A CROSS-COUNTRY NEWS COVERAGE AS A GROUND FOR A DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Knowledge Economics is considered to lead the next economic cycles backed with information as a currency. The media are accounted to be one of the key economic actors to generate and to distribute information. As a result, an integrated information environment has a potential to increase information dissemination and therefore to decrease information asymmetry that is named to be one of the reasons for social inequality. This article aims to assess the merging processes of the Russian and Indian media systems for creation an integrated information space. The potential of news information agencies to accelerate information dissemination and to increase knowledge penetration in developing countries is examined. The local agenda is deduced to be one of the defining factors for a prospective development of an integrated information environment.


INTRODUCTION
The role of media in the knowledge economy has been capturing scholarly attention in the recent years. The impact of media on the economies worldwide has been explored on micro level to examine a role of a journalist as well as on macro level to assess the maturity of the media institutes and ecosystems. In order to intensify the potential impact of media as an intermediate in the Knowledge Economics both perspectives are to be examined.

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The article attempts to evaluate the degree of cohesiveness between Russian and Indian media systems. Two samples that represent a number of publications on the preselected variables in Russia and in India are statistically analyzed to define the degree of cohesiveness. The comparative analysis provides with a profound overview on the potential to accelerate information dissemination in the Knowledge Economics through the media.

LITERATURE REVIEW
An ecosystem of formal institutions such as scientific centers in the Knowledge economy requires interconnections. The notion "knowledge brokerage" was profoundly articulated by Ward et al. (2009) with a proposed framework. The scholars identified procedures and models of knowledge transfer processes. Based on the selected models the role of journalists as knowledge brokers was highlighted by Gesualdo et al. (2020). The functions and mechanisms that journalists perform to intensify knoweledge exchange processes were explored in the study. A qualitative research based on the transcribed audio-recordings of the semistructured interviews with a diverse sample of health and science journalists showed that three key functions of knowledge transfer processes namely awareness, accessibility, and engagement were in the scope of a daily routine of interviewed journalists whereas two others (linkage and mobilization) were not clearly outlined. The scholars highlight that journalists as well as the audience both benefit from the information exchange that is executed through the media The study is limited by the approach of a sample selection of interviewees that included both in-house and freelance journalists. The article is focused on highlighting the role of journalists as a driving force of the knowledge brokerage processes, however the holistic overview of media as an ecosystem is missing. A study performed by Nisbet & Fahy (2015) emphasizes the added value that journalists bring with regard to research knowledge by simplifying the language and making the knowledge accessible to the mass audiences. The role of journalist as a broker or in other words as an intermediate between scholars and mass audience is aimed at increasing knowledge transfer processes from science to policy and practice. This perspective highlights the peculiarities of organizational challenge on the micro level such as media education, ethics in journalism, journalist personal networks. Thus, the level of data literacy to convey new meanings is considered as one of major factors for journalists to be able to derive complex information according to Bahareh R. Heravi (2019).
While journalists themselves form a community, the specifics on the macro level of the media sector do make a difference. The role of media as an information dissemination channel is explored by Bedford & Wiley (2017). The representation of the Knowledge Economics concept in the print media around the world is examined. A linguistic register was created to review 771 print media stories focused on the Knowledge Economy. The authors highlight the urgent need to reach out to the media to improve the quality the knowledge economy coverage. Interestingly, the volumes of articles sticked to geographical coverage haven't corresponded to their origin knowledge economy development levels. Thus, based on the composed rating on geographic source of media stories Pakistan (5,57%) was ranked on the 6th position, whereas Singapore (4,88%) were labeled to be the 10th. However, according to the Knowledge Economy Index Pakistan received 2.63 points whereas Singapore was scored with 8.26 points. Such distribution of KE coverage highlights the need to increase volumes of science journalism to give a real representation of activities that happen in the field of KE. The study bares 82 limitations on the selected medium namely newspapers. The future research steps are potentially able to explore coverage of the topic in other media sources. As the technology takes one of the leading roles in media institutes construction, Van Es & Poell (2020) attempt to assess the impact of Public Service Media (PSM) digitalization processes on their social goals and public values in the Netherlands. The authors pursue a goal to define how does the platformization process affects media strategy to develop interfaces, data infrastructures, moderation procedures, business models, user practices and communication with audiences. In the result of the research the authors have proposed several steps to maximize the effects of digitalization processes in the frames of the social mission that PSM bare. The research outlines the intention to benefit from the use of technologies and to keep the ground role of PSM that is aimed at increasing the knowledge dissemination processes.
A pervasive approach was taken by Bandyopadhyay (2005) with a focus on assessing the impact of mass media and information and communications technologies (ICT) on the knowledge-based infrastructure development processes. The article 'Knowledge-Based Economic Development: Mass Media and the Weightless Economy' develops the idea of how mass media and ICT penetration are associated with three development outcomes: corruption, inequality, and poverty. The author defines several mediums namely newspapers, radios, TVs, and ICTs infrastructures as variables in the econometric equation to test the associations with Knowledge Economics (KE) indicators in 128 countries. The selection of variables is based on the availability of aggregated statistical data namely the number of mediums in circulation per 1,000 people. According to the results newspapers and TVs and radios are negatively associated with inequality whereas a newspaper penetration is negatively associated with corruption. This article highlights the impact of mediums on key components of the KE infrastructure, the country's media consumption historical habits are not taken into account. The consideration of mediums to have an equal role in each of 128 countries sets a limitation on the derived results.
The role of media on the national level is explored with a specific focus on crossfield effects of mediatization processes and the rescaling of such effects through the media in the research conducted by Rawolle & Lingard (2010). The case study analysis highlights interconnection between print journalism and policy making processes in Australia. The interlink between mediatization and globalization processes is deduced. Such an approach unlocks a potential research of media system as an active component in the Knowledge Economics. The role of media on a national level was examined by Rosmani et al. (2020) to determine the primary way of information dissemination in Malaysia. The authors perform bibliographic analysis to analyze the frequency of the medium being discussed in an article obtained. According to the results information is dispersed through various platforms including the traditional and modern media namely newspaper, radio, television, internet, and others. The authors emphasize the escalation of media technology as a leading factor of the dissemination of information to the users. The technology penetration rates in the market define the velocity of information dissemination and therefore are expected to be examined under ICT and media studies criteria.
In the literature review the role of media in the Knowledge economics on micro and on macro levels was discovered. However, the development of integrated information environment has not been thoroughly examined. The study is aimed at filling the research gap to measure the level of integrity between Russian and Indian media systems in KE.
Russian and Indian information environments have peculiarities such as language systems, technology penetration, information government policy and others. Chadha (2017) highlights pluralistic media landscape as negative implications for the production of news in India. Pandey (2018) provides a deep analysis on the media landscape in India. The Indian Print Media Industry is unique in many ways as newspapers are published in 23 languages across the country. There is a clear division between the English-language press and those in the Indian languages. The circulation of the English dailies is only about 9.5 percent of the total circulation of Indian newspapers, they are regarded as extremely influential and have higher advertising rates compared to their language counterparts. The growth of print media has been spectacular in the last seven decades. From 330 dailies in 1952 the print industry grew to 9840 daily publications in March 2020 with a combined average daily circulation of over 258 million copies. Almost 46 percent of the total newspaper circulation is in Hindi while about 9.5 percent of the total circulation is for the English dailies. (RNI 2021). From an almost equal share of advertising and circulation revenues in 1952, at present, almost 85-95 percent of newspaper revenues are from advertisements Kohli-Khandekar (2008), p. 9. There are 834 million internet subscribers in India of which 795 million had broadband access. A majority of the Indians access the Internet on mobile phones. It has been estimated that an average Indian spent 4.7 hours a day on their phones in 2021.
Russian media system differs from the Indian media landscape. Concentration is a key tendency of the development of the Russian media industry (Mediasystem of Russia, 2021 Vartanova (2020). TV is one of the most popular source of information and entertainment: 63% of Russians are active TV users on a daily basis Mediascope (2022). An important role of the state in regulation and investing of media is observed. The economic crises of print media as a result of digital penetration has been developing for the last five years. The growth of digital and interactive media, online content, influence of social media on the Russian youth is actively articulated by the researchers Dunas et al., (2021).
The research states the goal to compare two media systems to investigate differences as well as similarities on consumption habits on digital media in Russia and in India. As the media are expected to act as a liaison in the knowledge economy a deep analysis on the Russian and Indian media systems connectivity is to be performed in order to identify the potential of media channel to accelerate knowledge exchange between Russian and Indian economies

METHODOLOGY
The research is aimed at measuring the degree of cohesiveness between Russian and Indian media systems based on the content analysis of the publications made in Russian and Indian media outlets. A sample of publications for a period 1/1/2022 -31/12/2022 was retrieved from an international news database Factiva.
The retrieved dataset indicated that Russian media (English version) published 151171 news items in 2022. In comparison to news published in Indian media (English version) 4534553 items. Based on the retrieved results, the cross coverage analysis was performed in order to see which subjects were covered with in the international context. It appeared that different focus is given.
On the left graph the data provided summarizes news articles related to various covered topics in India. The topics are selected based on the intersection of domestic coverage and the coverage that concern Russia. The data is organized into categories such as International Relations, Military Action, Political/General News, Executive Branch, Domestic Politics, Contract Tenders, Corporate/Industrial News, Armed Forces, and Regulation/Government Policy. For each category, the table provides the number of news articles related to that category and the total number of news articles collected.
Based on this data, it appears that Political/General News is the most frequently reported category with 10559 news articles, followed by Domestic Politics with 5551 news articles. International Relations and Military Action appear to be the third and fourth most frequently reported categories, respectively, with 11287 and 10828 news articles each.
The data is organized into categories such as Outbreaks/Epidemics, Equity Markets, Crime/Legal Action, Routine Market/Financial News, Armed Forces, Domestic Politics, Military Action, Political/General News, and International Relations. For each category, the table provides the number of news articles related to that category and the total number of news articles collected.
On the right graph the data summarizes news articles related to various topics covered by Russian media. The topics are selected based on the intersection of domestic coverage and the coverage that concern India. Based on this data, it appears that Political/General News is the most frequently reported category with 73 news articles, followed by International Relations with 280 news articles. The least frequently reported category appears to be Equity Markets with only 2 news articles.
In order to assess the potential to establish a common information environment we compare two intersections. In terms of the frequency of news articles, the Political/General News category is the most frequently reported category in both datasets. However, the number of news articles related to this category is much higher in the Indian media dataset (10559) compared to the Russian media dataset (73). The International Relations and Military Action categories also appear to be important topics in both datasets, with higher numbers of news articles related to these categories compared to other categories.
A comparison of two intersections gives a degree on cohesiveness on both datasets. Russian media follow a common agenda with 63% of Indian media for the English speaking version. In comparison to Indian English-speaking media that share 51% with the Russian agenda. Thus, Russian media have a higher diversity in the integrated information environment. However, a total volume of published news items in the integrated information space is higher in the Indian media system.

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The role of news article categorization for the knowledge economy is to measure whether the information on education is equally disseminated and to analyze what are the key channels in order to accelerate knowledge transmission.
Space exploration as a topic is considered to be the most representative for measuring the knowledge dissemination rate. The analysis on news coverage of the topic Space Exploration in India and in Russia is performed. In both countries the volume of publications on the topic accounts for less than 10%.
The graph represents the number of articles related to space exploration/travel published in India and Russia during the years 2017 to 2022 in English. Overall, it can be observed that India had more articles related to space exploration/travel than Russia in all years, except for 2017 and 2018. However, both countries had a significant increase in the number of articles published from 2017 to 2022, with India showing a more dramatic increase in 2020 and 2022. A rising interest to space exploration topic in the common information environment is identified to emerge in the Indian media whereas Russian media have a degreased trend on publications on the topic.
In order to better understand the specifics, the analysis on channels was performed. It appeared that the integrated information environment on the Russian side is formed with news information agencies namely Sputnik News Service (65%), Interfax (22%) and ITAR TASS (13%). The data indicates that Sputnik News Service published the most articles in every year except 2022 when they published only one article. Interfax and ITAR TASS both published significantly fewer articles than Sputnik News Service, with Interfax publishing the fewest articles overall. The Indian media coverage of the topic is almost equally shared between the key media outlets (Times of India, India Today Online, Hindustan Times and others). On average over 20 media outlets were covering the topic Space Exploration in the context of Russian economy on a yearly basis. This supports the presence of the media systems peculiarities with a focus on different media concentration levels in Russia and in India.

CONCLUSION
The research provides with a detailed analysis of the integrated information environment in Russia and in India.
In order to assess the potential of the integrated development of the knowledge economy in Russia and India the media landscape was assessed. Based on the descriptive data analysis, the volumes of cross-country news coverage are disproportional in Russia and in India. The integrated information environment between Russia and India is based on country-specific topics. The research highlights the importance to consider country peculiarities of media channels as a part of the media landscape. Overall, a vibrant and dynamic media landscape becomes a key driver of economic growth and development in the knowledge economy. Media outlets provide a platform for experts and thought leaders to share their insights and research and help to foster a culture of lifelong learning and continuous education.
Media play a vital part of the knowledge economy development by facilitating the dissemination of information and ideas, promoting innovation and creativity, and supporting the growth of knowledge-based industries.