Media image of new Russian public holidays: causes of resistance

Abstract

The media component of the socio-cultural space has a significant impact on the modern holiday calendar. The public holiday serves as a tool for the self-presentation of power, ideological and moral values that are significant for it, so the holiday resistance deserves special attention. The study is devoted to the media consideration image of a public holiday (on the example of the Day of Russia, the Day of National Unity, the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, as the most resistant at the present stage), its ceremonial and ritual complex and the sacred meaning, both perceived through the media sphere and constructed mass media. The media texts of institutional and non-institutional mass media, collected by the thematic query of the Yandex search engine using the continuous sampling method, are considered, which makes it possible to identify both the official point of view and the ordinary people’s opinion. Semantic dominants of discourse, texts emotional markers are revealed. Used methods of semantic, contextual, typological analysis. The reasons for the resistance of the three considered public holidays in society have been established: the fuzziness of holiday meaningful component, the lack of a symbolic-ritual complex that is understandable and accepted by the holiday participants, an ill-conceived media strategy, that is, an ambiguous choice of the date, holiday symbols, and the vector of its popularization. An additional factor of resistance can be called the modern calendar transitivity and its oversaturation with festive events. The reflection study of the image of the holiday in the media space and the construction of its mass media is significant for understanding the festive culture transformation at the present stage, the conclusions can be used in methodological recommendations for holding holidays for educational and cultural institutions.