Visual Discourses of Social Policy in TV Practice

The article presents the personification and visualization practice of social content discourses on the example of Russian Federation pension legislation reform TV coverage in 2018. Visual images are considered as the most effective semantic components of media messages. The personalization trend in modern television content contributes to the wide range of those who act as experts, and the specificity of social issues makes it possible also to use individual stories as arguments. The visualized experience illustrates the arguments in support of the reform, it creates a positive emotional background for the process of political discussions, and promotes appropriate patterns of social behavior.

The purpose of the study was: to trace in what visual images the pension reform was presented on Russian TV in 2018 and to determine the discursiveness of coverage in the process of adopting of amendments in the pension legislation of the Russian Federation.

Protection and necessity discourse is the main one, since it exists in the overwhelming majority of news stories, however, it is visually uninformative, is not associated with the content of the message, and is significant due to constantly presented status actors. The discourse is visually presented with by general and collective views, close-ups of opinion leaders, static, repeated, similar pictures.

The discourse of opportunities and prospects, being additional, appears in a small number of news stories, however it is personified, associated with the content, visually bears the main sense of messages.

The discourse is represented by reportage footage and dynamic views, diversity of images and pictures; there are individual stories and positive characters, heroes are at the workplace in the process of activity. They are all professional, enthusiastic, energetic, healthy, optimistic and promising, that is, able-bodied and ready to work. These characteristics corresponded to the theses that were used in the argument about the need to adopt amendments to the pension legislation.