THE IDEOLOGICAL MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF PUTIN AND ZELENSKY IN BBC PROFILES: A MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The current study aims to explore the ideological representation of Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky in BBC’s online profiles to see how sociopolitical ideologies are embedded with the help of semiotic resources within images and their accompanying texts. These ideologically loaded media representations are a medium used to build social realities and political opinions of the public. The selected data, nine images and their captions alongside details, are analysed by adopting Machin’s framework of multimodal analysis together with Fairclough’s model of representation of social events and van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors. The analysis rigorously focuses on the conscious choices of the BBC editors in terms of visual and linguistic features of the profiles and embedded structures of power relations which are represented as common-sense social constructs. The findings suggest that BBC’s profiles are far from neutral and they have used discourse and semiotic resources to represent Putin as rigid, vastly powerful and a threat, whereas Zelensky is shown as amiable but dauntless in the face of war and political strife.