Inciting xenophobia: Study finds that Russia’s state media is more likely than ‘foreign agent’ news outlets to associate migrants and violent crime

A new joint investigation by iStories and Novaya Gazeta assesses allegations that "foreign agent" media outlets are responsible for "deliberately criminalizing" migrants in news coverage. In late September, a senior police official leveled this accusation, implying that foreign funding fuels popular mischaracterizations of Russia's migrant community. To test this theory, iStories and Novaya Gazeta used neural network analysis to map the sentiments most often attributed to migrants in news reports over the past two years by Telegram's most popular pro-government channels (Karaulny, RT, Readovka, Solovyov, Mash, RIA Novosti, and Lenta) and "foreign agent" channels (Meduza, Dozhd, and Mediazona). The evidence contradicts the Interior Ministry's claims. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/11/24/inciting-xenophobia