The impact of news coverage of Russia in the media on export-import activities

After the introduction of sanctions against Russia, the volume of both exports and imports in the country fell sharply. The purpose of the study is to identify the possible impact of news information, taking into account its emotional color, on the volume of foreign trade of Russia during the sanctions period. The empirical base of the study included news texts of Thomson Reuters Agency from the beginning of 2012 to may 2018 and indicators of export and import of Russia. Using the methods of text analysis (sentiment-analysis based on NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon and calculating the semantic distance between words) and econometric modelling, the influence of the tone of news about Russia for the period from March 2014 to May 2018 was studied. As a result of the study, it has been found that there is a relationship between the content of news reports about Russia and the volume of its export-import operations. Sanctions pressure creates a negative reputational background around Russia, which reduces its attractiveness as a foreign trade partner for other countries.