Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the former comedian and current Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has become a political leader at the center of today’s world stage. Using the character traits and enduring news values identified by Gans (1979) and drawing on the indexing hypothesis, this study examined worldwide news portrayals of Zelensky over time. The study employed a quantitative content analysis of 1411 text-based articles and 318 images in leading newspapers from Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Russia, South Africa, and the United States. The results showed that Zelensky’s character was portrayed significantly more positively after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than before. Russian news media framed him in a more negative light than news media in countries supporting Ukraine or in formally nonaligned countries, suggesting that the news coverage of a foreign political leader echoes elite debates in the countries studied.
Steffan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.