“Annexation or Reunification?” Linguistic Appraisal of German and Russian news reporting on Crimea

Abstract

“Fake News” has reached new heights of contestation within recent times around the globe. Appraisal Theory provides a framework through which instances of news platforms’ positive and negative judgments can be identified, including their stances toward what counts as truthful reporting. Previously, researchers have identified the stances of news agencies by conducting linguistic analyses on news articles, showing how new agencies are able to assert their views through textual constructions. However, the expression of stance in German and Russian news articles showing different sides to the same conflict involving the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula has remained largely unexplored. To address this gap, I selected articles reporting on Russian involvement in Crimea from a liberal German news source, a conservative German news source, and a Russian-state sponsored news source based in Germany. Using a manual linguistic coder, I identified each instance of positive and negative attitude towards Russian involvement in Crimea within each news article. The analysis reveals that German and Russian news sources use different linguistic constructions to moralize Russian actions in Ukraine, with each side reporting information to support a German or Russian worldview respectively. The study shows how news agencies attempt to align readers with a particular worldview and that even if news sources appear to provide information from multiple sources or perspectives, they can still constitute bias.