Discursive construction of the image of Russia in the english and american press

Litvyak Olesya V., Davydova Oksana P.

the article deals with the problem of forming the image of Russia in the modern media space in the framework of the analysis of the English-language media discourse as one of the most important sources of information transmission around the world today. Attention is paid to methods of identifying media discourse, based on which it is, on the one hand, determined by a phenomenon typical only for the mass media field, as well as belonging to speech and thought activity (differentiated from political, religious, scientific, and other discourse); on the other hand, it is not differentiated from other types of discourse, so it is any discourse that falls within the communicative field of the media: political, religious, and historical discourses are perceived as a single discourse. Using the example of the English and American press, the article explores the issues of discursive construction of the image of Russia, which is determined by the goal-to create a plausible model of the world, which all communicants will adhere to when interacting with the media space. It is noted that the English media speak ambiguously about Russia (the image of the country has both positive and negative connotations), the American media are more categorical in their judgments, so they almost always "draw" the image of Russia only from the negative side.

Keywords:media discourse; mass media; image of Russia; discursive construction; American press; English press; semantic field; picture of the world.