Gaming Slang Terms in Russian Online Media: A Case Study of News Articles

The goal of this study is to identify gaming slang terms in the news articles of highly rated Russian media. Three online newspapers of various types were used as an empirical material: Kommersant (the first private business newspaper in Russia), RBC (a socio-political analytical newspaper) and Rossiyskaya Gazeta (agency of the Russian Federation government). With help of the content analysis of the media texts, all cases of using the slang gaming terms such as “achievement”, “noob”, “easter eggs” etc. have been discovered and described. The results of the study show that over the past five years the popularity of the gaming terms usage in the media has been growing; this increase can be described as a linear progressive growth: gaming slang is becoming an integral part of the Runet online resources and is gradually entering common vocabulary. It can be assumed that with the increase in the number of media managers from the generation of digital natives and their transition to the category of “decision makers”, the growth of gaming slang terms in online media will become exponential.