The Image of Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian War from the Perspective of American Media: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis

Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the global media has been busy writing about it. Based on its different political positions, each country has different attitudes and positions towards all parties in the war, and its reports will also construct different images. This research will combine the quantitative corpus method and qualitative critical discourse analysis to explore what kind of Russian image the US media has constructed in the reports of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the possible reasons. The study found that the US media believed that in the war, Russia played the role of the invader, while Ukraine was the victim, and believed that the war was a military aggression by Russia against Ukraine. The main reason may be that the United States, as one of the leading members of NATO, hopes to suppress Russia through public opinion and prompt Ukraine to join NATO in order to consolidate its global hegemony status.