MODELING MASS-MEDIA IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND PERCEPTION: THE CASE OF RUSSIA'S IMAGE IN SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

In today's global world an image of a certain country and its society plays a significant role in international relations. The creation of such image depends largely on the attitude of the mass-media and their owners' policy. For the past several decades research is done over many different aspects of the modern communication processes in search for better target audience impact methods and models.The purpose of this paper is to introduce the principal model of forming an inter- country communication within a specific target audience. The research is based on the model of the communication process by H. D. Lasswell and marketing research conducted by authors. The object of the study are residents of Spanish-speaking countries, while the subject is the formation process of perceiving the information about Russia.Research methods were based of questionnaire surveys of the Spanish-speaking region residents, which today are of special interest for Russia. The survey was conducted in the period within January-March 2017. The survey was done through online platform Survio.com among the residents of Latin America countries (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador) and Spain. The specific purpose of the survey was to determine the television news features and the strength of its influence on the local audience.