Space-Related Scientific and Technical Information in Current Media Discourse: Research Results

Abstract

By informing mass audience about scientific, engineering, and technological achievements, modern media contribute to the growth of the prestige of scientific and innovative activities and increase society's susceptibility to scientific and technological progress and innovations. One of the priorities for scientific and technological development in the Russian Federation is the study and exploration of outer space. Mass media can be an effective tool for popularizing fundamental and applied space research and its impact on everyday life, thereby updating the image of space in mass consciousness and society's representations of the present and the future. The leading federal socio-political newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and Kommersant, as well as the online media Lenta.Ru and Gazeta.Ru, were selected as the object of this study. The research period covered January-December 2020. Publications related to space were selected and analyzed using Integrum, the information retrieval system for monitoring and analyzing the media, and the word2vec algorithm based on artificial neural networks. The original methodology made it possible to determine the ratio of publications about space in the total amount of mass media reports and to identify key topical areas of the space information agenda and features of its geography.