Political Factor of Media Discussions: public embarrassment of a regional public official

Abstract

The paper represents a case-study of the particular case of manifestation of regional official’s rudeness and its reflection in media discussions. The sources are comments to news published on the regional information agency website, and telegram channels’ publications by the subject.Relationship between the authorities and the people is one of the key topics of political interest. Appeal to concept of political culture allows to answer many questions concerning the mastery, retention and use of power. To do this, the analyzed information array was considered the next aspects: reasons contributing to the appearance of the official’s statement (cultural level, awareness of the Russian regional elite, the gap between bureaucracy and Russian population); sanctions against the official (dismissal, extrajudicial reprisals); options for getting out of the situation for authorities (condemnation from the federal elite); political consequences of rudeness of the elite (protest vote of the population, recognition of personnel hunger in regions).Analysis of each issues allowed to address the problem of media discussions’ political potential, including new-media sites. Despite the constantly mentioned fact that such statements of officials provoke popular anger, which will affect the results of the elections in 2019, the discourse analysis reveals otherwise. Publications in the Internet space serve as a platform that absorbs negative expression of the audience, but not as a tool for calling for more active actions.