Communicative aggressions of the 21st century: Definition and analysis of the prerequisites

Abstract

Aggression is a realized intention of the subject to inflict maximum damage to his / her enemy / opponent in the economic, military, cultural, ideological, or moral spheres. Communicative aggression is the deposition of ideological, cultural and moral damage to an opponent through all media channels. Communicative aggressions are also characterized by the maturing readiness of the participants to transfer aggression from the symbolic to physical space, when the causes of aggressive behavior in mass communications are no longer separated by their carriers from the fanatical upholding of the “symbol of faith”. The implicitly formed targets of communicative aggression predetermine the activation of the Internet users for the mass-scale of information interaction in the society and beyond. The article considers the prerequisites of communicative aggressions and the relevance of their study. The author selects the facts of the emergence of aggressive reactions of a certain part of Russian society that are caused by the conflicts around the “symbols of faith” as a direct object of the analysis. The hierarchy of the communicative aggressions structure is presented in the fact that their ideological, artistic and publicist justification precedes the practice of wide application in the press, and this practice, in turn, affects the flow of aggressive consciousness in the network environment and implementation of aggressions in the physical space. The state of communicative aggression is characterized by an expanding practice of their display, technological equipment and spontaneity of involving different social forces. The article analyzes the facts of the origin of the prerequisites for the aggressive state of the media environment. It is based on the results of a scientific discussion at the international forum «Media in the modern world. 56th St. Petersburg Readings» (13–14 April 2017).