MANAGING EDITOR’S CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP IN THE MODERN POLITICAL MEDIA DISCOURSE OF THE USA AND RUSSIA: COMPARATIVE LINGUOCULTURAL ASPECT

This article is devoted to studying of the phenomenon of censorship and self-censorship in the modern American and Russian political media discourse. The authors analyse the pre-election speeches and the publications in the social networks of K. A. Sobchak and V. V. Zhirinovsky, as well as of D. Trump and H. Clinton. The purpose of the article, which consists in conducting a comparative linguocultural study of the mechanisms of censoring and self-censoring information in the modern American and Russian political media discourse, is achieved by using a comparative method, linguocultural analysis, a complex method of lexical and semantic, stylistic, interpretive, and emotive analysis. The analysis of the material shows that traditional forms of censorship in Russian political media discourse are not identified, but they can be found in the media space of the USA, causing a relatively weak public reaction among the communicators. In media space of the USA and Russia, the absence of formal external censorship restrictions leads to the updating of self-censorship to maintain the integrity of the manifestations of the language personality of a politician. Censorship in modern American and Russian media environment lies in such a structuring of information, that deliberately prevents the addressee from interpreting the information in an undesirable way. Self-censorship in modern media environment of the USA and Russia is characterized by an increase of the volume of information and the relative preservation of its valuable aspect. In addition, media discourse can be implicitly censored by filtering the comments under social media publications or by artificially increasing the number of approving reactions to them (by getting «cheat likes»). Self-censorship may use some features of the response to visual elements, when the picture and text supplement each other, causing the desired for the addressee emotional response. Hypertext can also direct the emotional response in the desirable direction, referring to the beneficial for the addressee elements of media discourse.