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The article is aimed at studying the conflict between liberal and religious values in the Dagestani media discourse. The socio-political prerequisites for the emergence of the conflicting discursive practice are identified; concepts and strategies of cultural polemics, linguistic methods of constructing religious or political value systems, methods of constructing opportunistic images and ethically marked simulacra are analyzed. The empirical base of the study is over 100 publication from federal and regional media. The selection was determined by the keywords and thematic relevance. The content analysis showed that factual information, characters and cited comments were often repeated. Further, the content of ten publications from federal and ten from regional media was studied. The publications selected for the analysis use a wide variety of methods to construct conflict-generating situations, have a significant number of quoted comments and the maximum depth of the characters' discursive confrontation. The publications were analyzed according to the critical discourse analysis model. As a result of the study, the directions and consequences of the development of a conflict-generating media discourse were determined. In the publications of the federal media, the discursive conflict forms a stable sphere of concepts, generates relevant emotions and types of communication. Supporters of conservative norms refer to the totalitarian ethical discourse, in which the propaganda orientation, manipulative communication strategies, the suggestive format of communicative interaction play the role of discourse markers. Journalistic comments present an objective analysis of the situation, often with the use of irony. Irony-caused transformations of concepts lead to increased verbal aggression, enhance the discursive conflict and equalize opponents in their attempt to promote their point of view. The hypertext shell of the publications exacerbates the conflict by context inclusion. As a result, a simulacrum of a national community is formed in the discourse, as opposed to civilizational and world integration cultural processes. In the regional segment, two logics of the discursive conflict development are distinguished; they are based on two different strategies. The strategy of carnivalization changes value-based and cultural orientations, devalues personal freedom, and hinders the development of cultural integration. The purport of this strategy is the ideologization of religious values, their subordination to political force. The mythologization strategy creates a sacred space within media discourse; this space is necessary for the formation of a religiously conditioned worldview. In this case, religious values subjugate political and social interests, become the purpose of discursive processes' development. © 2021 Tomsk State University. All rights reserved.