During election campaigns populist slogans and promises are often used in the speeches of candidates. There are some differences although between the discourses of the progovernment and the opposition candidates. It is therefore important to study the political discourse of the 2018 presidential election campaign. Since the political struggle develops in real life and is broadcast in details in the media space, the publications of the candidates on the social network VKontakte have been chosen in order to analyze their discourses. Topic modeling of the text published overtly was used to create a thematic profile of each candidate. Comparing topic profiles the author was able, firstly, to identify and compare the topics of the prostate and opposition candidates’ populist discourses, and, secondly, to identify the most similar agendas of the candidates in the information environment using the vector space model. Thereby, the thematic profiles of the candidates identified corresponded to their ideological positioning. The opposition candidates including the systemic opposition appealed to the problems of negative mobilization in their speeches, which is based on populist slogans. The discourses of candidates who pursue a certain ideology and status have been found to be similar.

Bogapova Anastasia Valerievna, Postgraduat, Department of Russian Politics, Faculty of Political Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1, Kolmogorov st., Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation, e-mail: Anastasiya.Bogapova@student.msu.ru

Bogapova A.V. 2018 Presidential Election Campaign: Populism in Candidates` Political Discourses. The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series Political Science and Religion Studies, 2021, vol. 37, pp. 9-18. https://doi.org/10.26516/2073-3380.2021.37.9 (in Russian)

1. Gudkov L.D. Populizm i rossijskoe obshchestvo: korni, osobennosti, perspektivy [Populism and Its Place in Russian Society: Roots, Peculiarities, Perspectives]. Populizm kak obshchij vyzov. Moscow, Politicheskaya enciklopediya Publ., 2018. pp. 80-90. (in Russian)
2. Kuznecov G.S., Sokolova E.N. Sovremennyj tekhnologicheskij populizm: strategicheskij doklad [Modern technological populism: a strategic research]. Moscow, EISI Publ., 2017, 84 p. (in Russian)
3. Medushevskij A.N. Populizm na Zapade i v Rossii: skhodstva i razlichiya v sravnitel'noj perspektive [Western and Russian populism: similarities and differences in a comparative perspective]. Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2017, no. 1-2 (124), pp. 28-47. (in Russian)
4. Aslanidis P. Measuring populist discourse with semantic text analysis: an application on grassroots populist mobilization. Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, 2018, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 1241-1263.
5. Is Digital Culture Responsible for Post-Truth Politics? Eliane Glaser. Open Transcripts. Retrieved 2017. Available at: http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/posttruth-politics/ (date of access: 07.02.2021).
6. Laclau E. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism-Fascism-Populism. London, NLB, 1977, 203 p.