| Summary: | The purpose of this study is to analyze the ways in which military activity in the arctic region is framed on the news website Russia Today. Russia Today is a state owned news agency which produces news intended for international audiences, and so this study has been positioned within international communication studies. The research employs discourse analysis as well as framing analysis. Initially, the search word “arctic” was used during the year 2014 to investigate the most common themes within news relating to the region. The most common news category was “military”, with 29 articles focusing on this topic. These articles were read and analyzed to determine the frames present, followed by a discourse analysis of two articles within each frame to further investigate the message presented. During the discourse analysis the framing of the arctic region was also investigated. The study suggests that on Russia Today, military activity in the arctic is framed in one of three ways: as defense, as matching military actions taken by the US or NATO, or as an effort to reclaim previously inhabited areas, which is connected to the framing of the arctic as an exceptional region in which larger international issues are played out. As a result, this study has the potential to give some insight into the main message which is presented on the reasoning behind recent military activity in the arctic.
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