Russian Mass Media Research Articles

Trends in State Regulation of Russian Mass Media: a Legal Aspect

The article deals with major trends in state regulation of Russian media landscape in the period 2017-2020, which features a large amount of fake news, extremist publications and other information harmful for the people and the society. The authors analyze the key measures taken by the state in order to protect the population from such information and diminish its negative effect, define the problems and difficulties that journalists and Internet-users face, and propose ways of addressing the problems. The article focuses on legal aspects of the governmental bans and regulatory policy as, in the authors opinion, they are primary to the other measures (economic, technological, etc.). Special attention is paid to the state legislative response to such threats as fake news, suicide, drug abuse, extremist or terrorist propaganda, and foreign agents financial impact on Russian media. The research involved an analysis of media reports on the relevant issues, as well as a study of the recent changes in the legislation concerning media landscape and results of other researches in this field. The authors infer that there are two major trends in the state regulation: one is liberalization of privacy laws for media landscape, and the other is harsher punishments for spreading extremist information, fake news and other state abusive content. However, such control should not be always viewed as negative.

THE SPEECH INFLUENCING POTENTIAL OF MASS MEDIA: THE ROLE OF PAUSE

This article involved is devoted to the peculiarities of an advertising prosodic organization. The most actively used types of pauses and their role in the formation and perception of a suggestive discourse have been revealed on an auditory analysis basis. Attention is paid to an utterance meaning deformation as a result of incorrect pause usage. When studying the functional characteristics of the pause the author considers it as a means of emotional and willful influence on an addressee. The investigation has been carried out using the author's case of examples assembled by the continuous selection method from English and Russian mass media - radio and TV channels. In conclusion it is emphasized that the pause as a complex phenomenon in oral speech is characterized by an inadvertent or intended stop of the speech production process and it performs communicative, pragmatic and expressive functions.

Psychological Factors of Trust Syrian Youth in Russian Mass Media

Psychological Factors of Trust Syrian Youth in Russian Mass Media

Динамика коммуникации в сфере речевого этикета

The article discusses the changes in communication that have occurred in the Russian speech etiquette, on the example of etiquette forms of greeting. Speech etiquette is the most important element of a communicative act. Compliance with the rules of speech etiquette largely ensures success in solving communicative problems. Based on the analysis of lexicographical sources and materials of modern Russian mass media, a shift in the use of greeting forms is noted. It is expressed in the transfer of old forms of greeting to a passive stock and the emergence and active use of new forms of greeting The author concludes that the dynamics of changes in speech forms of greeting reflects the general trends in the development of the Russian language at the present stage, such as a) the active neologization; b) the influence of the English language; c) the impact of computer technology on the language.

The Unstable Past: Historical Memory as a Political Tool in the Electronic Media of Contemporary Russia

The so-called “memory wars” have been the subject of close attention for several years, and sometimes even fierce debate among researchers — experts in the field of political science, historical science, communication theory, etc., and not by accident: events of the past (one can make a reservation: of what is meant by the past) “fall over” into the present, forming various patterns of sociocultural, ethnocultural, political identities in the present, and thereby, to a certain extent, affecting the future. Are these processes directed and controlled — or, conversely, are they spontaneous? How can readers and viewers relate facts and interpretations of historical plots, concerning the fact that these tasks can be of considerable difficulty even for professional historians? And to what extent ways of dealing with history become instruments in the political space of modern Russia? Obviously, these questions have been asked more than once on various media platforms and still do not lose relevance. The article focuses on the analysis of a number of the most characteristic practices of production, reproduction and interpretation of historical subjects in Russian mass media: in Internet versions of so-called “traditional” media, as well as in “new media” (zines, imageboards, etc.). We proceed from the fact that the information environment sets specific parameters for the treatment of history: its events in digital space not only have “technical reproducibility”, but also the speed of this reproducibility is very high; history is being re-writed no longer in a figurative, but in a literal sense, in real time and not by members of the expert community (whatever this community is). Information receives a visual dimension that is significant for the audience; one of the expressive manifestations of this is the culture of memes. Thus, historical memory is once again becoming a battleground for political conflict: in this case, between agents of traditional media and new actors in the digital space.

Gender aspects of employment in Russian mass media: impact of socio-political context and information technologies

The article presents the results of a study of employment in the Russian media. Given the global trend of feminization of the media, the issues of professional self-realization, salary and career growth were analyzed through the prism of gender. The research tools included, firstly, a mass questionnaire of media workers holding both creative and administrative positions; secondly, a series of in-depth structured interviews with experts experienced in working as journalists and editors-in-chief; heads of journalistic associations; owners and founders of publications; heads of HR services of media structures; and thirdly, analysis of statistics relating to the editorial corps of editions at the municipal, regional and national levels — in the latter case the data on leading news agencies and Internet resources were analyzed. The study confirmed the trend of feminization, which is based on the socio-political (reducing the influence of the media and, consequently, lower salaries) and technological aspects (spread of information technology, forcing traditional media to compete with social media, saving on staff and reducing the quality of materials). Dissatisfied with the decline in income and in the prestige of the profession men were replaced by women, that was facilitated by a marked increase in the accessibility of journalistic education. The size of salaries depends on decisiveness of the media, on region, and also on the topics that a journalist is engaged in; in general, the willingness of women to work for a lower salary is forced. Precarious employment that is widespread in the industry deprives workers of social protection, while most of them are young women. The article examines the so-called “glass ceilings”: the more influential the media, the less often it is led by a woman. At the same time, only a quarter of the respondents acknowledge the presence of gender discrimination in their industry, and most of them are women. This is partly due to the prevalence among journalists of both sexes of traditional ideas about the distribution of the social roles of men and women in family and in society.

Representation of migrants in the Russian mass media and its dynamics (2010-2020)

Over the last decades, scholars have reported a high level of xenophobia in Russia, which persists and spreads amidst all strata of the population. This shows the significance of the migration issue in the country and its topicality in the public discourse. However, the explanatory models used to analyze the perception of immigrants in Western countries do not find absolute empirical support in Russia. For this reason, researchers emphasize the importance of media discourse as a leading factor in constructing attitudes toward the foreign migrants in Russia. We take into account, firstly, the persistence of xenophobic attitudes among Russians, and secondly — the role of the migrants’ image, constructed by mass media, in shaping the perception of the immigrants among the locals. In this regard, this article hypothesizes that despite the official ban of the “hate language” and ethnization of crime, the negative representation of immigrants not only persists in the Russian media discourse, but is unfortunately increasing. To test this hypothesis, we utilize the results of research on the representation of immigration in Russian media discourse published between 2010 and 2020, which we analyze in the methodological framework of critical discourse analysis. We conclude that at the end of the current decade, there have been certain improvements in the media coverage of the migration issue, caused by the shift of the spotlight onto other problems, thus, the negative images of immigrants simply were not a part of the media agenda. On the one hand, this can help reduce ethnic tensions, although on the other, it complicates the development of the culture of interaction between the local and immigrant communities, since the national and cultural characteristics of migrants and their experience of living in Russia remain underrepresented in the media.

Емоційність політичної взаємодії (за матеріалами цифрових дискурсів України та РФ)

A comparative analysis of Ukrainian and Russian non-official political discourses is presented in the paper. Indicators of emotionality and political interrelations intensity are considered. Political texts of online-media «Ukrainska Pravda» and «Lenta.ru» were used for the research. Period: 2005 – 2019. The indicators were calculated with computer programs (Python language). The difference between the two discourses was observed in 2005-2013. In Ukraine political interrelations intensity indicator is larger, however has been decreasing from 2005 (1,4 – 0,9), in Russia the indicator is much smaller (0,41-0,47). In 2014-2015 in Ukraine the indicator decreased to 0,86-0,88, and in Russia an insignificant growth was observed. This may be explained with information policy change of the Russian mass media because of the «hybrid» war. The general trend in Ukrainian political discourse is decrease in political interrelations intensity, which is interpreted as being a reason of constant non-official mass media discourse digitalization. There is one more difference between the two discourses – in the emotionality indicator. High numbers (0,35-0,42) in Ukraine in 2005-2013 and low ones in Russia (0,19-0,22). And the positive correlation is found between political interrelations intensity indicator and emotionality in Ukraine. And there is no such correlation for Russia, thus political interrelations in the country don’t provide emotions. After 2014 emotionality indicators are almost the same (for Ukraine decrease of the indicator, for Russia – increase). And one more difference is in emotional level of texts about political actors (the countries’ presidents). Here to 2013 a significant difference is observed with high emotionality of messages about Yuschenko and Yanukovych (however in the case of the latter constant decrease of the indicator is observed). In the times of Poroshenko low numbers are discovered, however, in 2019 the largest indicator is fixated. In Russia the less emotional period is for Medvedev, this shows the imitative character of the power change in the country, and from 2014 the indicator growth is observed. Thus, in the first period of digitalization, emotionality and political interrelations intensity indicators seems to be significant to differentiate the authoritative (Russian) and transitive (Ukrainian) regimes.

A WORD BUILDING GAME: FROM LINGUOCREATIVITY TO LINGUOCYNICISM (ON THE MATERIAL OF MODERN RUSSIAN MASS MEDIA)

The article traces the main features of the word building game (WBG) in the language of the Russian mass media of the early 21 st century in a representative corpus of examples. As a result of enhancement of the role of the journalist, mass media texts started to abound in “witty” derived neologisms reflecting the author’s desire to play with the reading audience. At the same time, the pursuit of originality finds expression in the emergence of “ostentatious” words which may be considered unsuccessful language experiment. Overindulgence in the use of expressive means, aimed to indicate evaluation, results in the emergence of provocative words contradicting the norms of morality and decency. The realization of the word building potential in the narrow sense of the term is accompanied by the use of the popular word building game technique: word formation according to a model, contamination, and tmesis. Hybridization is also used as a general principle of creation of derived neologisms. Word building jokes, in which humor is not complicated with evaluation, have become very rare in the language of the modern mass media, which means that the word building game is not oriented towards entertainment but focuses on evaluation, such as ridicule or humiliation, and has become one of the radical and efficient means of expressing social evaluation. Social evaluation is expressed by various vocabulary layers, and specifically low colloquial words and stylistically marked affixes, which often leads to the manifestation of verbal aggression. The emergence of linguocynicisms - cynical references to sacred themes: historical memory about the past, the Great Patriotic War, and death of people in the time of peace - is a matter of serious concern.

«War and Peace» of Ukrainian Tourism: the Impact of Geopolitical Factors on the Tourism Process in Ukraine

The article intends to highlight geopolitical aspects in the development of international tourism in Ukraine as a global phenomenon that carries out economic, social and international political action. The paper analyzes international tourist flows in Ukraine, their dynamics and spatial structure during 2000–2017 in particular, in the context of military-political aggression on the part of Russia and intensification of Ukrainian-Russian intergovernmental relations. It has been established that the current dynamics of the international tourist flow in Ukraine is characterized by a sharp decrease in the volume of international visitors, a decrease in the rates of development of tourism activity and the reformatting of the spatial structure of the inbound and outbound tourist flow. The question arises as to the expediency of tourism development during the military-political confrontation. The experience of holding Eurovision–2017 in Ukraine, which took place against the backdrop of the anti-terrorist operation, is highlighted. The conclusion is drawn about the constructive role of tourism as a factor of «soft power» that can influence the informing of the world about the «Ukrainian issue». In this sense, international tourist flows acted as channels of public diplomacy, reflecting the true situation in Ukraine, which is fundamentally different from the Russian mass media. Attention is drawn to the intensification of domestic tourism in Ukraine, taking place against the backdrop of deteriorating key indicators of economic and social development. It is argued that the growth of the weight of domestic tourism was also possible due to the growth of patriotic sentiment in Ukrainian society. In a sense, the development of domestic tourism is seen as a continuation of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their independence and territorial integrity. Consequently, the constructive role of tourism lies not only in the presentation of the country to the world community, but also in the construction of a national identity within the country. In this way domestic tourism favors further development of the Ukrainian political nation. Key words: international tourism; actors of geopolitical influence; Russia–Ukraine international relations; regional structure of tourism flows in Ukraine; public diplomacy.

Coverage of the Arctic Development in Russian Mass Media Discourse (by the example of Rossiyskaya Gazeta)

The trends in the official Russian arctic media discourse reflect a sustainable public interest to the issues of the Arctic national development, as well as to the geo-political situation and Russia’s military buildup in the North. The article analyzes the trends in the coverage of Arctic-related issues in the official Russian discourse by the example of “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” — the official print newspaper of RF government. The study covers the period of 2001–2018, which is characterized by topicality of arctic discourse. The dynamics of the discourse can be visibly divided into two stages. The first stage started in 2001 and finished in 2007 with the Russian expedition “Arctic-2007”, which planted the flag of the Russian Federation on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The discourse of the stage features low frequency of publications on the topic and neutral emotional text sentiment. The discourse of the second stage (2008–2018) exhibits a noticeably wider topical range of publications on Arctic-related issues, as well as their reactionary and agonic spirit. The analysis resulted in an inference that the publications on Arctic-related problems in the newspaper reflect the official position of RF authorities, and have a specific-reason character.

Image in Media Landscape: a Linguistic Discourse Portrait

The review is a critical response to the monograph «Image advertorial as phenomenon of the contemporary media landscape» by L.G. Yegorova. The monograph makes a deep linguistic discourse analysis of the notion of media text, and shows relevant category features and ontological properties of image advertorial. The work is a coherent inter-disciplinary research, where the genre of image advertorial in Russian mass media discourse is studied from the position of linguo-sociological culturology and psycholinguistics, and from a communicative-pragmatic point of view.

The image of Poland in modern Russian mass media and among Russian students

The article discusses the image of Poland, the Poles, and Russia-Poland relations, presented by the Russian mass media in recent years. To analyze this image, the authors reviewed a number of publications that appeared in Russian publications in 2014–2018. At the same time, it was necessary to recall the historical causes of the Russian-Polish contradictions, from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. The authors assess the relevance of the historical heritage for the modern politics of the two countries and make an attempt to determine the influence of the image of Poland created in the Russian media on the everyday consciousness of the Russian students. For this, a survey of first-year students of the St. Petersburg State Technological Institute was conducted. The survey results and comments are provided in this article.

Reforms in the Field of Pensions, Education and Housing, as Portrayed in the Russian Mass Media

Welfare reforms in contemporary Russia are based on partial redistribution of responsibilities and resources from the state to other actors, including private business and civil society. Reforms in old age pensions, housing and utilities, primary and secondary education have affected wide social groups and have triggered public debates and protests, reflected in the mass media. This article analyses how these reforms are portrayed in three Russian media outlets representing different political positions—Rossiiskaia gazeta (official government media outlet), Novaia gazeta (independent media outlet belonging to the liberal opposition), and Zavtra (patriotic media outlet belonging to the nationalist opposition). The two independent papers have divergent critical perspectives on reforms. These three Federation-wide newspapers represent the range of political positions that are articulated publicly on non-securitized issues in contemporary Russia.

Современный болгарский и русский политический дискурс ‒ тенденции, сходства, закономерности

Данный доклад посвящен некоторым интересным языковым явлениям, которые наблюдаются сегодня в болгарском и русском общественно-политическом дискурсе. Эти явления имеют сходный характер, который объясняется сходным характером некоторых политических и экономических процессов в обеих странах. Такими типичными для обоих языков явлениями являются растущая обусловленность общественно-политической лексики экстралингвистическими факторами, вхождение в эту лексику более раскрепощенного, более экспрессивного и более образного языка, выход из активного употребления части лексики, связанной с периодом социализма и др. Автор рассматривает интересные примеры, эксцерпированные в основном из российских средств массовой информации, которые иллюстрируют эти явления. Основным выводом настоящего исследования является то, что сегодняшние тенденции и явления в болгарском и русском общественно-политическом дискурсе имеют сходный характер. Конечно, это не нетипично, когда речь идет о двух генетически связанных и родственных языках.

Russian new media propaganda about the events in the eastern Ukraine and Crimea

The article presents a content analysis of the Russian mass media regarding coverage of events in the Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, identifies main methods, models of propaganda, provides examples of disinformation based on analytical and search services. Monitoring and content analysis has been carried out on the basis of ten Russian Internet Sources on the beginning of 2019.

The Economic Crisis in the Russian Mass Media: Constructing and Deconstructing Problems

В данной статье анализируется процесс конструирования представлений об экономическом кризисе в российских онлайн-изданиях. Важность обращения к подобной теме объясняется повышением внимания аудитории к экономическим дискуссиям в СМИ в период экономической нестабильности и соответственно увеличением влияния средств массовой информации на восприятие ситуации в стране. В качестве теоретической рамки исследования используется конструкти- вистский подход к анализу социальных проблем - именно в терминах этого подхода рассматривается в проведённом исследовании экономический кризис. Для выявления стратегий депроблематизации экономического кризиса применяется классификация контрриторических стратегий П. Ибарры и Дж. Китсьюза. Для достижения поставленной цели применён содержательный контент-анализ, включающий подсчёт упоминаний и тематический анализ, а также новый и развивающийся в медиаисследованиях сетевой метод. В результате исследования было выявлено, что наибольшее внимание в онлайн-изданиях уделяется антироссийским санкциям, инфляции и курсу рубля. В то же время социальные последствия кризиса, такие как бедность и безработица, представлены в медиа в значительно меньшей степени. Сетевой анализ также продемонстрировал, что в СМИ делается акцент на курсе рубля и доллара, санкциях и кредитах. Согласно теории сетевой повестки дня, эти «связки» экономических событий в публикации способны сформировать у аудитории определённые ассоциации относительно причин кризиса, его виновников и последствий. Так, рост цен может быть вызван ослаблением курса рубля, а санкции - являться одной из причин кризиса. Что касается депроблематизации экономического кризиса, то контрриторические стратегии (декларация бессилия, перспективизация, опровергающие истории, контрриторика неискренности) были выявлены лишь в массовом онлайн-издании.

Stereotypic image of Siberia in Russian mass media

The article studies theoretical aspects of the image of the region and their realization as exemplified by the image of Siberia. The article treats the structure of the image and mechanisms of its formation from the point of view of the cognitive approach and with the help of frame structures. The cognitive analysis enables to differentiate three levels: frame, subframes, and slots, pertaining to the entity explored. The research allows demonstrating that the stereotypical ideas play an essential role in forming and sustaining the images of regions. Mass media appear to be the main source of the stereotypic image of the region due to highlighting different facts concerning the sterotypicized phenomenon, selecting various linguistic means for featuring it and influencing the emotional and evaluative perception of the image. The study was based on the data of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, which were analyzed with the help of content analysis and frame analysis. The image of the Siberian region actively exploits the frames “Nature and Geography of Siberia”, “History of Siberia”, “Economy of Siberia”. The research found out the dynamic and ambivalent character of the stereotypic image of Siberia.

Лексическая репрезентация образа Китая в российском публицистическом дискурсе

The question of formation of language image of China in the Russian mass media is considered. The relevance of the study is due to the current political context, in which the creation of a positive image of a country for its residents and for representatives of other cultures is one of the tasks of domestic and foreign policy. The material for the study were the Russian lexemes for China, PRC, Celestial, Celestial Empire, Celestial Oecumene, which are found in publicistic texts extracted from the National corpus of the Russian language, the newspapers “Коммерсантъ” and “Аргументы и факты.” Through the discourse analysis the meanings associated with these proper names actualized in the contexts are identified. On the basis of the revealed pragmatic information, a dictionary entry is compiled in accordance with the principles of lexicographical description of synonymic series presented in the New Explanatory Dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian Language edited by Yu. D. Apresyan. It is noted that the ideas of the Moscow Semantic School (hereinafter - MSS) are very popular in China. It is shown that the integral dictionary description of synonymic series can be applied to proper names, which is not represented in either Russian or Chinese linguistics. The author comes to the conclusion that the image of China as a world leader with specific socio-cultural and political characteristics is formed in the Russian information space.

Popularization of Science in the Russian Mass Media: Challenges of Multimedia Formats

This article reveals the problems that are typical for the current state of popularization of scientific knowledge and scientific achievements in the Russian mass media. In terms of possible efficiency and effectiveness the authors analysed new formats currently used to cover the topic of science in the press at both the federal and regional levels. The content and comparative analyses of the five most popular Russian scientific journals and their websites (from the quality of articles to the structure of the websites of these journals, gaming, infographics, and the use of social networks in the practice of scientific popularization) enable us to conclude that journalists still have not explicitly taken full advantage of the new multimedia features provided by the Internet. In our opinion, this practice is not conducive to the “promotion” of the results of scientific research on mass audience. The authors of the article note the poor training of students of faculties and departments of journalism in the Russian universities concerning their acquired competencies related to their possible future professional activity in scientific or popular science journalism. The results of the research supplement the conclusions through the examples from the current practice of the Russian popularization of scientific knowledge to the results of research contained in current literature.