Impact of new media discourse on young people (the case of TikTok)[Воздействующий потенциал дискурса «новых медиа» в молодежной среде (на примере социальной сети TikTok)]

The article discusses the fundamental problem of suggestive influence of the social networks’ discourse on young people. Extensive digitalization of contemporary media space, as well as the emergence of fundamentally new hybrid forms of media discourse, have led to a serious transformation of political communication. At the same time, political content in some Russian and international social networks is becoming an effective tool for promotion of certain ideological attitudes. Speech manipulation as a manifestation of the dissonance of the linguistic ecology of media discourse and an effective weapon of information wars lies at the heart of the post-truth phenomenon having an undoubted destructive potential from the point of view of public safety. The empirical base of the research on the influence of the "new media" discourse is the video materials of TikTok service and the related content of YouTube platform, as well as users' comments. The method of sociolinguistic interpretation was used in this study, which makes it possible to identify the correlation between linguistic and extralinguistic data, the functional load of the phenomena under study, as well as the potential of their influence on a certain social group considering the data obtained. Interpretation of the research material is carried out from the perspective of the cognitive-semiotic approach: videos on a certain political topic are referred to as creolized polycode texts. As a result of the analysis, the main factors that led to the active use of the platform for political propaganda were identified. Some technical aspects of the functioning of this social network, which have a significant impact on the use of certain manipulative tactics in the creation of politically oriented content, are examined. We analyze precedent socio-political situations (cases) that have caused a significant response from the youth audience of TikTok users in Russia and abroad. The analysis carried out from the perspective of the linguistic ecology has shown that creolized texts with a dominant acoustic code, i.e. created using music representing protest, have the greatest manipulative potential. Taking into account the principle of functioning of TikTok, it has been suggested that the “for you” page greatly contributes to the effectiveness of social media propaganda among the young people: the network forms certain behavioral patterns of youth according to the principle of simulation. Further study of destructive communication phenomena that lead to the marginalization of the cultural identity of the nation and the disruption of the harmonious coexistence of social groups and institutions can contribute to the adoption of effective measures in the field of social management, including the legal sphere.