and Qatar is a member of the American led coalition, a more critical perspective on the Russia's Syrian campaign is also expected considering the importance of cultural proximity in influencing news framing. On the basis of the social categorization theory, a complement to the social identity theory, cultural and political congruence has been marked as a crucial factor in the international frame building (Sheafer and Gabay, 2009). As defined by Tajfel (1974), ''social
categorization'' is a process of bringing together social objects or events in groups which are equivalent with regard to an individual's actions, intentions, attitudes and systems of beliefs''
3
(p. 69). In this case, we can infer that religion plays a crucial role. Namely, Qatari citizens, just like the majority of soldiers of the Syrian Opposition forces, are predominantly Sunni Muslims. On the other hand, Russia is an ally of the Alawite/Shia led Syrian government which is also supported by Iran, a predominantly Shia Muslim nation, as well as Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist paramilitary group.
The research has found that Arab news media, because of the cultural bias, are in general more critical than the Western media in their coverage of the foreign (non-Muslim) military involvement in an Arab/Muslim country (Aday et al., 2005; Jones and Sheets, 2009; Sheets et al., 2015). In their cross-cultural analysis of the 2003 Iraq War, Aday, Livingston and Hebert (2005) found cultural bias in the TV coverage of the war - ''when a network ran an unbalanced story, it was inevitably in the direction consistent with its culture of origin, with Al Jazeera's violations of the objective norm being critical of the war and the American networks slanting towards a more positive view'' (p. 17). Sheets, Rowling and Jones (2015) concluded in their article on news coverage of the American drone warfare that the most critical reporting on the drone program came from the Arab news outlets, while the most positive was present in the US media. Considering critical-positive dichotomy, British coverage of drone warfare fell between the Arab and the US coverage (Sheets, Rowling and Jones, 2015). Similar differences in the news coverage can be found in the case of covering 2004 Abu Ghraib prison story - while the US news media mitigated the scandal by employing words such are abuse or mistreatment and labeling the perpetrators as deviant and
''un-American'', foreign news media bluntly called it torture (Jones and Sheets, 2009). Differences in the coverage of Abu Ghraib among the foreign media themselves were also discovered ''with the non-Anglo cluster far more likely than the Anglo cluster to define the events as torture'' (Jones and Sheets, 2009, p. 288). Hence, it can be assumed that political and cultural similarities between the US and the UK will reflect in the higher level of similarities in their
media coverage of the Russian intervention, while Al Jazeera will display the most negative framing:
H5: Frames presenting the Russian military intervention into Syrian Civil War as illegal will be more prominent in the Qatari news media compared to the American and British news media.
H6: Frames emphasizing the collateral damage of the Russian military actions in Syria will be more prominent in the Qatari news media compared to the American and British news media.
H7: Frames presenting the Russian military actions in Syria as tactically unsuccessful will be more prominent in the Qatari news media compared to the American and British news media.
H8: Frames emphasizing the inaccuracy and insufficient technological sophistication of the Russian military actions in Syria will be more prominent in the Qatari news media compared to the American and British news media.
Methodology
BBC, Russia Today, CNN and Al Jazeera are news channels whose website content is analyzed in this study. Russia Today was chosen as a representative of the Russian news media channels. It is the only Russian English-language international TV news channel. It is financed by the Russian government and was occasionally portrayed in some prominent
Western media as its mouthpiece4. According to Ipsos survey of TV news consumption ordered in 2015 by RT, it is among top 5 most watched international TV news channels in Europe and the US5. Media censorship is a widespread issue in Russia with Reporters Without Borders ranking it 148th out of 180 in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index scale and Freedom House granting it a "Not Free" press freedom status. Taking this into account, it can be assumed that the state heavily influences Russian media which results in high levels of consensual framing among different Russian news media channels. The independent variable Russian news media tracks if the news article appeared in Russia Today website (1) or BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera websites (0). This variable allowed us to test hypotheses 1 to 4.
Al Jazeera and (Saudi) Al Arabiya are the most popular news channels in the Arab world (Galal et al., 2008; Zeng and Tahat, 2012). Al Jazeera is owned and partly funded by the Al Thanis, ruling royal family of Qatar. Similar to RT, Al Jazeera was also accused of being Qatari government's mouthpiece and consequently of biased coverage of war in Syria6. Unlike Al Arabiya which only has a website in English, Al Jazeera has both English website and TV channel. This led me to assume that Al Jazeera has greater international reach compared to Al Arabiya (although there are no data that could back-up this claim). Since the purpose of this study is to explore cross-cultural/national differences in respective media international conflict framing, Al Jazeera was considered as more adequate representative of the international Arab news media than Al Arabiya. The independent variable Qatari news media records if the news report appeared on Al Jazeera website (1) or CNN or BBC websites (0). Value 2 on the variable Qatari news media was added to news articles from Russia
4
See for example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/13/in-case-you-werent-clear-on-russia-todays-relationship-to-moscow-putin-clears-it-up/?utm_term=.c33d8221acdf
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/12/the-truth-about-russia-today-is-that-it-is-putins-mouthpiece/
5
I could not, however, find the original Ipsos report, only an article on rt.com.
6 See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/sep/30/al-jazeera-independence-questioned-qatar
Today. This enabled me to exclude RT news reports t-test analysis in which I only defined categories "1" and "0" on the independent variable Qatari news media.
BBC is the most-used news source in the UK and is also state funded (Ofcom, 2015). I acquired news reports from BBC.co.uk which was in 2015 the most popular news website in the UK (Ofcom, 2015). Regarding the US, after Fox News, CNN had the highest prime-time viewership in 2015 (Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2015). CNN was chosen because it is considered as less biased in news reporting than Fox News. Content was gathered from CNN website which was the second most popular US digital news outlet in 2015.
CNN news content was collected through Lexis.Nexis. Content from Russia Today, BBC and Al Jazeera was not available through Lexis.Nexis, so it was collected from news archives on their websites: rt.com, bbc.co.uk and aljazeera.com. I searched for key terms "Syria AND Russia" in the whole text of the article both on Lexis.Nexis and news websites. Russia Today has a special section titled "Russian anti-terror op in Syria" where all the articles related to Russian military intervention in Syria are categorized. A paragraph within a news article was the unit of analysis. The articles were gathered from 4 time periods: 1) from 30 September until 12 November 2015; 2) from 14 November until 30 December 2015; 3) from 8 February until 2 March 2016; 4) from 25 August until 7 November 2016. While searching through Lexis.Nexis for the news articles from CNN.com using 2 week frame as time unit, it was observed that in the aforementioned time periods the coverage on Russian intervention into Syrian Civil War peaked. More than 30 articles in 2 weeks was a cut-off point for designating a relevant time period. First time period marks the initial stage of the Russian military intervention - the airstrikes started on 30 September 2015, while the coverage on the downing of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 (suspected ISIS bombing) and its repercussions signified the final stage of this time period. The beginning of the second time
period was marked by the endorsement of the Syrian peace plan by the members of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG) at Vienna peace talks on 14 November 2015. Downing of the Russian fighter jet by Turkish Air Force on 24 November, further peace talks between Russian and US political actors and UN Security Council December meeting
characterize this period. Third period was characterized by February 2016 Syrian Army Northern Aleppo offensive backed by the Russian air force. The final time period was marked by the final stages of the 4 year Battle for Aleppo between the Syrian Army and its allies (among them Russian air force) and the groups opposing the Assad regime. Of course, this does not imply that Russian military intervention in Syria was covered solely in the light of these major events.
All in all 200 news articles were gathered, 50 from each news website. The focus was exclusively on news reports and analyses, opinion pieces were excluded from the analysis. The codebook was designed based on the findings of previous similar studies underpinned by the results of preliminary content analysis of relevant news stories. In other words, there was an initial idea about which frames would be present in the news coverage. The number of paragraphs within a news report was manually coded if containing a defined frame
components. Four frames were discerned: legality, collateral damage, strategic value and accuracy/technological sophistication. These were also frames discerned by Sheets et al. (2015) in their research on the US drone program media coverage. Each frame consisted of one positive and one negative valence component.
Within legality frame, positive valence components were those which presented the Russian military intervention as legal, that is, in accordance with the international law. For example, the following paragraph was coded as pro-Russian intervention,. that is, positively valenced: "Russia has said it is targeting ISIS, al-Nusra Front and "other terrorist groups" as recognized by the United Nation Security Council or Russian law" (CNN, 8 October 2015).
Negatively valence paragraphs within legality frame were coded into category illegal, such is: ''Speaking at a G20 summit in Turkey, Mr Tusk said Russia should focus more on Islamic State (IS) militants and not against "moderate Syrian opposition" (BBC, 15 November 2015).
Tactical success frame consisted of positive valence component tactically successful against IS/terrorist groups which presented Russian military actions as effective in combating the IS and terrorism in Syria overall. The following paragraph is an example of positively valenced framing: "The bridge over the Euphrates River near [the Syrian city of] Deir ez-Zor was a key point of the logistics chain [of IS]. Today Russian pilots carried out a surgical strike against the object," the deputy chief of the General Staff of Russia, Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov, said on Thursday during a news briefing, adding that the terrorist group's armament and ammunition delivery route had been cut off" (Russia Today, 23 October 2015). Russian military actions that were negatively valenced within this frame were coded as tactically unsuccessful/against Syrian Opposition (SO). Such were: "Some opposition activists said ISIL took advantage of Russian air strikes and the rebels' preoccupation with fighting Syrian troops on other fronts in central Syria" (Al Jazeera, 10 October 2015).
Positive references within collateral damage frame stated that Russian military was not responsible for the (possible) civilian deaths and destruction of non-military
infrastructure. These were coded as downplaying collateral damage: "Konashenkov denied the accusations, which he said were "traditionally made without ay proof, without any factual backing." Out of six hospitals that were mentioned in the reports, only one medical facility actually exists in real life, he added" (Russia Today, 2 November 2015). Contrary to this, emphasizing collateral damage is a negatively valenced component of this frame. Paragraphs coded within this component were as following: "Last week US Secretary of State John Kerry also called for war crimes charges, saying Russian and Syrian government attacks on
hospitals were "beyond the accidental" and part of a deliberate strategy" (BBC, 10 October 2016).
Finally, accuracy/technological sophistication consisted of positive references stating high capabilities of the Russian military equipment such are precision bombings and the use of modern weaponry like cruise missiles. Negatively valenced components of this frame presented Russian military operations as an indiscriminate and inaccurate bombings. The following paragraph was coded as positively valenced; "According to RT television network, Russia is using in Syria "time-proven bombs and missiles equipped with state-of-the-art system guidance. Precision weapons are used from high altitudes to exclude encounters with portable air-defence systems" (Al Jazeera, 12 October 2015). Negative references to
accuracy/technological sophistication were for instance: "Video material released by the Russian ministry of defence along with stills and other video material show a variety of weapons being used, the overwhelming bulk of which appear to be dumb - that is to say unguided - bombs rather than the precision-guided munitions that dominate Western air campaigns" (BBC, 7 October 2015).
For each frame, we calculated the relative percentages of frame components within each article so that the extent of their presence could be compared across news media
channels. The percentage of each frame component was calculated out of the total number of paragraphs within an article that conveyed a specific frame. For example, if 6 paragraphs within a news article emphasized and 4 downplayed collateral damage, it was calculated that within this article 60 percent of paragraphs containing collateral damage frame presented a negatively valenced component, while 40 percent presented a positively valenced component of this frame. The Russian news media were compared to the non-Russian news media, that is, the UK, US and Arab news outlets taken together. Subsequently, the Arab news source was compared to the UK and US (Western) news media. Beyond initial t-test analyses of the
hypotheses, I also conducted a linear regression analysis to test whether the presence of frame components evolved differently over time in Russian and non-Russian news media. As it was described in the theoretical framework, different events characterize the four discerned time periods. These time period characteristics might have entailed emphasizing different frame components in the news coverage. For example, compared to the previous time periods it can be expected that the collateral damage discourse would be more pronounced in news
reporting in time period 4 because of the Battle of Aleppo and the scale of the humanitarian crisis it caused. Hence, positively and negatively valenced frame components were separately regressed on variables Russian news media, time period 2, 3 and 4 as well as three interaction variables created by multiplying variable Russian news media with variables time period 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Time periods 2, 3 and 4 were included in each regression analysis as dummy variables. Time period 1 was chosen for the reference category.
Inter-coder reliability was tested with Krippendorff's alpha on a 10 percent subsample of news reports coded by two English-speaking coders. The results indicated that reliability was acceptable to good, with the variables measuring positively valenced components of collateral damage and legality frames being highly reliable with KALPHA values of .98 and .91 respectively. The variables emphasizing collateral damage (KALPHA = .80) and
tactically successful (KALPHA = .61) had lower, but still acceptable KALPHA values. With the exception of emphasizing collateral damage, the variables measuring negatively valenced frame components had lower reliability, ranging from .42 to .54. Since these are ratio
variables, it was discerned that the issue of low reliability mainly lies in coding the articles with a low presence of components of the same frame (usually below 4 paragraphs overall). Minor disagreement between coders in these cases were often reflected in substantial
differences in the calculated percentages to which these contrary valenced frame components were present in the article.
Results
The Russian versus the UK, US and Arab news media
To assess hypotheses 1 to 5, I first conducted a series of independent sample t-tests (the results are summarized in Table 1 in the Appendix). The results were almost entirely congruent with my expectations that Russian news media would frame the Russian military intervention into Syrian Civil War in a more favorable light than the UK, US and Qatari news channels. Hypotheses 1 to 3 were accepted, while H4 was rejected - compared to the UK, US and Arabic news channels, the Russian news media on average employed significantly more positively valenced frame components, with the exception of accuracy/technological
sophistication framing. To remind, variables measuring the presence of
accuracy/technological sophistication frame components were deemed unreliable with KALPHA values well below .67. Looking at the mean scores we can conclude that almost entirety of Russia Today's article paragraphs coded within legality frame contained a positive legal component. BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera mostly offered a negative outlook on legality issues concerning Russian military intervention in Syria with illegal frame component on average used substantially more in these media outlets (M = 0.40, SD = 0.39) than its counterpart (M = 0.07, SD = 0.16). Hence, I accepted H1.
H2 was also accepted. About 21 percent of paragraphs falling into collateral damage frame category in Russia Today news reports diminished or denounced the responsibility of Russian army for the caused collateral damage, while 15 percent emphasized collateral damage (by mostly quoting foreign sources in order to instantly rebuke those claims). On the other hand, only 8 percent of collateral damage paragraphs from CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera taken together emphasized the positively valenced component of this frame, while 62 percent
conveyed negatively valence component. Although Russia Today's coverage with respect to collateral damage does seem quite balanced, this is mostly attributed to quoting non-Russian sources (political actors, NGOs) in the Russian media in order to instantly rebuke these claims often within the same paragraph.
Regarding tactical success, around 46 percent of paragraphs within this frame in RT's news articles presented Russian military actions as indeed successful in combating the IS/terrorism. Non-Russian news media dedicated only 19 percent of content referring to tactical success to portraying Russian military operations as beneficial in fighting the
IS/terrorist groups. Different outcomes occurred while testing H4 with both Russian and non-Russian news media containing in their coverage the same amount of paragraphs presenting the Russian military actions as accurate and the Russian army as technologically
sophisticated. However, negatively valenced component of this frame was completely absent in Russia Today news articles, while only around 4 percent of respective news material from BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera websites conveyed inaccurate/technologically unsophisticated perspective. Considering non-Russian media tendency to emphasize collateral damage of the Russian military operations, this might seem as an unexpected finding. However, observing CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera's discourse on this frame it can be concluded that they implicitly present collateral damage as deliberately perpetrated by the Russian military, not as a consequence of their inaccurate airstrikes.
The Arab versus the UK and US news media
The Arab news media was expected to be more critical of theRussian military actions in Syria than the UK and US media. This notion was partially supported with t-test statistics supporting H5 and H6, but also leading me to reject H7 and H8 (the results are summarized in
Table 2 in the Appendix). In other words, compared to the UK and US news media,
presenting the Russian intervention in Syria as illegal and emphasizing collateral damage it caused was more salient in the Arab news sources. BBC and CNN were however more critical in stressing the negative effects of the Russian military operations in combating IS/terrorist groups as well as their inaccuracy and the lack of technological sophistication.
The Arab news media mostly presented the Russian military intervention as illegal (51 percent of paragraphs on legal frame), while the UK and US media offered a balanced
outlook with legal and illegal components getting an almost equal share in legality frame. Both Arab and Western news media overwhelmingly stressed collateral damage caused by Russian actions in their coverage. The results show that Al Jazeera was indeed more prominent than Western media in emphasizing collateral damage, supporting H6.
Furthermore, Russian intervention was to greater extent framed as tactically unsuccessful, that is, ineffective in combating IS/terrorist groups (or even radicalizing and inciting further terrorism) in BBC and CNN's news than in Al Jazeera's coverage. Finally, Al Jazeera completely omitted accuracy/technological sophistication frame from their coverage. Contrary to that, the UK and US media dedicated around 7 percent of paragraphs within this frame to portraying the Russian military actions as inaccurate/insufficiently technologically sophisticated.
The influence of time period
After these preliminary bivariate analyses, I conducted several linear regression analyses to test if, depending on a time period, there are differences between the Russian and non-Russian news media in the occurrence of components within legality, collateral damage, tactical success and accuracy/technological sophistication frames. To test whether these
frames evolved differently over time in the Russian and the non-Russian news media, these models interact the time period variable with the Russian news media variable. In all models, time period 1 was used as a reference category in each linear regression. Models with
significant interaction coefficients are presented in tables in the Appendix.
Regarding legal frame component, a significant interaction coefficient (B = - .406, SE = .188, p = .032) was found comparing time period 1 and 3. To understand the interaction in more detail, I calculated the predicted values in the model for this time period for the Russian and the non-Russian news media. They show that this model predicts that 50 percent of paragraphs within this frame in Russia Today and 38 percent in BBC/CNN/Al Jazeera to present the Russian military intervention as legal in the third period. Compared to the first period, this indicates that there was a substantial decrease in the Russian news media
comparing period 1 to period 3 in the presence of positively valenced legal component - the same model for time period 1 predicts 93 percent of paragraphs to convey this component within legality frame. Since the model predicts that 41 percent of paragraphs in the non-Russian news media to contain legal frame component in the first time period, I concluded that no substantial change occurred in the content of these news outlets comparing time period 1 and 3.
A significant interaction coefficient was also found comparing time period 1 and 4 with respect to illegal (B = .282, SE = .139, p = .044), tactically successful against
IS/terrorists (B = - .404, SE = .149, p = .007) and tactically unsuccessful (B = .563, SE = .157, p = .000) frame components. Contrary to predicted decreases in the presence of legal frame component, the predicted values of the model with criterion variable illegal showed an increase in the presence of illegal frame component in both Russian (0 percent in period 1, compared to 12.5 percent in period 4) and non-Russian news media (30 percent in period 1, compared to 46 percent in period 4). Regarding tactically successful frame component, the
model predicted a decrease in Russia Today (73 percent in time period 1, compared to 11 percent in time period 4), as well as non-Russian news media (29 percent in time period 1, compared to 7 percent in time period 4) of the amount of paragraphs presenting the Russian military operations as beneficial in combating the IS/terrorists. Comparing time period 1 and 4, an increase of 33 percent in the presence of negatively valenced component of strategic value frame is predicted in the Russian news media - tactically unsuccessful frame component was completely absent in the first time period. On the other hand, the amount of paragraphs portraying the Russian intervention as inefficient in combating the IS/terrorism was predicted to decrease in the non-Russian news outlets from 41 percent in the initial to 18 percent in the final time period. No significant difference across time periods was found in Russia Today and other news channels concerning collateral damage as well as accuracy/technological sophistication frames.
The model predicted that even the Russian media framed Russian military operation in the final time period as more ineffective than effective in fighting terrorism. However,
characteristics of strategic value discourse and the extent to which the Russian military actions in Syria are portrayed as legal in Russia Today have to be considered. As mentioned before, besides denouncing responsibility for the collateral damage, in Russia Today legal frame component was usually used to instantly counter statements about civilian deaths and illegitimate attacks on the Syrian Opposition. If Western political actors were quoted claiming that Russian airstrikes caused an excessive amount of collateral damage, which was
sometimes related to further radicalizing the Syrian Opposition and escalating the conflict (tactical success frame), they were countered by Russian claims about targeting terrorist positions (coded as legal), which was often accompanied by (implicitly) denouncing that collateral damage even occurred. The following paragraphs are typical examples of this discourse in Russia Today:
1) Strategic value framing - ''Russia's anti-IS air campaign has been frequently criticized by the West, which accuses Moscow of targeting Syrian ''moderate'' opposition forces and stalling the peace talks. The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly dismissed the accusations and has dubbed the US-led strikes inefficient, while Russian diplomats have pointed out that Washington's Syrian strategy seems to be playing into IS hands'' (Russia Today, 12 February 2016).
2) Collateral damage framing - ''Amnesty International accused Russia this week of a failure to acknowledge civilian deaths from its strikes in at least 25 incidents. Amnesty's report was based on witness accounts and footage and pictures published online, but the group didn't sent its own investigators to Syria. The UN sad it couldn't independently verify the allegations, Russia denied the accusations, saying the report lacked proper evidence'' (Russia Today, 27 December 2015).
Conclusion and discussion
The framing patterns found in this study support the argument that national and cultural identity influence media coverage of an international armed conflict (Aday et. al, 2005; Entman, 1991; Jones and Sheets, 2009; Nossek, 2004; Rowling et al., 2011, 2015; Sheets et al, 2015). As hypothesized, the Russian news media per se as well as in comparison to the non-Russian news outlets predominantly framed Russia's Syrian campaign as a legal military endeavor, efficient in fighting the IS/terrorist groups, and not causing civilian deaths in the process.
In the non-Russian media the greatest discrepancy was found in collateral damage framing with emphasizing collateral damage overwhelmingly dominating its downplaying. Significant civilian casualties, indiscriminant use of barrel bombs, accusations of attacks on humanitarian convoys and hospitals as well as "excessive" destruction of the rebel-held areas by the Syrian government army and Russian air force were main aspects of what can even be called a "war crimes" discourse in the non-Russian media. De jure, Russian intervention was in accordance with the international law since the Russian army was invited by a government of a UN member state. Furthermore, it was often difficult to accuse the Russian military of targeting ''moderate rebels'' (coded as an illegal activity) because the American led coalition continuously failed in separating the (legitimate) Syrian Opposition forces from the terrorists. Hence, we can conclude that the non-Russian news media portrayed Russian military
operations in Syria as illegal actions by focusing on the collateral damage it caused and relating it to the further escalation of the conflict as well as radicalization of the population. This was especially present during the Battle of Aleppo (time period 4). Arab news media was more critical of the Russian military intervention than the US and British news channels taken together. This is also congruent with the findings of previous research (Aday et al., 2005; Jones and Sheets, 2009; Sheets et al., 2015). In this case, besides the fact that Al
Jazeera is a Qatari news channel and Qatar is a member of the American led coalition, a more critical perspective can be attributed to the importance of the cultural proximity in influencing news framing - Sunni Muslims are a predominant majority in the Qatari population as well as in the Syrian Opposition forces.
A few issues and limitations have to be addressed. The discerned frames were sufficient to get a general idea about how the Russian intervention in Syria was presented in the international news media across nations and cultures involved in the conflict. However, a more detailed picture would be made if other aspects are also taken into consideration.
Primarily, the impression while coding was that media perceptions of Russia's role changed over time. In the non-Russian media the intervention was initially viewed as contributing to the problem and associated with the disaster of Russia's Afghanistan campaign in the 1980s. Over time, when Russia established itself as a relevant actor in Syria and consequently the Middle East, it was considered as a legitimate participant in the peace talks that would finally solve this armed conflict. Further research could focus on how the salience of frames change throughout the conflict depending on the dynamics of diplomatic as well as military efforts. Secondly, Russia is not the only military actor in the Syria/Iraq theatre. In the Russian media for instance, various accusations against Russia were often rebuked by counter-accusations directed towards the member states of the American led coalition. Future studies could
investigate how were the military operations of this coalition framed in the international news media. Finally, intercoder reliability was too low for some variables. The results for strategic value frame should especially be taken with a considerable doubt. However, it should be noted that a coder who coded a 10 percent subsample necessary for the intercoder reliability tests was not familiar with the topic of interest. Also, because of the time limitations, the coder was not provided with a proper coder training.
Previous studies suggested that competing on the battlefield go hand in hand with competing in the media arena (Scheafer and Gabay, 2009; Scheets, Rowling and Jones, 2015; Wolsfeld, 1997). The findings of this research add another case to this argument. This study provides an insight into dominant political ideas regarding the Syrian Civil War in countries that are influential parties in this conflict. These ideas are put into practice on the Syrian battlefields as well as at the negotiation tables. In other words, they affect millions of people in a war whose consequences are by now felt throughout the world.
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Appendix
Table 1. T-test statistics and mean scores on each frame component regarding Russia Today and non-Russian news channels (BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera).
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
Russian news media Non-Russian T-test statistics news media (BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera) Legal Illegal Downplaying collateral damage Emphasizing collateral damage Tactically successful Tactically unsuccessful Accurate/technologically sophisticated Inaccurate/insufficiently technologically sophisticated 0.86 (SD = 0.30) 0.07 (SD = 0.16) N = 50 0.21 (SD = 0.37) 0.15 (SD = 0.32) N = 50 0.46 (SD = 0.50) 0.16 (SD = 0.37) N = 50 0.12 (SD = 0.33) 0.00 (SD = 0.00) N = 50 0.33 (SD = 0.37) 0.40 (SD = 0.39) N = 150 0.08 (SD = 0.19) 0.62 (SD = 0.45) N = 150 0.19 (SD = 0.36) 0.29 (SD = 0.43) N = 150 0.12 (SD = 0.31) 0.04 (SD = 0.19) N = 150 t (102) = -10.06*** t (57) = - 2.40* t (67) = -3.51** t (198) = - 0.07
Table 2. T-test statistics and mean scores on each frame component regarding Arabic and Western news channels (BBC and CNN).
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
Arab news media BBC and CNN T-test statistics Illegal Legal Emphasizing collateral damage Downplaying collateral damage Tactically unsuccessful Tactically successful Inaccurate/insufficiently technologically sophisticated Accurate/technologically sophisticated 0.51 (SD = 0.43) 0.29 (SD = 0.37) N = 50 0.79 (SD = 0.39) 0.04 (SD = 0.10) N = 50 0.17 (SD = 0.36) 0.19 (SD = 0.38) N = 50 0.00 (SD = 0.00) 0.08 (SD = 0.27) N = 50 0.34 (SD = 0.36) 0.35 (SD = 0.37) N = 100 0.54 (SD = 0.45) 0.10 (SD = 0.21) N = 100 0.34 (SD = 0.45) 0.19 (SD = 0.35) N = 100 0.07 (SD = 0.23) 0.13 (SD = 0.33) N = 100 t (85) = - 2.52* t (114) = - 3.44** t (117) = 2.54* t (99) = 2.84**
Table 3. Regression weights for the amount of paragraphs presenting Russian intervention as legal. Coeff. S.E. Russian Today Time period 2 Time period 3 Time period 4 RT * time period 2 RT * time period 3 RT * time period 4 Intercept .53*** .008 - .03 - .21** .06 - .41* .10 .41 .10 .08 .09 .07 .16 .19 .14 .05 R2 N .37 200 *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
Table 4. Regression weights for the amount of paragraphs presenting Russian intervention as illegal
Coeff. S.E. Russian Today Time period 2 Time period 3 Time period 4 RT * time period 2 RT * time period 3 RT * time period 4 Intercept - .46*** - .02 - .06 - .16* .02 .23 .28* .46 .10 .08 .10 .07 .16 .19 .14 .05 R2 N .18 200 *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
Table 5. Regression weights for the amount of paragraphs presenting Russian intervention as tactically successful against the IS/terrorists.
Coeff. S.E. Russian Today Time period 2 Time period 3 Time period 4 RT * time period 2 RT * time period 3 RT * time period 4 Intercept .44*** - .04 - .16 - .22** - .06 - .10 - .40** .29 .11 .09 .10 .07 .17 .21 .15 .05 R2 N .23 200 *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
Table 6. Regression weights for the amount of paragraphs presenting Russian intervention as tactically unsuccessful. Coeff. S.E. Russian Today Time period 2 Time period 3 Time period 4 RT * time period 2 RT * time period 3 RT * time period 4 Intercept - .41*** - .29** .07 - .23** .29 .29 .56*** .41 .12 .09 .11 .08 .18 .22 .16 .05 R2 N .14 200