Abbreviations in Online News Media: Functional and Thematic Aspects

The article is devoted to the analysis of abbreviations used in online news media. The relevance of the study is because the structural, thematic, and functional characteristics of abbreviations are considered in direct connection with the features of online media. The material for the study was 500 abbreviations obtained by continuous sampling from the most cited Russian online news publications. The main research methods were the method of continuous sampling, semantic, functional, and thematic analysis. Based on the already existing thematic classifications of abbreviations, the authors identify nuclear thematic classes related to areas relevant to modern society. As a result of the study it was found out that online news media use abbreviations from such thematic areas as politics, economics and finance, the legal sphere, government bodies of the Russian Federation, the military sphere and the media. In the texts of military subjects the use of digital abbreviations, both in Cyrillic and in Latin, was recorded. The study found out that abbreviations are used in the titles of articles without any explanation of their meaning. The meanings of abbreviations are explained in the texts of the articles. It has been established that the presence of abbreviations in the headings of texts is a consequence of the manifestation of the nominative and compressive functions of abbreviations and is due to the constant change of information in online news media. Functional analysis of abbreviations showed that abbreviations in Internet media texts can be used as a means of manipulation. The inclusion of abbreviations with unclear semantics in the headings and text of Internet news articles, without further interpretation of their meaning, creates an informational background around the event, but does not allow the average recipient, to whom the Internet media is oriented, to fully appreciate the ongoing event.