AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
lexemes include the names of countries and supranational
entities (Italy, the USA, the EU): "In her interview to the Tgcom
24 news channel on March 26, Simona Viola, the president of
the pro-European liberal party +Europa, noted it is difficult for
her to imagine Russia simply helping without any secret
motives. Why the military? Why not civil assistance? <…> The
politician noted that Russia wants to destroy the EU" [36].
Finally, the Russian media actively spread the word of the Italian
newspaper "La Stampa" that, referring to anonymous sources in
the Italian government, called Russian help 80% useless. This
largely contributed to the formation of a mythological concept
that can be indicated as a continuation of the previous one: here
Russia is viewed not just as a political actor who actively stands
up for its interests, but as a tormentor that provided no actual
help to Italy. Russian media either use the "Italy" lexeme, or
directly state the source of the information – "La Stampa"
newspaper as if attributing the responsibility of the formation of
this concept either to the country as a whole or to the specific
organization.
It is necessary to add that the nomination dominant in all the
analyzed publications was the one that served as a media event –
the help of Russian military doctors. It is quite apparent that the
background/context for the mythologization of Russia as a
political actor was formed by the stable myth of the aggressive
foreign policy of Russia. However, while the foreign press, as
cited above, ask a rhetorical question of why the provided help
was military rather than civil reinforcing the provocative
meaning of the situation, Russian media are also focused on the
demythologization strategy. This is the way in which materials
on partnership in the fight against the dangerous virus appear:
phone conversations between the Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Shoigu and his Italian counterpart Lorenzo Guerini, a
consultation in Rome with the chief of the interspecific
operational command of the General Staff of the Armed forces
of Italy, Lieutenant General Portolano on the issue of
participation of Russian military specialists, machinery, and
equipment in the fight against the infection [37], the period of
practice for Russian military doctors working in Bergamo that
would allow them to "compare the approaches, treat patients in
accordance with Italian laws and regulations, draw up
documentation" beforehand [38]. The purity of intent is
emphasized by the details from the stories of the doctors
themselves about their completely peaceful life: buying yogurts,
juices, vitamins in a pharmacy to maintain strength after hard
work. Each of these "sorties" into the city is accompanied by
emotional remarks from Italians who recognize Russian doctors
by their military uniforms: "Grazia, Russe!" [38].
In general, the real event of humanitarian aid to Italy from
Russian military doctors became an impetus for the formation of
an intense dissonant media narrative. Having turned into text,
this event "became available for experiencing multiple times –
for participation on the part of those people who were not its
direct executors" [39, p. 23]. The uniqueness of this narrative is
found in the fact that it is "patchworked" from the individual
experience of people who apply their own evaluation criteria for
the assessment and mastery of political reality sometimes being
captivated by imagination as a constant companion of every
mythologized consciousness.
Appealing to the value consciousness as "a certain horizon of
consciousness that allows a person to establish their value
relations with the world and become a subject of learning the
value qualities of existence" [40, p. 66], a mythologized concept
executes its function of destination: it is directed towards a
particular portion of the audience forming and reinforcing its
cognitive distortions expressed, in particular, in the formation of
subjective beliefs (as well as prejudices and stereotypes) in
relation to "other" and "alien" world-systems.
A mythological concept is realized through its continuous
(extended in time) representation in multiple forms and, at the
same time, remains unstable and easily abolished under the
effect of historical processes, which is promoted by its open
nature. As was rightly noted by Roland Barthes, a concept is "in
no way an abstract, sterile entity, but rather a condensate of
unformed, unstable, foggy associations; their unity and
coherence depend primarily on the function of the concept" [13,
p. 82].
I.V. Erofeeva suggested using the concept of "mediatext
axiosphere" to describe the space accumulating spiritual (mental)
values: "the construction of this sphere should be examined
<…> at three levels: the pragmatics of axiosphere, the syntactics
of axiosphere, and the semantics of axiosphere. The problem of
mediatext axiosphere that includes the issues of the functioning
of major concepts and archetypes of a national worldview in the
media is directly related to the genre (postmodern) specifics of
the existence of the spiritual sphere, the structural (ritual)
components of its organization, and the technological
instruments of affecting" [11, p. 278]. The interpretation of
substantial values and the myth itself as a communicative system
or a message is expressed in the definition provided by R.
Barthes: "From here it follows that it can be neither a thing nor a
concept or idea; it is a form, a way of designating" [41, p. 265].
In Barthes’s description, a myth contains a form of the
"designated" and the meaning of the "designating" which are in
constant playful interaction. A world economy that, aside from
the dominant myth of the individual liberty of a person, declares
the right for mythological interpretation prioritizes the external,
the formal, and the aesthetic. Such an interpretation forms the
structure of a myth fixating its fluctuation, temporality, and
conditionality. This relation to a myth and its value core presents
a significant communicative advantage of the global world
economy as it allows to destroy myths and devolve world-
system values based on personal representations and the denial
of absoluteness per se.
In journalism, as a virtually alienated form of a world-system,
the contradiction of mythological interpretation is expressed in
the problem of the objectivity of an author’s statement and their
product in general. O. F. Smaznova identifies two forms of the
modern mythological: the "big" (or the native) myth as an
ideally typical model of worldviewing and "a mythoid as a
mythical story or image endowed with an exclusively personal
philosophical meaning, created in an individual mythological
impulse, but capable of acquiring a sociocultural, supra-
individual meaning – a phenomenon that is not comprehended
ideally typically, but rather biographically" [14, p. 319]. In a
journalistic text, this contradiction is resolved through achieving
conformity between content and genre forms and in context this
issue is settled through coordination of social and individual
meaning. The problem of objectivity acquires a certain shape for
a communication researcher: "it is obvious that the true essence
of a myth can be seen through ‘getting used’ to the forms of the
mythological activity of consciousness, but then the myth is lost
as an object and appears as existence" [15, p. 192].
The dense circumnuclear sphere of the world presents an
integrated individual reality of images of reality based on
personal ancestral experience, experiences, and memories. The
essence of a myth as the reality of the world, the object of direct
perception is most clearly expressed in its circumnuclear
structures [12, p. 121]. The external sphere of a myth in the
media sphere encounters the totality of virtual flows impacting
the dense sphere and the core with the goal of correction or
destruction. One of the authors of the article describes such a
communicative process through the categories of the opposition
between a value and an anti-value: "The moral alienation of a
person and even entire social groups is not so much of a basis for
abandoning the production of values rather than a favorable
environment for replacing it with anti-values. For this reason, it
must be said very clearly: openness and democracy of the press
can no longer be a filter preventing the media sphere from being
penetrated by both the explicit denial of values and the meanings
that appear under the guise of their reinforcement" [9, p. 36]. In
the structures of world economy, the cultivation of openness and
democracy creates the conditions for the devaluation of the
dominant myth about the freedom, which inevitably falls into its
own trap of relativism, is questioned, criticized, and ridiculed.
- 309 -