The “Russian threat”, popularized by many foreign media sources, actualized a request to continue the study of the national-civic identity of Russians. The study is based on the communicative behavior of subjects in the media and in the collective cultural memory. The article is dedicated to the detection of the repertoire of identifications, the construction of the discursive identity of Russians by the subjects of communication in the English-language media space. The identification was carried out in the course of the analysis of speech statements, the subjective positions of the communicators, reflecting the formed collective communicative and cultural memory. On the basis of the structural-semiotic approach, the concept of cultural memory by J. and A. Assmann and the Russian cultural model built by M. Bergelson, English-language texts about Russia and Russians were analyzed. The system of text-generating practices and codes of journalistic discourse formed by E.V. Chepkina, the network principle of organization of discursive identity introduced by L.V. Enina, the concept of plotting by V.Ya. Propp and the types of K. Booker's stories were used to detect the identities of Russians in journalistic discourse. Basing their research on the analysis of 22 journalistic stories, the authors come to the following conclusion: domestic and foreign authors use similar facts in their stories about Russians, but in the end they formulate opposite positions and construct different meanings. What is recognized as “a norm” by Russian communicators, causes confusion among foreign authors. This is a reflection of the previously assigned communicative behavior during the Cold War era, low-contextual cultural traditions and the national cultural memory of foreign actors. Most likely, this distinction is now used by political communicators to support intentionally organized “information confrontations”. Foreign journalists admit that one-dimensional “formalized patterns” are not applicable to understanding the identity of Russians. In the analyzed texts, the authors, first of all, translate or search for a “Soviet” and “traditional” cultural model (according to M. Bergelson). Perhaps, this is important for the implementation of the “adjustment” of Russians in the current geopolitical situation, and, moreover, it helps to broadcast what has proved to be a successful “defensive position” for centuries. At the same time, both domestic and foreign journalists identify the character of a Russian as of a “Hero” in the process of “Searching and finding a goal”.

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TV viewers build relationships with the outside world, focusing on the news, which is a television interpretation of reality. Media reality is created on the basis of the information policy of TV channels and determines the agenda of the audience. This paper uses M. McCombs' agenda-setting theory, N. Luhmann's cognitive system communication, W. Lippmann's public opinion concept, J. Baudrillard's simulacrum, J. Fiske's code structure, G. Deborah's Performance Society to study television news of Russian TV channels. Based on the systemic, structural-functional, and semiotic approaches, the application of models of communication, information, the cognitive model of the impact of the media on the mass audience and the model of Russian journalism, a TV news projection model was developed in the context of a television channel's information policy. The model was tested on the basis of analysis of 130 news stories of the final weekly news releases of two federal and two regional Russian TV channels. As a result, we have seen that the media reality is constructed as a result of a selection of facts, modeling of meanings and forms of submission of news. The differences in the themes and forms of the news delivery are due to the territorial affiliation and technological development of the channels. In the production process, the journalist acts as an informer, communicator and manipulator, and the news represent a socially constructed and thoroughly edited reality. The media create a similar media reality, a different level of fiction, intended, albeit for the post-Soviet, but still society of centralized spectacle (according to G. Deborah). Translated meanings correspond to the symbolically-oriented mentality of Russians (according to M. Zagidullina). The media reality formed by the TV channels proves that the domestic journalists follow the special Russian way.

One of the characteristics of the post-literacy era is the emergence of the communication gap between “analogue” and “digital” media generations. Among their distinctive features are not only different media practices, often in mismatched media environments, but also various thematic orientations of generational media communications. Based on the author’s socio-cultural concept of media generations and the use of the Sketch Engine, a modern cloud tool for studying large text collections, thematic generational dominants in the media were identified and the perspectives for intergenerational media communication are formulated.