Manipulative use of political headlines in western and Russian online sources

Abstract

The research identifies the amount of headline/article discrepancies in the corpora of western (the USA, the UK) and Russian online articles on sensitive political topics. A quarter of the western headlines and nearly half of the Russian headlines distort the publications they introduce. Language means and manipulative strategies employed by different sides vary considerably. Extensive use of expressive language and style variation are seen as leading causes of distortions in the western corpus. The rich imagery used by the authors (metaphors and metonymy in particular) forms emotional implicatures that affect the reader’s perception of the issue. In contrast, information substitution, subjective modality and selective citations are identified as major causes of distortions in the Russian corpus. Contributors to Russian news outlets rely on general rather than language manipulation strategies, including frequent use of logical fallacies and wrong generalizations. These techniques establish false logical sequences and wrong causative implicatures that compromise objective reporting. The underlying motives of the journalists’ creating false emotional and causative implicatures in the headlines lies beyond the scope of the study; however, it is assumed that intentional change of the information introduced by the headline could be viewed as a covert misinformation attempt.