A War, a Conflict or an Invasion? Journalistic Definitions of a Full-Scale Russian Invasion in the British Newspaper the Guardian

Abstract

On the the example of one of the leading newspapers in Great Britain - The Guardian - this study finds out what the nespapers’ policy has for defining a full-scale Russian invasion, and also offers an algorithm for identifying approaches to the representation of the war in the international mass media. In order to analyze the definitions used by The Guardian, an archive of 7,734 publications related to the Russian-Ukrainian war was collected from the official website of the newspaper with the help of a program written in Python. Period: February 24, 2022 - November 30, 2023. The definitions taken into account were: "crisis", "operation", "conflict", "aggression", "invasion", "war", "genocide", "occupation", "denazification", "demilitarization". Both in scientific and media discourse, we encounter numerous definitions of a full-scale Russian invasion: war, conflict, crisis. They are used in parallel, so there is no final understanding of what happened yet. An analysis of the definitions provided by The Guardian allows us to claim that although journalists generally describe a full-scale invasion as a "war", they rarely mention that it is a "full-scale war". This ignores the important context and background of the events. Also, the largest publication is focused on describing the Russian invasion as an event affecting mostly Ukraine. Russia is also mentioned, but less often. It is also important that other European countries directly affected by these events are not found alongside the keywords. Only in one case (the word "crisis") do we see Europe. Such a picture may indicate an urgent need to broadcast the Ukrainian point of view on events in the international media, Ukrainian sources - not only official, but also experts who could transform the vision of the situation both in Great Britain and in the partner countries of our state.