Image Of Stavropol In Modern Regional Television Journalism: Narrative And Communicative Aspect

Abstract

The visual and verbal image of a region is a part of modern cultural consciousness, a way of cultural policy formation, public consciousness, cultural and social “province code”. Local material allows creating a unique text that has thematic specificity, originality of the problem statement and unique visual means of transmitting sense. A region in various image-forming television projects of regional television is a construct, the content components of which are the verbal and visual methods of its creation, the script concept, etc. The conceptual space of a “region” is formed as a result of verbal marking of a territory and a region, the use of various methods of geographic object nomination, creating a contextual environment of statements related to the definition of this concept. The concept “region” is formed by nuclear and peripheral components from the point of view of the verbal and visual specifics of the presentation of this concept in television discourse, creating the associative array of the concept of “Stavropol Territory”. The study was carried out on the material of the projects of State Autonomous Institution of the Stavropol Territory “Stavropol Television”. The material of the research was image-making projects, review, image and analytical interviews, travel projects. During the course of the study, the content of the conceptual space “region” was formed, which was expressed in terms of the correlation of the historical past of the region, the understanding of the region as a unique, ecologically clean, tourist attractive region, a place of family, rural, provincial life.

Keywords: Concept, image of the region, Stavropol Territory, television journalism

Introduction

The image of the region, the image of geographic space and the cultural and historical landscape are a significant category in the space of modern culture, which is formed by media discourse.

The image of the region is a part of modern cultural consciousness, a way of cultural policy formation, a method to create cultural and social “provincial code”. The conceptual space of the “region” is formed as a result of visual and verbal marking of the concept of “territory” and a “region”, the use of various methods of geographic object nomination, creating a contextual environment of statements related to the definition of this concept, selection of visual illustrative material, creation of verbal and visual associative context for the formation of the concept of “region” in relation to the Stavropol Territory.

Problem Statement

The study will solve the problem of the formation and description of the content of the conceptual space associated with the representation of the image of the region in television discourse, the definition of its nuclear and peripheral components, the characteristics of the verbal and visual content forming the image of the region in the Stavropol television journalism.

Research Questions

In the television agenda of Stavropol Television (“Your TV”), the following projects are being implemented, in which the image of the region is formed by communicative verbal and visual means: (“I am not a local”, “The way life’s arranged”, “Business time”, “Made in the Stavropol Territory”, “Land use right”, “Let's go to a resort”, “A man at his place”, “Stavropol region today”.

The project “The way life’s arranged”, belongs to the category of image-creating programs, is broadcasting from August 14, 2020. The purpose of this project is to compare the region from the standpoint of the correlation of its historical past with the present state. The program provides information on scientific developments, educational technologies and agriculture of the Stavropol Territory as a unique, environmentally friendly, attractive tourist destination with a rich historical past.

The conceptual space of the “region” is formed as a result of verbal marking of a territory and a region, the use of various methods of a geographic object nomination, creating a contextual environment of statements related to the definition of this concept. Frequency components of the concept are markers associated with the thematic group “nature, climate, natural wealth”. For example, “in the Stavropol Territory, a land without a sea, fish farming is developing” (Stavropol Fish (is broadcasting from September 25, 2020)), “in arid Stavropol realities” (“Stavropol Fish "(broadcasting from September 25, 2020)), “fog usual for the Stavropol Territory” (“Cities of the future” (broadcasting from January 22, 2021)),”frosty winter in the Stavropol region, by the way, not so frosty”, “fertile beautiful Stavropol autumn”, “we are still lucky – there are enough sunny days in the Stavropol region compared to other regions” (“Vitamins all year round” (broadcasting from February 5, 2020)), “all conditions for delicious milk” (“Dairy farming” (broadcasting from August 28, 2020)). The content of the concept of “region” is also associated with locations that chronotopically determine the place of the Stavropol Territory in the all-Russian and world space. For example, “the great history is hidden by viticulture and winemaking of the Stavropol Territory”, “Italian Tuscany, French Burgundy, – no –, Stavropol Territory, Russia”, “The Stavropol Territory has always been and, possibly, will become the leader of winemaking in Russia” (“The way life’s arranged. Viticulture and winemaking” (broadcasting from September 11, 2020)), “the leader of green renewable energy” (“Energy of the future” (broadcasting from August 14, 2020)). The representation of the conceptual field “region” is interesting from the point of view of marking this concept in time perspective, from the standpoint of temporality. The concept of “life time of the region” is correlated and opposed to the phenomena of Soviet time, Soviet era, a semantic dominant is formed in the understanding of the region, connected with the awareness of the polar positions of time perspective of “Soviet times – in the modern world”, “times change – legends remain” (“Dairy farming"” broadcasting from August 28, 2020). The verbal and visual context of the presentation of the “region” phenomenon is associated with the determination of the concepts “region, place of residence” and “family, home”: for example, “big family”, “there is everything for loved ones and relatives” (“Dairy farming”, broadcasting from August 28, 2020), “a smart city is not so smart without a corresponding resident” (“Cities of the Future” broadcasting from January 22, 2021). The “vertical / horizontal” perspective is based on the visual means of the formation of the image of the territory: the type of image, the way of plot demonstration, landscape photography, the subject specificity of frames, the editing technique, the locations describing the space as poetic, idealized, with a clear and unambiguous depiction of thematic sketches of “mountains”, “rivers”, “field”, “seasons”.

The weekly project “I am not a local” is a way of the authored implementation of the idea of ​​ content, specificity, figurative originality of the modern rural Stavropol Territory. It presents the image of “farm life”. The project has been implemented since October 2020. The content characteristics of the thematic space associated with the presentation of the image of the region are represented by the following nominations: forests, fields, plains, rivers, lakes, steppe, bees, livestock, natural resources and the North Caucasian tourist cluster. The peripheral thematic space is represented by images and image objects related to the following topics: school, center for digital and humanitarian education, ambulance station, village, farm; master, craft, graduate of capital university, volunteer, rural firefighter, machine operator, children, a parent with many children, medical volunteers, development program, social contract. The basic verbal and visual components of the concept are presented in the following nominations: “ a puzzle of the nature of the Stavropol region”, “everything natural”, “traveled your wide open spaces”, “the strength of the village is that it is endless”, “the village is open space, open spaces...” , “Stavropol land, Stavropol grass, Stavropol nectar” (“Yutsa village: apiaries, beekeepers and bees” broadcast on October 10, 2020), “calm, good, cozy, home, sweet home” (“Yessentukskaya: children, tears, new playground” (broadcast on November 2, 2020), “it is convenient for me to live here, I like the climate, my family is nearby, everything is nearby”(“Praskoveya village: zemsky doctors, their secrets and life hacks” (broadcast on November 9, 2020), “Stavropol is a lucky city. It is not only the most comfortable (this is the merit, for the most part, of residents and authorities), but also it is one of the greenest in the country. I must thank Mother Nature. Surrounded by the steppes, our city is hidden from the sun and heat in a dense green veil”, “the pleasure that we have all this” (“Forest dacha reserve: boar sauna, invisible deer and many trees” (broadcast on November 30, 2020), “In our grain land” (“Kochubeevskoe village: a bakery, sweets and a lot of bread” (broadcast 07.12.2020)), “open spaces one can only dream of, people whose sincerity and hard work can be envied”(“Results 2020 broadcast on December 23, 2020), “in Stavropol way means in rural way” (“Coffee Stavropol” broadcast on February 2, 2021), “village, lambs, fresh air, open spaces, beautiful ... “, “they go to the village to live in peace” (“Sengileevskoye: fire station, knots and costumes” (broadcast on February 8, 2021). The peripheral component of the conceptual field is the positioning and opposition of the region to the concepts of “capital”, “city” and the location in time perspective of “Soviet past-present”: “the local collective farm was considered exemplary back in Soviet times”, “ it is a part of the North Caucasian tourist cluster”, “Moscow (in comparison with Stavropol) has many its own peculiarities”, “the strength of the village is the people of the village and the nature of the village” (“The village of Yutsa: apiaries, beekeepers and bees” broadcast on October 10, 2020), “and are there few opportunities !?” (in comparison with the capital cities), “during the years of communism ...” (in a positive connotation), “the state farm Staromaryevsky in the best (in the Soviet) years had ...”, “the countryside is now not inferior to (the city)” (“Growth point”: robots, 3D models and digital education” broadcast on October 26, 2020), “neither Moscow, nor St. Petersburg attract me (in comparison with Stavropol)” (“The village of Praskoveya: zemsky doctors, their secrets and life hacks” broadcast November 9, 2020). The verbal and visual context of the presentation of the “region” phenomenon in this project is associated with the determination of the concepts “region, place of residence” and “peace”, “order”, “quiet place”, “natural and economic sustainability”, “space”, “better than metropolitan region”.

The project “Time to act” is devoted to the presentation of the results of the implementation of supporting program for local initiatives in the Stavropol Territory in the economic landscape of the region. We analyzed 106 episodes of this project that were released during the period from March 20, 2017 to April 13, 2020. As a result of the study of this project, it was found that with the actualization of folklore topics, a description of the content and the system of propaganda of folk art (ensembles performing folk songs) the authors of the project form an idea of ​​the region as a nationally distinctive, traditional, cultural and historical chronotope dependent on the conditions of the historical positioning of the place of the region in the world. One of the methods to form the image of the region is (as a manipulative speech strategy) the frequent use of the nominations of the region. The project “Made in the Stavropol Territory” has 67 episodes (broadcast from May 13, 2016 to November 7, 2018). The image of the region in a visual context in this project is created due to large and detailed plans. They are used to form an emotional visual image that creates a positive mood, idealizing the concept of the region.

The project “Land use right” is devoted to the stories of successful farms and start-ups that were invented by ordinary villagers. The topic space of the project is associated with the following tags: “excess profit”, “property of the region”, “region as a grain leader”. For research purposes 57 episodes were chosen (broadcast from June 7, 2016 to September 29, 2017). The verbal space of the project is emotional, saturated with means of artistic expression, metaphorical: “tomato empire”, “local elite” (episode dated September 10, 2017), “(here) life should have been in full swing” (episode dated August 04, 2017).

The travel project “Let's go to a resort” on the channel “Your TV” has a five-year history. During this time, its creative concept, the ways of presenting information, musical accompaniment, the choice of locations and the specificity of the drama of the episodes have changed. Due attention is paid to natural monuments (Lakollite mountains, permafrost cave, Ring Mountain, etc.), architecture and the medical properties of resorts. The programs use comparisons with other well-known spa centers (“Tambukan brine is said to be superior to the Dead Sea mud in Israel, according to experts”, “the number of tourists in Kislovodsk per year exceeds their number in Baden-Baden by almost 50 %” etc.). Journalists actively fit the region into the context of world history and culture, mentioning the Great Silk Route, which once ran over the region, calling the it “one of the last outposts of Byzantium”, claiming that “Pushkin Gallery in Zheleznovodsk and Lermontovskaya Gallery in Pyatigorsk, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, are the first examples of buildings assembled from prefabricated structures”. Taken together, the program “Let's go to a resort” presents the region as a unique and distinctive territory, which is nevertheless inscribed in the history and culture of the country and the world.

The project “A man at his place” presents the following objects that characterize the image of the region: Pyatigorsk, Essentuki and Stavropol. The specificity of the visual presentation of the main character of the project is the technique of clip editing, the use of angles characteristic of a portrait interview (a hero against the background of his profession, in an illustrative interior, a rich perspective of the frame, the interview about the hero's profession is at the second place). The following characteristic nominations of the region in the context of the presentation of the character's image can be noted: “multinational region”, “Russian culture in the Caucasus exists in the form of Cossack culture”, “folk chant of a Russian song, polyphony of a Cossack song – this is our genetic code”, “traditions are intertwined here in songs of different peoples of the Caucasus”, “cuisine in the Caucasus is a journey”, “taught in very childhood, handmade... therefore, the Armenian national dish is better prepared by an Armenian, Chechen – a Chechen woman” (“A man at his place. Mukhamed Papshuov” broadcast on January 13, 2021, “A man at his place. Alexey Panchenko” broadcast on December 30, 2020, “A man at his place. Vladimir Kuznetsov” broadcast on December 23, 2020).

In the project “Stavropol region today”, the thematic and figurative content of the concept “region” is associated with the actualization of the following characteristics: “only dances with tambourines will give us some water”; “summer is green in the Stavropol Territory”, “the agrarian region of the country”, “in small villages of the Stavropol Territory, residents are their own designers”, “sun-drenched Stavropol”, “our kids are born, the trend is good”, “Stavropol vegetables”, “every fifth tomato in the country is Stavropol”, “greenhouse farms of Stavropol” (“Stavropol region today. Ecology of the Stavropol region” broadcast on March 28, 2020, “Stavropol region today. Social policy” broadcast on March 25, 2020, “Stavropol region today. Local Initiatives” broadcast on March 21, 2020, “Stavropol region today. Support for families is a priority” broadcast on February 09, 2020).

We can state that the parameters and specifics of the creation of the image of the region in the projects “A man at his place”, “Stavropol region today” are based on a clear concept associated with the categories “space”, “national diversity”, “agrarian region”, “sunny land”.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the television media discourse of the regional channel “Stavropol Television” (“Your TV”) from the standpoint of the definition of the content of the concept of “image of the region” and the means of its formation by verbal and visual components.

Research Methods

The problem of the research is the combination of several modern trends in linguistics, communication science and the theory of journalism, the sphere of interest of which is the study of a text as a multidisciplinary, polycode phenomenon and the mechanism to represent a concept in image-forming discourse. The research is carried out on the material of television discourse. The genre specificity of the studied text is associated with travel journalism and the ways of the presentation of nationally specific material in concept space.

In the definition of the content of the concepts of modern travel journalism typology and the concept of national-cultural identity, we rely on the research of (Blaer et al., 2019; I-Chieh et al., 2020; Rosenkranz, 2016; Wartmann et al., 2018).

The structure of the image of the region and the format of its presentation depends on the parameters of interaction between the addressees of an utterance, media space and the format of the media text (Svistunova, 2018). We considered in details this very specificity of the formation of the concept, correlating the parameters of the content and the means of its expression.

In this work, we rely on the characteristics of the image of the region from the standpoint of cognitive science, considered by Cheprakov (2016):

The approach based on cognitive science to the consideration of the image of the region allows solving the issues of the relationship between the components of the image and their linguistic representation, helping to identify the cognitive features of the object, reflecting the accumulated knowledge, impressions, sensations, emotions included in the cognitive picture of the addressee's world ... (p. 84)

Karandashov (2016) proposes to consider the socio-cultural phenomenon, which include the conceptual concept of “region”, in the context of the structure of this phenomenon:

Each social system has a center (core), in which the most important elements constituting its uniqueness are concentrated. The center accumulates the space of concentration of social values, formed as a result of adaptation processes in the civilizational conditions in which it was originally formed. The center also contains norms, standards and rules of activity as specific standards according to which society lives. The nuclear components of culture are especially vividly represented in folklore, mythology, customs, habits, behavior in everyday life, historical traditions, rituals, linguistic structures and mentality... (para. 7)

We share this position and suppose that the content of the image-forming concept is related to the specificity of the presentation in this concept of specific sociocultural knowledge.

The content of the concept is formed precisely by the image, documentary and media image, which is “one of the ways to understand reality ...” (Babenko, 2018). The specificity of the content of this image is associated with the playful verbal and visual representation of its content: the formation of the image space on the regional channel is the format of the artistic convention of description and image, the presentation of the content of the concept as a generalized typical.

Findings

The visual and verbal image of the Stavropol Territory is a part of modern cultural consciousness. It is presented in the space of modern regional television journalism as a format for the implementation of the cultural code of a province, the idea of a province as a type of consciousness and way of life, a way to form national identity.

The studied material allows stating that a unique phenomenon has been formed in the format of regional television, which is created in television discourse by verbal and visual means.

The territory, the region is presented as a concept, the nuclear components in the understanding of which are the components of “region, place of residence”, “peace”, “order”, “quiet place”, “natural and economic sustainability”, “space”, “better than the capital region “, “a region with history “, “a region that is part of the world space”, “a unique region”.

The concept of “the time of the life of the region” is correlated and contrasted to the phenomena of “Soviet time”, “Soviet era”, “historical past”, “then and now”.

The “vertical / horizontal” perspective is based on visual means of the formation of the image of the territory. It is also based and on technical means of artistic visual expressiveness and an idealized poeticized image of a given space is formed.

Conclusion

Thus, the projects “I am not a local”, “The way life’s arranged”, “Time to act”, “Made in the Stavropol region”, “Land use right”, “Let's go to a resort” of “Stavropol Television” (“Your TV” company) form an attractive image of the region in the context of image formation. The conceptual content is the idea of ​​the Stavropol Territory as a sustainable, stable region with an ordered way of life, original, on the one hand and unambiguously embedded in the historical and cultural space of the country and the world on the other hand.

References

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Publication Date

29 November 2021

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978-1-80296-116-4

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European Publisher

Volume

117

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Cultural development, technological development, socio-political transformations, globalization

Cite this article as:

Ganzhara, O. A., Lepilkina, O. I., Apolonova, I. D., & Sokolova, L. N. (2021). Image Of Stavropol In Modern Regional Television Journalism: Narrative And Communicative Aspect. In D. K. Bataev, S. A. Gapurov, A. D. Osmaev, V. K. Akaev, L. M. Idigova, M. R. Ovhadov, A. R. Salgiriev, & M. M. Betilmerzaeva (Eds.), Social and Cultural Transformations in The Context of Modern Globalism, vol 117. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 596-603). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.11.78