Types of spatial semantics in the ‘Cyberspace’ frame model (based on media texts in Russian)

The aim of the study is to identify the cognitive models and language means used to express locative semantics in the ‘Cyberspace’ frame involving the texts of Russian-language media. The study is based on the hypothesis that global news stories concerning events in cyberspace often receive a specific framing in the Russian media discourse due to both socio-cultural singularity and the peculiarities of spatial semantics expression in the Russian language. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that cyberspace representation in the mass media in Russian has not previously been the object of linguistic research, although new lexical units describing phenomena from the cybertechnology industry are being actively included both in the media discourse and in the common Russian language and require a systematic description. As a result of the study, the process of adapting the global news frame in the Russian-language media has been described for the first time taking into account lexical and word-formation models and linguocultural aspects. It has been found that the semantics of cyberspace is actualised within the framework of three thematic clusters: real, associative-background and conceptual locations described using borrowed vocabulary, authorial neologisms, metaphorisation and homonymy.