The specifics of the representation of Russian-German relations in the political discourse of the mass media in the recent period of history (2022-2024); Специфика репрезентации российско-германских отношений в политическом дискурсе массмедиа в новейшем периоде истории (2022-2024 гг.)

For the first time, the article introduces and analyzes material on modern history within the framework of Russian-German political relations with balanced assessments of the public political discourse of the psi-war in Ukraine (2022-2024) based on the identification of linguistic markers with political significance. The research was based on documents introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, representing original publications in the Russian and German mass media during the period under review. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the theoretical development of the public political discourse of Russia and Germany in the recent historical period at the lexical level in order to identify the ethno-sociocultural specifics of interpreting events in the context of the military-political crisis in the countries of the collective West and Russia. The article evaluates the public actions and statements of politicians from both countries who act in conditions of uncertainty, while simultaneously managing socio-economic, political and cultural challenges within the country and in the international arena, which requires the construction of understandable discourse at the verbal and semantic levels for the target audience. For the first time, the specifics of using the latest metaphors of military conflict in the modern media discourse of Russian and German politicians have been revealed based on a comprehensive analysis identifying the main areas of functioning. Excessive compression of means of manipulating public consciousness can lead to the opposite outcome, as opposed to the predicted results, as can be seen from the example of O. Scholz’s strategies in November-December 2024. The meta-level of the discourse of modern politics is concretized with the formulation of post-interpretations of the meanings of basic concepts – democracy, citizens’ freedoms, the essence of the political situation and trends, the interpretation of the historical process, which indicates about the high degree of independence provided by the wide access of the population to various information. The recent historical period, complicated by the confrontation between European countries and Russia, illustrates how the field of politics is trying to manage collective intelligence through social engineering in the media based on well-thought-out strategies for verbalizing the political agenda. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.