Ideological World Modelling in American Media Discourse

The article focuses on the phenomenon of ideological world modelling in American media discourse. The premise is that media managers intentionally represent a particular stance on political matters. The research draws on world modelling theory that is traced back to European and Russian theories, which emphasize the importance of studying discourse in terms of representational structures, the main being discourse-world and text-world. The author limits the study to a three-fold objective: to characterise discourse-world as a representational structure that is created in American mass media, to identify and to analyse a key ideologeme of the current time that engenders ideas about informational, psychological, and ideological confrontation of foreign policy opponents. To reach the objectives, the author follows the discourse-analytical perspective outlined by T. van Dijk. The analysis involves contexts from American high-quality press-newspapers and news sites that cover the period of 2010-2018. The most influential are The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Irish Times, War on the Rocks, WTOP, Mother Jones, The Atlantic. The employed methods are semiotic and corpus analysis, ideological analysis, and componential analysis. The approach to the study of media discourse is based on an assumption that in the context of deterioration of political relations between the USA and Russia, the discourse-world of information and psychological warfare serves as a background for profiling the new ideologeme of the first quarter of the 21st century, namely “Russia-opponent of the West”. The discourse-world of information and psychological warfare is textualized in an aggregate of media texts united by the theme of confrontation and war. It is treated as a conceptually complex representational structure, which reflects the balance of forces in the global world of politics and forms the idea of strong ideological confrontation between Russia and the West. It is argued that the revealed ideologeme is a mental schema possessing ideologically marked features. They comprise negative characteristics of Russia as enactor of information and psychological warfare. The systematization of the characteristics has revealed the scope of confrontation according to the following parameters of information and psychological warfare: initiator, intensity, main objectives, channels, forces, operations, weapons. The evaluation potential of the ideologeme is one-dimensional as negative axiological expression dominates in American media discourse. The image of Russia is demonised in the eyes of the world community. In pragmatic terms, world-modelling is aimed at supporting the current political stance of the USA, which is associated with Russophobia. This results in representing Russia as a hindrance to the civilizational development of the West. The conclusion might present interest for working out measures to ensure the protection of national interests of Russia in the information sphere.

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