The role of suggestion in public opinion shaping of the audience of the Internet editions

Abstract

Introduction. Mass-and socially communicative technologies, that produce the content of modern mass media, are aimed at changing the beliefs, worldview, value orientations of the society, formation of certain behavioral patterns, and transformation of public opinion. Consumers of information, in particular, the audience of Internet editions, become an object of external influences and information aggression. Thus, a comprehensive study of the influence of semantic and structural organization of the content of the modern mass media on public opinion formation is really an actual and urgent task. The purpose of our research is to determine the role of such kind of manipulative technology as a suggestion in shaping the public opinion of the content consumers of the Internet editions (on the material of the electronic versions of the popular newspapers «The Guardian», «USA Today», «China Daily», «The Day», «Moscow Times»). In addition to theoretical, the basic methods of research were also empirical, in particular sociological research, for which the questionnaire was compiled. The respondents were offered to answer 13 questions, 10 of which were of a closed type and 3 questions on an assessment by a scale from 1 to 10. The questionnaire consisted of two blocks. The first block «Target Survey» contained 5 questions, the second block «Associative experiment» – 8 questions Anonymous survey was conducted in December 2018 – March 2019. The audience of the survey consisted of postgraduate students of different specialties, lecturers, and students of the departments of Germanic philology, journalism, and philology at Sumy State University (1st, 2nd, and 3d year students). According to the results of the survey, the most popular sources of information are social networks and electronic information portals, and newspapers. The level of confidence in the popular mass media is 75 %, while most consumers trust electronic information portals and newspapers. The level of influence on the personal opinion of the consumers of information is 60 %. The overall efficiency of the suggestion is 80 %. By the level of influence in its initial effect on the change and formation of reactions, the most effective instruments of suggestion at the lexical level are irony, emotionally-marked vocabulary, contrasts, set-expressions, metaphor-symbols, and also the instruments at the communicative-strategic level (emotionally-evaluative judgments). Keywords: public opinion, Internet editions, content, suggestion, survey.