Mediatransit of Social Issues in Russian Media: 1990-2010 (Case Study of Social Orphanhood)

The article discussed the findings of the content analysis study of social orphanhood stories in six Russian newspapers from across the country, from a dynamic perspective. Despite a considerable reduction of the amount of social issues due to the fact that parents of some orphans are alive, the issue remains very serious, with a range of causes and effects. The scientific framework of the study is to identify the conditions that can improve the effectiveness of the media's functioning in Russian people's social lives, eradicate social vices, and acquire competence that will reduce the occurrence of social phenomena of orphanhood. The main point of the study is the dynamics of the ideological and thematic features of the publications over the decades. While media content studies are quite popular in Russian scholarship, they tend to capture the state of media discourse at a particular point in time, assessing its strengths and pointing out its weaknesses. Such approaches, however, are not as effective as they could be; they do not describe how the issue has evolved over time, and they do not address the question of a solution. Our research puts forward a different methodological solution: we find it more relevant to analyze the coverage of hot topics over a long period to identify the presence (or absence) of any development of the theme and changes in the approaches. We perceive this development known as media transit as a more promising way of assessing media performance. It allows us to lay down the foundations for analysis. We evaluated the media state of the issue of child abandonment in Russian media as leading. The findings are based on the changes in the leading themes of media coverage (from child abuse to the social placement of orphanage graduates) and changing nature of the messages (from calling for more media coverage of the hot topic to the use of positive experiences that involve the efforts of public organizations).