Environmental Discourse in Russia: Topic Modeling Presidential Communications

• In Event: Analyzing Debate and Discourse about Science and Environmental Issues

Abstract

How do political actors frame and communicate their concerns about environmental issues in a federal and politically-centralized authoritarian regime? In this project, I aim to explore this question focusing on Russia. The current paper concentrates on the speech acts from the office of the Russian president. Specifically, I apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to various documents of communications at the Russian presidential office pertaining to the broad topic of environment and ecology between 2008 and 2022. I find that generally the most frequently discussed environmental topics are forest, fires, climate, water, and the arctic. I also find that the content of communications from the presidential office on the environment has differed thematically for international and domestic issues, but the framing is similar in that these issues co-occur with references to the state and the national economy.

Author

• Delgerjargal Uvsh, University of Texas at Austin