The media presentation of political leaders: research approaches

The media representation of the activities of political leaders in the media is not well studied in science currently. The article fills this theoretical gap by examining existing scientific research and the approaches to the representation of politicians reflected in various sources. The purpose of the paper is to show what approaches to the representation of the activities of political leaders exist in the modern theory of media representation. The article examines the main research approaches to the media representation of political leaders. Since journalism creates political discourse, partly spontaneously and partly deliberately, there are many approaches to representing the activities of political leaders in the media. Given that some of the content about political leaders is created spontaneously, research approaches that describe a more thoughtful approach to generating political content in the media are especially interesting in this study. In Russian scientific research, there are no classifications of research approaches to the representation of the activities of political leaders; accordingly, this research has a novelty. Moreover, the study is one of the first on the topic of media presentation of the activities of political leaders. This process and its results are poorly covered in Russian science. The paper uses methods of classification and comparative analysis. A classification of approaches used in various sciences and describes the specifics of media presentation is proposed. The classification is based on the idea that media representation is an important social process that is comprehended not only in the theory of journalism. The comparative analysis is carried out when comparing theories of media representation. The conclusion is made that such an approach as modeling is the most interesting from a practical point of view; modeling helps to increase the responsibility of journalists and a more conscious approach to representing the political life of society. Modeling the representation of the activities of political leaders suggests that the creation of content about political leaders will become less spontaneous, more orderly. Modeling can help create a benchmark for a more adequate representation of the activities of political leaders.