Media Discourse and the Formation of Cultural Stereotypes

This article analyzes Russian media discourse to identify its role in shaping cultural stereotypes in the mass audience's perception. The empirical basis of the study consisted of cultural news items from the period May–October 2025, published on four popular Russian-language online resources: Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Super.ru, and Ura.ru. To compare discursive strategies, headlines from a publication positioning itself as "quality press" ("RBC") from the same period were additionally analyzed. The presented research includes an analysis of news headlines from the perspective of their syntactic and lexical content, an analysis of article topics, as well as techniques for exerting emotional influence on the recipient, promoting an uncritical perception of the transmitted content. The methodological basis of the study was the random sampling method for selecting examples for analysis and the content analysis method, aimed at identifying ways of representing information to form a system of values of a pragmatic nature in the public consciousness. The analysis revealed that the structuring of information in media texts follows this logical scheme: specific selection of information and methods of its transmission, formation of a specific stable image, and, subsequently, a specific stereotype of information perception within the desired cultural-ideological context. As a result of the study, it is concluded that the media deliberately influence people's consciousness, providing a worldview which focuses primarily on pragmatic goals and commercial interests. It is stated that this kind of information cannot contribute to the formation of cultural identity, and media discourse in this case does not serve as a space for cultural interaction between the media and readers. Instead, it turns into a tool for manipulating public consciousness, used in accordance with the laws of market economy primarily to monetize audience attention rather than to educate it.