ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author presents an overview of the body of news recordings that people collected over a two-year period from September 2010 to August 2012. From news recordings the author generated a simple content analysis which enabled, to gain a grasp of the broad patterns and trends in coverage of inter-ethnic relations in Russia, to map out the contested and shifting terrain. In presenting the content analysis, the author begins by assessing the overall presence of ethnicity-related news on state-aligned national television. The period to which the recordings belong encompassed some important changes in Russia's political landscape. The author developed the coding typology in two stages, applying both deductive, or a priori, and inductive, or grounded approaches. In percentage terms, 'ethnic cohesion' accounts for approximately 12 per cent of the intensity of news coverage relating to the topic area for both Vremia and Vesti.
