Visualisation of digital media discourses: a case study of Russian language esports media.

The paper examines the ongoing trend of the extensive visualisation of digital media discourses through an investigation of Russian language esports media discourses. The authors suggest that esports discourses are typical examples of digimodern and hypermodern discourses in which the visual mode with its various elements and genres is central and dominant in serving the interactional purpose of esports discourse. The analysis focuses on the complexity of the discourse of the esports community and its role as a media communication community on the global intercultural communication scene. The interdisciplinary research methodology draws on the resources of several academic disciplines, primarily those of linguistics, semiotics, communication and media studies, and cognitive sciences. The case study explores the dominant role and the functions of the visual mode in Russian language esports discourses on portals such as cybersport.ru and cyber.sports.ru using materials relating to the esports teams Virtus.Pro and Newbee. The discourse and content analysis reveals that the growing visualisation of esports discourse has emphasised the importance of visual elements such as photos, graphics, infographics, videos, mesh banners, screenshots, quotations, memes, contests and CTA (Call to Action) buttons as the overriding means of interaction. The corpus used in this research is comprised of materials from the cybersports.ru (729 texts about Virtus.Pro Dota2 and 57 texts about Newbee Dota2) and cyber.sports.ru (1774 texts about Vitrus.Pro and 219 texts about Newbee) online portals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]