Methodology for Identifying Contextual Ideologemes in Digital Media Discourse (a Case Study of Media Discourse about Covid-19 Pandemic)

Section: Media Language

The article discusses the issue of tools for studying digital media discourse and proposes a method for identifying contextual ideologemes in media texts. The rationale of the methodology is based on the analysis of the terminological and theoretical field of the ideologeme. It is argued that the linguistic phenomenon “contextual ideologeme” reflects in digital media discourse the meaning and features of the impact of the media text. It is proved on the material of media texts about the COVID-19 pandemic (the resources the empirical base relies on are as follows: Gazeta.Ru; RBC; BBC News Russian Service; Lenta.ru; Life; Meduza; March 2020 – February 2021) that the proposed methodology is capable of determining contextual ideologemes on the material of large arrays of digitized media texts, while a formalized procedure allows the creation of verifiable scientific knowledge. As a result of approbation of the methodology, the contextual ideologemes of the Russian-language media discourse about the first wave (“new virus”/“coronavirus”) and the second wave (“vaccination”) of the COVID-19 pandemic are named, common to the media under study, and such a characteristic of the ideologeme as distortion is problematized.

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