Internet-memes as object of linguistic research from the position of national and political tolerance

Abstract

Now the Internet is one of the main means of social communication and information interchange, which is carried out within the framework of the information field created with special technologies. Undoubtedly, in the hands of skilled manipulators the Internet can turn into a rather powerful and dangerous psychological weapon attacking people’s mind. One of such means of mass influence is the meme with national and political content. These comic pic-tures with laconic posts have become the cause for initiation of numerous legal proceedings. The purpose of the re-search is to investigate the opinion range that reflect peculiarities of the youth reaction concerning the Internet-meme with the national and political background and their tolerance level. The scientific novelty of the work is that the author examines the features of Internet memes with national connotations and approaches to identify offensive connota-tions in them. Besides, to reveal the degree of influence of the Internet-memes on recipients and their personal assess-ment of this information and communication phenomenon, anonymous questioning was carried out. The meme is a joke, sneer or criticism expressed by means of certain language means: more often, it is a picture with a laconic phrase spread throughout the Internet by various means. It usually causes particular interest and emotional response in the recipients. It has a certain urgent and topical problem in its background. Thus, the Internet-meme represents certain latent mechanism of speech influence. The basis for criminal prosecution for distributing memes online is primarily Ar-ticle 282 of the Criminal Code of the RF concerning extremism. At present, approaches to linguistic examination of memes are just being developed; it is often hard to prove the presence of offensive and extremist implications in the media object. The analysis of the studied information allows to establish that a meme whose propagation can cause legal proceedings and which represents certain danger to our society should possess the following characteristics: 1) aggression appeal, 2) offensive content, 3) propagation via mass-media and the Internet, 4) net relapse. The carried out experiment leads to the conclusion that Internet-memes are psychological means effective enough to influence peo-ple. Nevertheless, its influence is not equivocal and depends on the recipient’s mood. Undoubtedly, the issue of drawing up criteria for the linguistic analysis of memes to determine their danger to society is extremely relevant.