German and Russian Political Blogs as Relevant Protest Practice in Context of Modern Society Mediatization

Abstract

The study reveals the multifunctionality which is typical of German and Russian political blogs. Regardless of the language of the blogs, information and evaluation, political and convening, consolidating, agitation and propaganda, presentation and propaganda, and directive functions are among the dominant functions. The paper briefly describes the linguistic means which represent these functions. It shows the discursive hybridity of political blogs which is manifested in combining the features of Internet discourse with elements of political, news, journalistic, and social values discourses (in German political blogs) and political, business, legal, conversational, and artistic discourses (in Russian political blogs). The authors establish the relevant communicative strategies of the addresser (the strategy to justify a “problem”, the strategy to support / not support demonstrated evaluation) and the tactics that implement them. The authors also define the topics for discussion which initiate the addressee’s protest reaction – these are social issues, international and regional developments, environment and migration crisis in German political blogs and finance and taxes, constitution and government, elections, corruption and officials in Russian political blogs. The paper describes the ways of forming and maintaining convening technologies in the protest practice considered. It considers the features of mediatization of politics and personality in the content analyzed, which are manifested in guiding the political agenda to the needs of the addressee. It also establishes that German and Russian political blogs as a protest practice are characterized by a set of common system and communicative characteristics, a similar strategy and tactic organization, and a different set of problem areas marked with the “threat” index. The results obtained contribute to further development of the provisions of the communicative theory of protest, facilitate the understanding of modern protest forms and attempt to explain how technology, politics and the media sphere are interlinked.