On extremism in media discourse on the North Caucasus region: Linguistic expert review of conflictogenic texts

Abstract

The study is based on the analysis of the results of the regional and federal media space monitoring on the North Caucasus that aims to reveal the information that can provoke the escalation of conflicts and subverting the society. It is based on personal author’s experience in numerous linguistic expert reviews of controversial texts to determine the presence / absence of signs of extremism. The author of the article has long-term experience as a forensic linguist of Advisory council on the application of the Russian Federation regulation about mass media in Directorate of the Federal Service for Supervision in the sphere of communication, information technologies and media in North Caucasus. Nowadays North Caucasus still remains the region with the high conflictogenic potential and located in the area of serious possibility of infowar. For this very reason the issue of media security has a particular dimension here. The problem is particularly up-to-date as there are information torrents in the Internet and the Internet media and social networks have the most deconstructive potential and remain the area of informational provocations and threats to the national security. Recent years in North Caucasus region revealed the growth of expert reviews connected with uncovering of extremism signs in media texts. The experts reveal not only the open calls for inter-ethnic feud, separatism and terrorism but also implicit aggression directed to persons of some nationalities or another social class, veiled propaganda of one nation’s superiority above the other. The linguistic expert review of conflictogenic texts becomes the essential tool of legal regulation of the information torrents. Improving these regulation mechanisms becomes the most important factor for media security in North Caucasus including the safety of information environment itself as well as the social security from information deconstructive influence on psychological and social state of the citizens.