Cultural and Ethnic Identity in the Modern Realities of Media Development: Rating of Market Forces and Potential

The study’s relevance is determined by a sharp increase in interethnic and intercultural conflicts due to the digitalisation and mediatisation of geopolitics. Socio-communicative channels of ideological influence on ethnocultural life make it possible to actively manipulate people’s desire to preserve their ethnocultural identity, supporting extra-legal forms of institutional social management implemented through media, which requires deep investigation and comprehension. The article aims to outline the role and place of media and the media market in today’s geopolitical conflict landscape, both on a global scale and at the nation-state level, based on research on the conflict potential of media within ethnic and cultural identity patterns, their shaping and functioning. The research is founded on concepts and hypotheses developed in national-cultural identity, globalisation, and geopolitics. It is also based on methodological approaches such as civilisational, comparative, systemic, dialectical, sociocultural, and synergetic. It is shown that media products and the media market are a resource for ethnic conflict mobilisation. Social actors in mass communication strive to convince society of the benefits of their peace/conflict projects. It was revealed that contemporary communication, media and journalism studies have mostly neglected to critically assess the news media’s role in producing and distributing propaganda based on ethnic and cultural identity narratives, and the necessity of filling this research gap is emphasised. It has been demonstrated that information influences can change the main geopolitical potential of the state – the national mentality, culture and moral state of people. The media market today has become a full-fledged element of postclassical geopolitics. The question of the role of the symbolic capital of culture in the information (media) space is now acquiring not an abstract theoretical but a strategic geopolitical significance.