Assessment of News Items Objectivity in Mass Media
of Countries with Intelligence Systems: the Brexit Case

TATYANA N. VLADIMIROVA¹, Marina V. Vinogradova²,

ANDREY I. VLASOV³,& Alexander A. Shatsky ²

¹Moscow Pedagogical State University, Russian Federation

² Russian State Social University, Russian Federation

³ Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Russian Federation

The role of mass media in society keeps the problem of manipulative influence distinction and the contiguous phenomena, chief among which is objectivity and authenticity of news items, current. The research provides a detailed study of the information broadcasting mechanisms in the media area, defines the problems, impeding an impersonal reproduction and disclosure of information, clarifies the verification methods, and gives their topology. In this research, we examined how the mass media of different countries presented the same event to the public. The publications of four mass media, concerning such an event as the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit), have been determined as an object of the analysis. The chosen mass media refer to the countries, which are not the direct participants of that process: Russia, the USA, and Ukraine. D. Brewer’s criteria were used to define the objectivity of the news items. A relative sentiment of the news, which became the objective analysis basis, has been identified using linguistic rate with Eureka Engine intelligence system. The obtained results predominantly confirmed the hypothesis, that the mass media of different countries would represent the process of the UK withdrawal from the EU according to the country’s policy and interpret the facts in their favor. All the four mass media demonstrate the partiality when broadcasting the current situation in the matter of Brexit. The concepts being the semantic kernel elements of mass media publications have emotional coloring. The sentiment analysis of the publications resulted in the conclusion that only one of the four mass media gave a neutral assessment of the Brexit situation. The other three held to the political stance of their edition or government. The research results indicate that the problem of mass media objectivity remains relevant. The correctional impact on public opinion through mass media is extremely high. Therefore, forming the personal attitude toward the situation or event should occur with using several verifications methods and mass media sources at once.

Keywords: Content analysis, mass media, objectivity, manipulation, semantic kernel, information,

sentiment analysis of news items, public opinion, intelligence systems

Mass media play an essential role in the broadcasting process of significant information about events. The objectivity of public opinion depends on the authenticity of the information provided by mass media. The same events and phenomena can be covered differently by countries’ mass media, taking completely contrary attitudes. With the ongoing development of mass media, their appliance turned into the significant tool of forming public opinion, which uses extensive influence techniques.

Under modern conditions, the number of information sources keeps steadily growing, their behavior, functions, and focus change. New mass media appear that have an impact on legacy media (Deryabina, 2016; Allabouche et al., 2016; Yessenbekova, 2018a, 2018b). Affected by mass media, the marketing background of economic relations change (Chernova, Tretyakova, & Vlasov, 2018). Mass media became the most important civil society institution, which forms the society’s vision of the world around. The objectivity of such a view primarily depends on mass media diversity and the existence of different opinions in the information realm (Zimin, 2012). Well-balanced, exhaustive, and objective information of all aspects of public life is indispensable for widespread behavioral culture to be advanced in a positive way (Yessenbekova, 2015, 2016).

The importance of mass media is enhanced with each passing day. With successful handling information, they can misrepresent the relevant facts, control human behavior and opinion along with imposing their views (Sisulak, 2017). Hence, the manipulative actions of mass media is a question of vital importance for researching. The accuracy and authenticity of the information, provided by mass media, are a separate matter of this issue. The objectivity of information should be understood as its consistency with the content of a real object (Fokina, Nikitina, & Vinogradova, 2018; Nikiforov, 2008). The more exhaustive and profound such information confirms the phenomena of our interests, the more objective it is. The commitment to publications being objective resulted in a situation where it could be provided at the “Fact-based journalism” or “Precision Journalism.” However, the truth, “exposed” by a journalist, always appears to be objective (in a greater or lesser degree) (Komarov, 1986). Among other things, the objective information itself, journalists armed with, provides no guarantees of publications objectiveness and worldviews formation for mass media audience.

In this research, we examined how the mass media of different countries presented the same event to the public, which tools of manipulative influence they use, and how effective they are today. The purpose of our analysis is to examine the news items sample for comprehensive covering such an event as the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit).

Literature Review

The role of mass media in society keeps the problem of manipulative influence distinction and the contiguous phenomena. Language manipulations and propaganda are placed alongside. Danilin (2018) considers manipulation as an integral part of propaganda actions. Bessonov (1971), having examined these phenomena, regards both of them as tools for society enslavement along ideological lines in particular.

The researchers consider the concept of manipulation from different perspectives. According to Bykova (1999), loaded terms in mass media is a form of influence, used for subtle influence on addressee’s mind. Litunova conceives that manipulation is a selection and usage of language means, which help to affect a certain addressee. Strenin (2012) shares this viewpoint. Shostrom (2008), a linguist, highlights the prevalence of this phenomenon in society. Almost everyone looks forward to imposing his or her viewpoint on a specific issue to an interlocutor, and moreover, it is highly desirable, if he does not understand it. Sheinov (2008) develops this approach. He suggested that manipulation is a covert human control against his or her will, providing the initiator with unilateral advantages. Blakar (1987) considered language manipulations as a tool and meant of social power. A positive component of manipulation is revealed by Sedov (2003), who remarks that a person can commit acts, which are beneficial for both a manipulator and an addressee on the productive manipulation background (as in training process (Giessen, 2015)).

The manipulative influence of mass media is carried out with several tools, methods, and strategies. There are three key kinds of information manipulation: misrepresentation, selection, and reservation (Scherbatyh, 1998; Jdanova, 2010). Kara-Murza (2000), Limba & Sidlauskas (2018) remark that a reservation is the most common in mass media today. A metaphor (Shragina, Arutiunova., Lakoff & Jonson, 2004), a reiteration and a rhetorical question ((Kopnina (2012), Skovorodnikov (2005)) are the main linguistic means, which have an impact on emotional intelligence of an addressee.

A text can express an affective evaluation of what is reported alongside information. The effective evaluation of the text is called a tonality feature, or a sentiment. A sentiment of the whole text can be determined as a function (in the simplest case – a sum) of lexical tonality features of its units (sentences) and the rules of their combination (Liu, 2015). A common approach to sentiment analysis consists in text classification on two or three categories (negative, positive, neutral or negative and positive) [Pang & Lee (2002); Turney (2002)]. The objectivity is the core concept of the sentiment.

The division of linguistic units into subjective and objective ones was extensively used in sentiment analysis. Nevertheless, it was experimentally proved that these categories are inefficient in sentiment analysis, resulting in the term “sentiment relevancy” appearance. Sentiment relevancy provides the difference of information context for establishing a document sentiment from non-informative. It stands in contrast to the conventional difference between subjective and objective context (Scheible & Schutze, 2013; Pang & Lee, 2008). The relationship between the two mentioned terms existing; however, they are unequal.

Support Vector Machines (SVM) is widely used in text classification on sentiments in the statistical approach, Bayesian models, various regressions (Chetviorkin & Loukachevitch, 2013). If the goal is to establish the sentiment of a certain, predefined object (several ones), then more complex statistical algorithm as CRF (Antonova & Soloviev, 2013), semantic similarity algorithms, etc. are applied.

It is essential to highlight the accuracy and authenticity issue in mass media. Tyrygina (2010) suggested diverse approaches for accuracy and authenticity establishment of the news item, e.g., thematic and lexical-semantic analysis of the requested news. Also, she defined the “accuracy” as a reflection degree of reality at the lexical-semantic level of a text. The “authenticity” was addressed in terms of news item actuality, which always had to be accompanied by commentaries, information sources.

Commonly, objective information is the one, which contains no prejudices and is impartial. Moreover, absolute objectivity is known to be never achieved. As for comprehensive covering the news, the ratio of available information amount to all the information of the topic, or the information property to include the required minimum volume for adopting an objective stand. According to Brewer D. (2018), the concept “objectivity” includes four components. They are balanced highlighting of topics and viewpoints showing various opinions, the study of opposed views, examining the exhaustiveness of both opinions. An objective sentence contains evidence-based information while a subjective one – personal emotions, viewpoint, and beliefs. It is important to understand that subjectiveness is not the same thing as sentiment, as far as objective sentences can contain opinion (Semina, 2018).

Relative objectivity of mass media publications can be available with the appliance of certain methods of information verification. There are several core verification methods such as (Prikhodko, 2015): (i) direct comparison of a statement to real events; (ii) comparison of a statement to other one of the observers, participants or commentators who can be impartial and qualified; (iii) the proof, consisting of adding supplementary data which could be regarded as original ones; (iv) comparison of information from several independent sources to each other. Thus, the low level of mass media manipulations and new items objectivity can be spoken of if there is a complex of mentioned approaches.

Materials and Methods

The content-analysis material for determining the comprehensive coverage of an event in mass media and the objectivity of its interpretation was the media-resources news items, relating to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit). Furthermore, all the examined mass media belong to the countries that are not the European Union members (that is, they are not direct participants of Brexit). A news article has been chosen as a contextual unit of the analysis. The analysis background consists of 200 articles, 50 for each media-resource. The considered news articles were published in the second half of 2018. The data were collected from the following media-resources: (i) News agency “RIA Novosti” (Russia); (ii) informational portal “Ekho Moskvy” (Russia); (iii) News agency “UNIAN” (the Ukraine); (iv) television channel “CNN” (the USA).

The suggestion, concerning the mass media of countries to assess the process of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, based on the government policy and interpret the facts to satisfy their interests, was developed as the research hypothesis. Thus, as we suggested, the Russian mass media must cover this news positively, the Ukraine ones – negatively, and the US ones – neutrally or positively.

D. Brewer’s (2018) criteria were used to define the objectivity of news item. Meanwhile, the news sentiment is the basis of content analysis. The Eureka Engine Intelligence System (2018) provides the linguistic rate of texts, which allows extracting “comprehension” from the raw data. The system has two types of establishing a sentiment: regarding the pre-defined object; the object automatically established by the system based on the total knowledge of it. The second type of sentiment provides more accurate text classification. Generally, that is why we have chosen it for researching. The Eureka Engine Intelligence System identifies three types of sentiment: positive, negative, and neutral. The relative sentiment rates were used to define news item objectivity in mass media; the neutral ones were not included in the research.

The regime of sentiment establishment being objectless, we may only talk about averaged values. The relative sentiment rate is calculated with dividing the sum of positive news items ranks by the sum of the respective negative ranks (including the weight of these values in the text):

Ts = P/N, (1)

where Ts – relative sentiment rate; P – positive rank; N – negative rank.

A text being neutral, Ts is close to one. If it is considerably more or less than one, the news item is a positive or negative one respectively. The absolute rate is calculated with the deduction of the negative rank from the positive one:

Ta = P – N, (2)

where Ta – absolute sentiment rate.

Results

Content Analysis of “RIA Novosti” (Russia) News Items

Highlighting the general subjects of the articles of the news agency “RIA Novosti” on Brexit, the following may be included: “The Brexit process in Great Britain,” “The response to Brexit in the European Union”, “The impact of Brexit on Russia,” and “The prime minister Theresa May’s personality.” Proceeding from the texts of the articles we can see, that the RIA editorial staff regards Brexit as a positive event, even if Western Europe discourages it. There are a large number of articles, concerning “hard Brexit” as probable outcomes, that is the withdrawal of the UK from the EU unilaterally.

The article “Stumble on the border. Why is Great Britain is so sorely parting with the EU?” can be cited as an example of Brexit description in news items of “RIA Novosti” (2018)1: on the one hand, we see Theresa May (prime minister) be ready for withdrawal from the EU; on the other hand, the British public wanting to make compromises. The article conveys the conflicting nature of Brexit. The article “An analyst evaluated the likelihood of “hard Brexit” (2018)² contains one more Brexit description. This article concerns several options of Brexit being carried out, and yet the view of the event appears to be rather lopsided. The instances of Brexit political effects on the UK, Russia, and the EU have been found in the examined articles.

Studying the objectivity of the “RIA Novosti” articles sample, let us turn to Brewer’s method. The new items are sufficiently balanced. Both facts and events, along with experts and politicians’ opinions, are presented here. Various viewpoints take place to be. However, they cannot be said to be opposite. Therefore, it cannot be concluded either, that all these viewpoints are described in detail. The comprehensiveness of the news covered is high. The articles, concerning Brexit, are the tenth (45 from 489) of the total amount of articles published by “RIA Novosti” news portal in the section “World” over the reviewed period on site. The key events of Brexit were mentioned, personal opinions of different experts were also presented.

The length of the articles varies from 3.000 to 15.000 thousand symbols. The articles about Brexit are often published on the “RIA Novosti” news portal. Ten articles on this topic per week, on average, are published. Insertion frequency of the articles grows up alongside such newsworthy events as votings, summits, etc. The news items sentiment rate distribution by the sample is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The news items sentiment rate distribution about Brexit adapted
by the news agency “RIA Novosti”

According to the received data (Appendix), the total sentiment rate is as follows:

Ts = 12.62 / 6.65 = 1.90

Thus, the “RIA Novosti” publications concerning the withdrawal of the UK from the EU have mostly a positive rate.

Content Analysis of News items on “Ekho Moskvy” (Russia) Website

With 50 articles of media-source “Ekho Moskvy” having been analyzed, several topics, combining them, may be highlighted: “The British government’s attitude on Brexit,” “Western Europe’s attitude on Brexit,” “The Brexit consequences.” Even though the Russian government’s position on the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, described in the articles, is rather positive, however many negative rates of such a complicated historical process can be found in the texts of the articles.

To illustrate the Brexit description, we examine a fragment from the article “Facing the consequences of the wrong choice” (Sonin, 2018)3. “Two years ago Brexit would seem to be reasonable, promising, have new opportunities. Two years later after hundred hours of negotiations and tones of paper full of notes it became abundantly clear – it was absurd with nothing, but irresponsibility of some politicians, lack of the other ones’ vision and also the citizens who, having their welfare grown up, lost insight in where it comes from, beyond that. The opinion piece has an explicitly negative connotation and observes the process one-sidedly, not coming up with alternative viewpoints. The article “The draft agreement on the withdrawal conditions from the EU triggered a new wave of political crisis” also has the same rate of Brexit (2018)4. The effects on society are presented in the article “The British self-isolation” (Rodionov, 2018)5; the heading contains a negative attitude of the editorial staff towards the process.

Referring to Brewer’s method of objectivity rate, it is worth noting that the materials, concerning Brexit, are well balanced. They contain both fact-based articles and personal opinion ones. There are viewpoints of different experts in publications, but they have a negative tendency in common. Opposite viewpoints do not exist. However, some neutral articles take place to be. Therefore, it cannot be said that all the viewpoints are equally presented in the whole “Ekho Moskvy” content.

The comprehensiveness of the news covered is less than “RIA Novosti” has. Many newsworthy events are not presented in “Ekho Moskvy” material. Brexit forms the 1/12 part of all the news material from the International Section (21 from 249 articles). Insertion frequency of the articles is about three articles per week, on average, but it is different as one newsbreak event comes with several articles. The article length is from 1.000 to 18.000 symbols. The minimum length of those articles, which contains unbiased, factual reports, more informative ones, is opinion analytical pieces. The news items sentiment rate distribution by the sample is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The news items sentiment rate distribution about Brexit по теме Brexit adapted
by news portal “Ekho Moskvy”

According to the received data (Appendix A), the total sentiment rate is as follows:

Ts = 14.55 / 10.17 = 1.43

Thus, the “Ekho Moskvy” publications concerning the withdrawal of the UK from the EU have mostly a positive rate.

Content Analysis of the News Items on the “UNIAN” (the Ukraine)

Fifty news items of “UNIAN” having been analyzed, several overarching issues have been revealed. They are “The British government’s attitude on Brexit,” “Western Europe’s attitude on Brexit,” “The Brexit effects on Ukraine,” and “The role of Russia in Brexit.” Regarding common tendencies of news items, concerning Brexit, it is worth noting that most of them are modestly negative, which is not the case of the ones concerning Brexit and Russia.

The fragment of the Brexit description published by “UNIAN” are in the article “Britain evaluated the scopes of economic collapse in the Brexit case without a deal” (2018)6: this article is based on several sources, the British and Russian editions along with the data of the London School of Economics. Despite each of these sources regarding Brexit as a negative process, the objectivity of the news item takes place to be. Another description of Brexit is presented in the article “The prime minister of Great Britain: Reneging on a deal leads to destabilization of the country7: there is only one opinion and no other viewpoints in it.

Based on the sample studied, the topic of social consequences in the context of Great Britain and Ukraine is raised. The effects on Ukraine are presented in the article “One pace away from Brexit: How the withdrawal of the UK from the EU will affect on the Ukraine” (Zaremba, 2018)8. There is several experts’ opinion in the news item, although each of them belongs to an interested individual. The opposing viewpoints are absent in the article; that is why the news item cannot be objective.

Generally assessing the objectivity of the news items, it stands to mention that the articles contain both factual-based information and subjective viewpoints that results in the materials being well balanced. However, not all of them build on several sources; most of them provide information without any alternative one. The opposing viewpoints are not found. Therefore, it cannot be said that the objectivity of the “UNIAN” articles is not so high.

The comprehensiveness of the news covered is remarkably high; almost all the big newsworthy events permeated the news items of “UNIAN.” The article's length varies from 6.000 to 15.000 symbols. The articles of “UNIAN,” concerning Brexit, are published 2-3 times per week. The news items sentiment rate distribution by the sample is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The news items sentiment rate distribution about Brexit по теме Brexit adapted
by the news agency “UNIAN”

According to the received data (Appendix A), the total sentiment rate is as follows:

Ts =11.41 / 10.38 = 1.10

Thus, the “Ekho Moskvy” publications concerning the withdrawal of the UK from the EU have a neutral rate.

Content Analysis of the News Items on “CNN” (the USA)

Media-Resource CNN is the most popular and reliable source among all the analyzed ones. It stands a neutral-negative position towards Brexit mostly. Worth noting topics are “The British government’s attitude on Brexit,” “Western Europe’s attitude on Brexit,” and “The personality of Theresa May.”

The Brexit description is presented in the article “The non-Brits guide to Brexit (because it affects you too”) (Doug, 2019)9. It has detailed information, which contains a clear chronology of the relationships between Great Britain and the European Union. The article consists of a body of evidence and provides with plenty of viewpoints resulting in its objectivity to be the highest one. The same description of Brexit is regarded in the news item “(It's not just you) Brexit is making Britain very hard to understand right now” (McGee, 2018)10. The body of evidence of Brexit available for today is presented in it. With the volume of sources and all-round opinions taking into account, this news item can be said to be objective.

The news items of “CNN” appears to be the most objective in comparison with the mentioned news agencies in general. The material is balanced. .Almost all the articles have several information sources, containing in most cases opposite views. The article's length is from 8.000 to 12.000 symbols. The articles of “CNN,” concerning Brexit, are published ten times per week, on average and forms the tenth (64 from 652 articles) of the “World” news section. The videos concerning it are published more often. The news items sentiment rate distribution by the sample is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The news items sentiment rate distribution about Brexit по теме Brexit adapted
by news portal “CNN”

According to the received data (Appendix), the total sentiment rate is as follows:

Ts = 9.06 / 14.35 = 0.63

Thus, the “Ekho Moskvy” publications concerning the withdrawal of the UK from the EU have a negative rate.

Discussions

Comparing the total sentiment rate of new items of the four mass media, we have concluded that only one of them (news agency “UNIAN”) shows a neutral rate of the current Brexit situation [with the prevalence of positive]; Ts= 1.10 when neutral Ts must be 1. The other three mass media hold to the political stance of their edition or government: American “CNN” assesses the situation negatively almost as the Russian media-resource “Ekho Moskvy” does the same, but in a positive way [CNN has the deviation from a neutral rate of 0.37 and “Ekho Moskvy” – 0.43]; the most impartial mass media is “RIA Novosti” [the deviation is 0.9 positively].

The analysis of the sentiment trend of news items, regarded by the mass media, shows the following. “RIA Novosti” shifts the emphasis to common contrariety and tension of the situation (word diagonals “agreement” – “situation” and “voting” – “withdrawal”) focused on the meaning of politicians’ actions, not on the ones themselves. CNN semantically emphasizes on the national and political sides, establishing a contradictory situation, not setting them against each other (concepts “vote” and “backstop” are opposed to “government” and “opposition). By contrast, with CNN, “Ekho Moskvy,” focusing on the political parties’ contradictions, opposes them to each other (word diagonals “withdrawal” – “opinion” and “country” – “party”). “UNIAN” shifts the sematic emphasize to a possible resolution of the situation (“agreement” – “negotiate” and “withdrawal” – “subject”). The sentiment of the semantic kernel in the mass media material is also different, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The sentiment distribution of the semantic kernel concerning Brexit situation in the mass media

Term	Mass media
Term	RIA Novosti	CNN	UNIAN	Ekho Moskvy
Parliament	+/-	+	+	+
Party	-	no	+	+
Prime minister	no	+	+	-
Government	+	-	+	+
EU	-	no	no	-
Brussels	no	no	no	+/-
Ireland	+	+	+	-
Referendum	no	+	+	no

Note: (+) – positive sentiment; (-) – negative sentiment; (+-) – neutral sentiment; (нет) – absence of a term in semantic kernel.

According to the data, it can be concluded that the terms, composing the semantic kernel in the mass media publications, have an evident sentiment. The neutral sentiment of “parliament” in “RIA Novosti” and “Brussels” in “Ekho Moskvy” are an exception. News agency “UNIAN” has a positive sentiment of all national participants’ position (parliament, parties, prime minister, government, Ireland, referendum). In the meantime, the EU and Brussels have no high frequency of reference despite Russia (positive sentiment) and Ukraine (negative sentiment). It indicates the shift of focus on the stance of the internal participants of the UK and the effects of these actions on Russia and Ukraine.

CNN alongside “UNIAN” does not regard the current situation in the context of the EU – the focus is shifted to the internal conflicts. The political parties (prime minister, parliament, Ireland, referendum) have a positive sentiment, given by CNN. The negative one is concentrated on government and the opposition contradictories.

“Ekho Moskvy” regards the issues of Brexit as inside Great Britain as well as between the UK and the EU. The news portal gives a positive sentiment to the British political formations, except for the prime minister. The EU stance got a rate, having a more negative sentiment. “RIA Novosti” gives a rate to Brexit difficulties for Great Britain alongside “Ekho Moskvy.”

The terms, defining the solution methods of the issue or the solution itself, also have a sentiment (a positive or negative one). “RIA Novosti” gives a positive sentiment to such terms as “agreement,” “negotiations,” “support,” “agreement,” and a negative one to “deal.” “UNIAN” gives a positive sentiment to “agreement,” “negotiations,” and a negative one to “deal,” “coordination,” and “support.” CNN assesses negatively “agreement” and gives a neutral sentiment to “deal”. “Ekho Moskvy” gives a positive sentiment to “treaty,” and a neutral one to “agreement,” “negotiations.”

Thus, all the analyzed mass media demonstrates inequity when publishing articles about Brexit. Inequity consists of giving sentiment to semantic units, concerning them being mentioned. According to the sentiment analysis, the most impartial mass media is “UNIAN.” According to the choice of stance analysis, the most impartial one occurs to be “Ekho Moskvy.”

Conclusion

The problem of new items in mass media objectivity and the ways of manipulation are the cross-disciplinary study object. The influence of mass media on society, people’s mind, and their view of the world have been researched in psychology and linguistics for a long time in detail. For this very reason, it is necessary and important to examine the tools and specifics of manipulative actions, to assess the objectivity of mass media in the context of one event described.

The regarding event is the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit) – shows that the news items sentiment of the four mass media is diverse; the trends of the sentiments of the text significantly associate with the political stance. The hypothesis developed at the beginning of the research is confirmed. The mass media of different countries, indeed, assess the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union according to the government political stance and interpret the facts in their favor; however, the interpretation can be different.

The most objective mass media among the analyzed ones is American news channel CNN; the least one is the news agency “Ekho Moskvy. The news agency “RIA Novosti” and the Ukrainian “UNIAN” take an intermediate position. The comprehensiveness of the news covered is satisfying. Any big newsworthy event concerning Brexit is embodied in the sample.

The manipulative influence issues in these mass media cannot be said to be studied deeply. According to the data, it can be concluded that the concepts of the semantic kernel have an explicit sentiment. However, only one mass media analyzed (the news agency “UNIAN”) gives a neutral rate to Brexit. The other three hold the political stance of their edition or state: American “CNN” assesses the situation negatively almost like the Russian media-resource “Ekho Moskvy” does the same but positively; the least impartial mass media is “RIA Novosti.”

Acknowledgments: In the framework of the agreement with the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation from 26.09.2017 No. 14.577.21.0251 on the topic: "Development of experimental prototype of a software complex of management of the organization's reputation, built using integrated data sources based on the technology of streaming micro-segmentation of the Internet audience, machine learning and data mining». Unique project ID RFMEFI57717X0251.

Notes

1Editorial staff of “RIA Novosti”. (2018, December). Stumble on the border. Why is Great Britain is so sorely parting with the EU? RIA Novosti. Retrieved from : https://ria.ru/20181213/1547922670.html

2Editorial staff of “RIA Novosti”. (2018, December). An analyst evaluated the likelihood of “hard Brexit. RIA Novosti. Retrieved from: https://ria.ru/20181211/1547771934.html

3Sonin, K. (2018, December). Facing the consequences of the wrong choice. Ekho Moskvy. Retrieved from https://echo.msk.ru/blog/ksonin/2317842-echo/

4Editorial staff of Ekho Moskvy. (2018).The draft agreement on the withdrawal conditions from the EU triggered a new wave of political crisis. Ekho Moskvy. Retrieved from: https://echo.msk.ru/news/2315988-echo.html

5Rodionov, V. (2018, December).The British self-isolation. Ekho Moskvy. Retrieved from: https://echo.msk.ru/blog/v_radionov/2302134-echo/

6Editorial staff of UNIAN. (2018, November). Britain evaluated the scopes of economic collapse in the Brexit case without deal. . UNIAN. Retrieved from: https://economics.unian.net/finance/10356006-v-britanii-ocenili-masshtab-padeniya-ekonomiki-v-sluchae-brexit-bez-sdelki.html

7Editorial staff of UNIAN. (2018, December).The prime minister of Great Britain: reneging on a deal leads to destabilization of the country. UNIAN. Retrieved from: https://www.unian.net/world/10369767-premer-britanii-otkaz-ot-sdelki-po-brexit-privedet-k-potere-stabilnosti-v-strane.html

8Zaremba, A. (2018). One pace away from Brexit: How the withdrawal of the UK from the EU will affect on the Ukraine. UNIAN. Retrieved from: https://www.unian.net/politics/10376286-v-shage-ot-brexit-chem-ukraine-mozhet-grozit-razvod-velikobritanii-s-evrosoyuzom.html

9Doug, C. (2019, January). The non-Brits guide to Brexit (because it affects you too). CNN. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/17/uk/non-brits-guide-to-brexit-update-gbr-trnd-intl/index.html

10McGee, L. (2019, December). (It's not just you) Brexit is making Britain very hard to understand right now. CNN. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/11/uk/brexit-latest-analysis-intl-gbr/index.html

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Appendix

Consolidated data of the empiric study of the sentiment rate of the mass media news items concerning Brexit

Mass media	Label	News items sentiment		Total
Mass media	Label	Positive (Р)	Negative (N)	Total
RIA Novosti, sum over the sample		12.62	6.65	5.97
average		0.25	0.13	0.12
Ekho Moskvy, sum over the sample		14.55	10.17	4.38
average		0.29	0.20	0.09
UNIAN, sum over the sample		11.41	10.38	1.03
average		0.23	0.21	0.02
CNN, sum over the sample		9.06	14.35	-5.29
average		0.18	0.29	-0.11

Tatyana N. Vladimirova, (Dr. Sci. of Pedagogic received at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in 2015; Cand. Sci. Philological received at the Moscow State Open Pedagogical University named after M. Sholokhov in 2003) is the Professor, Director of the Institute of Journalism, Vice-Rector for Public Relations, Moscow Pedagogical State University (Moscow, Russian Federation). Her research interests are journalism, professional education, information technologies, modern educational technologies, innovations in the field of management, and psychological portrait of a person.

Marina V. Vinogradova, (Dr.Sci. of Economic received at the Russian State University of Tourism and Service in 2013), Professor, Director of Research Institute of Advanced Directions and Technologies, Russian State Social University, Russian Federation. Her research interests are socio-economic development of macro and microsystems, socio-cultural problems, forecasting, information systems.

Andrey I. Vlasov, (Cand.Sci. of Engineering received at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 1997), Assistant professor, Bauman Moscow State Technical University. His research interests are a public-private partnership, information technology, Big data, Internet of things, investment management, marketing planning, intellectual analysis of social communications.

Alexander A. Shatsky, an applicant for candidate degree, Russian State Social University, Russian Federation. His research interests are socio-economic development, multi-agent technologies, digital economy, management of economic systems, service management.

Correspondence to: Tatyana N. Vladimirova, Moscow Pedagogical State University (1/1 M. Pirogovskaya Str., Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation).