Strategy of positive mediatization of war in Vietnam (based on newspapers "Pravda" and "Komsomol’skaya pravda", 1965)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the strategy of positive mediatization of the Vietnamese War in the Soviet media. The theoretical basis of the work is the concept of mediatization of politics developed as a term in the era of global informatization when the perception of social conflicts and their evaluation are actively formed by the mass-media. The projection of this concept to the events of 1965-1973 allows identifying the features of coverage of the military conflict in the Soviet media which are the mouthpiece of the official authorities. The material for the research is the newspaper resources in "Pravda" and "Komsomol'skaya pravda" for 1965 which is the starting point of the beginning of the USSR’s military assistance to fighting Vietnam. Two polar substrategies of mediatization of the image of Vietnam are found and characterized, based on opposition of ours and theirs: the substrategy of the heroization of the Vietnamese people and the substrategy of the accusation and condemnation of the external aggressor – the United States. The opposition of ours and theirs is value oriented. The representation of ours and theirs dichotomy by means of a totalitarian language has identified hypertrophied and simplified evaluation in the designation of ours and theirs. The first group is characterized by an absolutely positive evaluation, the second is absolutely negative. Among the linguistic means of implementing the substrategy of accusation and condemnation of the external aggressor, evaluative epithets, metaphorical nominations, political labels with negative evaluative connotation, and slogan headings of the accusatory and condemning type are found. The substrategy of the heroization of the Vietnamese people has formed a general idea of the national character of the Vietnamese. The positive mediatization of the Vietnam War has resulted in the enrichment of the meaning of the concept of Vietnam. In the Russian linguistic consciousness, there formed positively estimated views about the Vietnamese as a friendly, hardworking, heroic nation, capable of defending their independence.