Mass media about the Russian labor market: Main topics, coverage formats and genre solutions

The article is a report on a content-analytical study of an array of media texts on the labor market. The objective of the project was to study the presence of the topic of labor in modern Russian media and the nature of its representation in the context of authorial texts. The mediatexts of six federal and six regional media were subjected to content analysis for four months (from June to September). The sample included federal publications, on the pages of which the topic of labor is covered regularly. Regional media were considered from the mega-region of the South of Russia (Rostov region, Krasnodar region, Sevastopol and Crimea). Electronic publications for analysis were selected in accordance with the citation frequency identified by the Medialogy rating agency for the first half of 2023. The two most authoritative web-resources in each region, republic, or territory were selected. In total, more than a hundred publications were selected by topic for analysis in three categories. Priority themes and specific problems for the labor market of the South of Russia and the national market were identified. The signs of the author's position and evaluation in relation to the subject of the description were fixed. The preferred formats for presenting up-to-date information about the work, as well as the genre features of the development of the topic of labor, were determined. The conclusions of the article substantiate the coexistence in the press of two contradictory discourses, one of which praises the heroes of labor, and the other criticizes employers for low wages and poor organization of work. It is noted that the topic of labor today is of an expert nature and not a single publication is complete without references to authoritative sources and without the involvement of commentators. Most often, government officials, specialists from recruitment agencies, and academic economists act as expert commentators. In the transfer of the voice of the commentator to various kinds of experts and in the rejection of one's own conclusions, one can see the threat of a fall in the reader's trust in the figure of a journalist, who, in fact, is deprived of the qualities of subjectness. If in the regional media the main topic is the size of wages, then in federal publications they often pay attention to the shortage of workers in industry and the service sector. Another point of difference in journalistic approaches is the genre repertoire. In regional publications that are closer to their audience, there is a set of genres of the Soviet newspaper: reports, congratulations, portrait sketches. But, at the same time, there are also emotional readers' comments on publications. There are no essays and portraits in federal publications, but business genres of press releases, reviews, and comments are used. The content-analytical study we have carried out may be of interest to sociologists of the press and developers of a course on the topics and problems of the periodical press.