Modern song as a resource for influencing people’s consciousness and behavior in mass media (Experience in studying the student audience’s perception of songs)

Professional communicators (including music journalists) have various resources in their arsenal to influence people’s consciousness and behavior, through which they seek to achieve their goals and obtain the desired emotional response. There are communication spheres in which specific texts, most commonly referred to as works of art, circulate. The impact of such “texts” on humans is rarely studied from this perspective. However, for example, music and songs are capable of inducing a trance, making one cry or laugh, committing rash acts, etc. It is from this point of view that our study examined songs that are in the zone of interest of today’s youth audience. During the study, 37 undergraduates attending the Manipulation Technologies of Consciousness and Behavior: Identification, Analysis, Counteraction course from different faculties and campuses of the National Research University Higher School of Economics were offered to choose 10 songs of any genre and any epoch, and to analyze them in order to identify target communicative and emotional settings they contained, as well as the means they used to influence people’s consciousness and behavior. A total of 370 songs were analyzed. The study was conducted between January and March 2023. This article presents some of the results and conclusions from the study. 1. Over 80 percent of the study participants chose to analyze composer songs (mostly rock and all its varieties, pop, rap, and bard songs). Among folk (folklore) songs, the most popular were round dance songs and ritual family songs. 2. Interest in the songs chosen for listening was determined, among other factors, by the students’ being a part of a certain cultural type: archaic, industrial (modern), and post-modern. The most popular among the participants is the “modern” song, followed by the “post-modern” one; the “archaic” song is the least popular. 3. The authors of the analyzed songs (explicit or implicit in the texts) aim at describing everyday situations and behavior in them; awakening of empathy, appeal to feelings; determination of their social positions, formulation of attitude to what is happening. The assessment of social, political and other processes (justification, praise, condemnation, accusation); warning of danger, consequences of actions and/or statements are less frequent. 4. In the wide range of emotions that the studied songs evoke, the leading are the emotions of a positive range: hope, joy, confidence, pleasure, etc. although frustration in all its manifestations is also often present in the song texts. 5. The perception of a song is influenced not only by texts and music, but also by performance: the melody and rhythm of a song are as important as its musical accompaniment and the singer’s voice. This study should be considered as a pilot one. Further research, conducted on different song material and in different audiences, will provide an opportunity to form a holistic view of songs as a resource for influencing the consciousness and behavior of the mass audience. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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