“Cold War” Ideologeme: Aspects of Functioning in Historical and Modern Media Spaces

Abstract

This article analyses aspects underlying the functioning of the “cold war” ideologeme in the media texts of two historical periods. The aggravation of political relations between the collective West and Russia actualises the concept of “cold war” which entered the lexicon of the Soviet media after the end of World War II and is being increasingly used by journalists to characterise what is happening today. The methodology of structural and thematic analysis employed to study the practices of functioning of the ideologeme “cold war”, as well as elements of content analysis make it possible to identify and characterise the features of the use of this ideologeme in modern Russian political media texts. What makes this study original is the approach the authors use to substantiate the conclusions of the article comparing the journalistic practices of using the ideologeme “cold war” in two historical periods: Soviet and Russian (from 2014 to the present). The theoretical basis of the article is the research of renowned Russian scholars, and the analysis is based on the development of the topic in papers on philology. The empirical basis formed for the article includes more than 500 publications of the Soviet and Russian media from Sovetskaya Rossiya, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vedomosti, Trud, Novaya Gazeta, Krasnaya Zvezda, Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Pravda, and REGNUM news agency which contain the “cold war” ideologeme. As a result of the study, the authors demonstrate the differences in the practice of applying the ideologeme and the conditionality of these differences. They establish that the Soviet stage of the use of the ideologeme “cold war” is representative, while the Russian stage significantly expands and changes its functional possibilities.