Bridging the Divide Between Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Seminar on Discursive Cleavages in State Duma Organized by HSE Working Group

The Working Group on Russian Discourses held its 10th seminar (in hybrid format), dedicated to the interrelationship between political discourse within the State Duma and lawmaking processes. Ekaterina Kulik, a researcher of the Working Group, presented her paper, "The Influence of Discursive Divisions in the Russian State Duma on the Lawmaking Co-sponsorship on the Subject of Education during the VII Convocation."

The seminar discussion centered on the potential of combining quantitative and qualitative methods in public discourse research. Ekaterina Kulik's research employed a diverse methodological approach, including conventional discourse analysis, network analysis, multivariate linear regression, exponential random graph modeling, and correlation analysis, to illuminate the discursive cleavages within the Duma.
Participants contrasted Kulik's methodological strategies with those employed in other Working Group research. Among other things, including the limitations of Ekaterina’s research, the seminar focused on how the specific institutional contexts of different public discourse structures influence the homogeneity of content, with some spaces proving more discursively uniform than others.