Rudeness or Professional Competence: Negative Communication in the Information and Political Field

Abstract

Introduction. The article presents the results of an empirical study, the main purpose of which was to consider communication between politicians and journalists, which can be characterized as negative. The main objectives of the study were to accumulate a database of typical conflict situations between politicians and journalists, their structural and role analysis; characterization of professional achievements and risks due to negative communicative actions. Methodology and sources. The method of data collection was the case study. Focused on the in-depth study of the uniqueness of the object, in particular, a specific video document (a television story or a television interview), this method uses included observation and subsequent qualitative analysis of a specific situation, which reveals the possibility of identifying communicative scenarios and procedures that are difficult to identify by other methods. The article describes situations of interaction between politicians and journalists, published in the form of a media text and containing various types of conflicts. The conducted research is based on the ideas and positions of practice-oriented theories of social activity, set out in the works of P. Bourdieu, M. Weber, I. Hoffman, M. Castels, J. Habermas. Situational analysis is carried out within the framework of the so-called interpretive sociology, which considers social communication as a constitutive factor of people's behavior and activity. Results and discussion. The selected situations are divided into categories, namely as situations that problematize informational, communicative and socio-role aspects of professional conflict interaction. Each designated category is considered from the point of view of negative communication techniques used by participants to solve their professional tasks.Conclusion. The conceptual conclusion in the context of the research results suggests the total nature of conflicts between government officials and the mass media, which can be interpreted as an everyday reality in which the risk of c