Stereotyped Media Images as a Method of Forming Delusions of Ordinary Consciousness

Abstract

The article reveals the psychological foundations of the manipulative influence of the media on the ordinary consciousness of the information consumer, analyzes the methods of manipulative influence. The survey of respondents has determined the activity rate of information consumption, the level of interest in various media formats, the respondent’s degree of awareness of the specificity regarding influence on their consciousness. Methods of media influence on ordinary consciousness include various types of fragmentation of information, game by facts and figures, logic violations, semantics (use of metaphors, emotionally evaluated vocabulary, language of symbols, archetypes, antitheses) of stereotypical images for attaching certain connotative stereotypes to the consciousness in order to strengthen influence, and others. Consequently, the technologies of influence determine the need for psychosemantic analysis to study stereotypical, mythological and archetypal images of ordinary consciousness. The research demonstrates the relevance of the psychosemantic approach to the study of ordinary consciousness in the modern information society, the impact of crisis processes in the society development on the changes in certain levels of ordinary consciousness and the main tendencies of its transformation; as well as the empirical research of the formation of the ordinary consciousness by mass media has been demonstrated.