The purpose of the study is to identify the peculiarities of interpreting the concept of 'God' in the publications of modern Russian newspapers and their comparison with the interpretation of this construct by the modern youth audience. In the course of the study, it was found that a theme of religion, attitude towards God is very popular among modern journalists in the genres of interviews and journalistic analytics. There is ambiguity in the treatment of this concept, more freedom in its interpretation, the appearance of such a phenomenon as 'political Orthodoxy'. The frequency of the use of various colloquial constructs with the kernel word 'God' is seen in the newspaper headings of materials far from religious themes, and is of an everyday nature. The conducted focus group study of the youth audience showed that majority of respondents do not rely on God in their lives, but believe that one should rely more on one's own. Males adhere to this position in a greater extent than females. It is established that understanding about God among young people is undergoing changes, and faith in God is understood by the audience as one of the universal values. There are various approaches to the study of certain concepts in modern philological science. However, in our opinion, an approach can be considered the most productive that uses the data of related sciences and involves not only an appeal to the mass media texts, but also data from focus group studies of the youth audience. This is connected, first of all, with the powerful impact that the mass media have on the formation of the worldview of young people.