Siberia as a trigger of geopolitical conflictogenic media discourse

The article reveals the influence of manipulative tactics in the media discourse on the public consciousness of the peoples of different countries regarding such a huge territory as Siberia. The authors analyze the historical, sociological, and psycholinguistic aspects of the functioning of the geopolitonym Siberia in the geopolitical conflictogenic media discourse within the framework of the linguistic-informational model of Siberia in the modern media discourse on the material of different structural languages. The selection of sources was based on the method of contextual analysis with an emphasis on the implicit content of the media image of the region, the descriptive method, the method of cultural interpretation, content analysis. Information wars use the image of Siberia as the center of the matrix of conflict-prone media discourse to increase attention to events in Russia and accentuate geopolitical manipulations in the public consciousness. The authors give the concept of a media matrix for understanding the cognitive side of media images of a geopolitical topoobject, such as Siberia. The media matrix of geopolitonyms consists of linguoinfornems, being implemented in linguoinformational steps in the media discourse. The media image of Siberia is diverse, being realized in evaluative linguistic systems of different languages, based on scalable sociostereotypes about Siberia. The authors show what the mythologized and realistic perception of the image of Siberia is based on, how it is interconnected with the tasks of geopolitics, influencing success in intercultural communication. The research is aimed at understanding linguistic universals in the perception of geopolitonyms. The article is of interest to specialists in the field of linguistics, psychology, journalism, history, cultural studies, sociology, and political science. © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved