Poroshenko and Zelenskyi: the first media months as presidents

On the very first month, Poroshenko focused on the patriotic agenda and western direction of foreign policy. Unlike him, Zelenskyi attempted to cover all social issues. But the width of issues coverage was to the detriment of depth.
BALANCE OF ATTENTION TO DIFFERENT ISSUES OF AGENDAS FROM POROSHENKO AND ZELENSKYI
BALANCE OF ATTENTION TO DIFFERENT ISSUES OF AGENDAS FROM POROSHENKO AND ZELENSKYI

The first month of the president`s job is considered as one of the most eloquent: president creates his image as a manager of the state level. We have analyzed media activity of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyi during June 8 - July 7, 2014, and May 21 - June 20, 2019, respectively.

We have chosen two units of study: agenda of presidents` mentions and verbs that describe their actions. We distinguish six categories of issues forming the agendas: the issues of patriotic agenda and Western direction of policy, Russian direction of policy, liberal agenda, social agenda, anti-corruption issues and the rule of law, and non-political agenda.

On the sample of publications in five popular media with different political favors, we compared two presidents and came up with that conclusion:

1. Both presidents paid main attention to the patriotic agenda, and then to the liberal one. Therefore, for Poroshenko, this direction was more prominent and more saturated with real solutions. Zelenskyi tried to reach issues of all agendas but predominantly made just statements.

2. Zelenskyi paid much more attention to the non-political agenda.

3. Regarding verbs, media wrote a lot about Zelenskyi`s terminations of Ukrainian officials, and about his dissolution of Parliament, comparing to Poroshenko who usually spoke about appointments. It appears that authority was cleaned by the new president. With respect to communication, Poroshenko predominantly focused on the substance of meetings (offers, negotiates), and Zelenskyi - on the process (meets).

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