Mythologemes and ideologemes of the Russian media: the experience of systematization

The article substantiates the necessity of the description, systematisation and analysis of mythologemes and ideologemes, with which the modern Russian mass media forms the identification representations of mass audience. The author interprets the concepts "mythologeme" and "ideologeme", describes the main ones that are actively used by Russian media in the past decade. The author comes from the orientation of modern Russian media on the use of irrational patterns of influence on the audience consciousness and behaviour which rely on a set of mythologemes and ideologemes. A "mythologeme" in this case is any statement which contains an open or hidden reference to some eternal, global and universal truth; a convincing assertion which does not require strict proof because it is a "hologram" of a holistic myth stored in the unconscious. An "ideologeme" is a generalising assertion, a claim to absolute truth, which in a brief form affirms the necessity or possibility of certain actions in the political or social spheres, and/or justifying such actions. Based on years of observation of the Russian media, several stable mythologe-mes that continuously reproduce themselves in the federal and regional press are detected and analysed: 1) the myth of the great pagan past of the Slavs; 2) the myth of the great Orthodox Russian Empire; 3) the myth of the great Soviet Union; 4) the myth of the great "Wild and Evil '90s"; 5) the myth of the "Country Surrounded by Enemies"; 6) the myth of Stalin as a great leader. Among the fundamental political ideologemes are "Sovereign Patriotism" and the "Special Way of Russia". It is those ideologemes that structure the ideological space of the modern Russian official media and develop into a whole set of ideological cliches. In the first of these ideologemes, after A.V. Obolonsky, the conscious deformation, the substitution of the normal human affection for the place of one's birth with a sense of pride of the greatness of the state and government can be traced. In the second ideologeme, a biased geopolitical speculation in the interests of the political regime prevailing in the 2000s (E. Pain) can be seen. Both, according to the author, reflect the conservative turn in the ideology of the country in recent years, which provides the relative stability of the autocratic regime with a strong centralisation.

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