Networkization of the public policy symbolic field (on the example of the regional leader image)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the symbolic field of modern public policy in the context of the rapid digitalization of society. The purpose of the article is to consider the content of the image of one of the modern political leaders and to identify the presence/absence of the networking effect in it, manifested in the polythematic and heterarchy of themes presented in the image, its situationality and variability. As an example, the image of the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region G. S. Nikitin is considered in the study. With the help of qualitative and quantitative content-analysis, the author studies an information array of data, which includes news reports posted on the website of the Government of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, where there is a reference of the head of the region. The sample size was 710 news posted between November 27, 2021 and June 9, 2022. The semantic unit of analytical observation in the course of textual analysis has become an image-role construct, which is a relevant tool-concept for studying the political image. Based on the results of the analysis, it was concluded that the content of the image of a political leader is polythematic and that there is no one, absolutely dominant theme in it. Among the most frequent are the following image-role constructs — “business executive”, “team player”, “organizer”, “leader looking to the future”, “open leader who hears society”, “leader who is aware of various details of current problems” and “crisis manager”. In terms of content and meaning, the filling of the image of a political subject is also influenced by the situational factor, which determines not only the list of emerging image-role constructs, but also the frequency of their occurrence. Thus, the content of the modern political image can be represented as a logical and semantic configuration of interconnected image-role constructs subject to the influence of the effect of networking.