THE IMPACT OF NEWS MEDIA HEADLINES ON THE READER’S PSYCHOSPHERE: AN ECOLINGUISTIC ASPECT

Abstract

The article examines the issues of ecological/non-ecological influence of news media headlines on the reader’s psychosphere. Eco-friendly means the creation of a positive emotional center of interaction, and non-ecological means the creation of a negative emotional center of interaction (V.I. Shakhovsky). The main research methods are directed associative experiment and mathematical analysis of experimental data. Two samples served as the research material. 1) 100 news materials for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 selected by the continuous sampling method from the “Archive” heading of the Orenday Internet portal; 2) the results of a directed associative experiment in which 50 respondents participated. The results of the analysis show that the relative frequency of neutrally perceived information is 0.48; negatively perceived information is 0.34; positively perceived information is 0.18. The main trend in the formation of the media space of the Orenburg region is an imbalance in the transmission of news that causes negative, positive and neutral reactions from readers. The formation of the media space occurs due to the predominant broadcasting of neutral and negatively perceived information. The predominance of such reactions testifies to the non-ecological format of the media’s impact on the audience. The revealed relative frequency of positive reactions is interpreted as a factor in neutralizing the non-ecological format of media exposure.