journal article
Confrontation or warfare: How information in the western mass-media creates discourse destruction
Abstract
The paper is devoted to the analysis of strategies, tactics and means that are used in the modern information environment and cause the discourse destruction. The term "discourse destruction" is interpreted as breaches of information coding and decoding which influence the process of world events' perception and interpretation and which are caused by cultural differences, ethnocentrism and stereotypes inherent to the communication participants. The authors come to the conclusion that the modern geopolitical situation is characterized by information warfare rather than by confrontation. Information is viewed as a weapon in the information and psychological warfare and the repertoire of strategies and tactics used during it is of broad scope: The conflict of semantic interpretation of the utterances, the breach of diplomatic rules, the collision of axiological priorities of the intercultural political communication participants, the usage of applied media-technologies, insult, libel, reproach through the wide range of speech means. It is possible to presuppose that the information and psychological warfare will gather pace but the time will show how the repertoire of its methods and means will change and whether this attack is connected with the definite historical personality and the attempt to damage the image of this or that political leader.
Author keywords
discourse destruction, information confrontation, information warfare, intercultural political area, speech conflict