Currently, the active introduction of digital technologies into the field of political communication has led to a transformation of electoral discourse structure. Big data analysis techniques are widely used at the preparation stage to identify the target electorate; at the communication stage, machine learning technology helps to pinpoint fakes and monitor the media, and neural networks create campaign content. Digital technologies enable actors in the political process to communicate with the electorate through channels independent of mainstream traditional media, densify the information environment and contribute to the creation of a unique digital scenography that produces a powerful emotional impact on the electorate. The article examines the most active period of the election campaign, when the candidate is in direct contact with the electorate, and digital technologies enhance the degree of his/her influence on potential voters. It is shown that the choice of digital technologies depends, to a large extent, on the political culture of the country. The cases of election campaigns in the USA, France, India and South Korea are considered.

The article focuses on the conceptualization of social media as a social institution. The article addresses the current issues and prospects for the institutionalization of social media in the context of the contemporary media space transformation and the evolution of the digital society. The authors analyze the establishment of social media as a social institution from the perspectives of political, sociological, and media philosophical approaches. Employing a meta-analysis of current scientific literature, the authors delineate the principal issues associated with the institutionalization of social media. The authors highlight the role of the state and communication with the audience in the institutionalization of social media. The effectiveness of legal frameworks regulating government activity in the digital sphere is posited, drawing on examples of social media use within public administration across different nations. The social influence problems of intra-audience communication on social media are raised, as well as aspects of disinformation, post-truth, and the impact of narratives on collective identity. The article also explores conceptual approaches to the transformation of the digital space and the role of information technology in development of social media.

The author notes, referring to the opinion of a number of well-known researchers, a significant level of interpenetration of physical and digital reality, as well as the intensity of their interaction. New forms of digital inequality are emerging, which coexist alongside and are interconnected with its traditional manifestations. The concepts of digital divides of the first, second and third levels are not replaced by the concepts of digital inequality, but continue to be used along with them, maintaining their attractiveness. The author believes that one of the most heuristic methodologies for studying digital inequality and digital divides is proposed in the approach of P. Bourdieu, who studied inequality through the prism of forms of capital and the concept of habitus. The empirical basis is grounded on the study Me and My Big Data1, which takes a multidimensional approach to digital inequality in constructing ideal-typical models of digital users. This study reveals the digital divide both through the unequal level of knowledge and skills of UK users, and through the social benefits they receive in social interaction.

The present-day Russian system of university social and humanitarian education was formed against the background of the collapse of the USSR. The ideologized system of Marxist-Leninist disciplines was replaced by a Western-oriented liberal system in which philosophy began to play the role of a translator of Western philosophical ideas and values. For more than thirty years, the liberal Russian state refused to control the activities of the professional philosophical community and the content of philosophical knowledge disseminated in universities. With the beginning of the special military operation, the situation began to change, and the state, through presidential decrees, set before the professional community the task of protecting the traditional spiritual and moral values of Russian society. This task is directly related to the task of decolonizing public consciousness and returning to the grandiose philosophical experience accumulated by Russian culture.

The article is devoted to the issues of communication of brands with the audience and identifies the trends in technologies for creating communication messages. The empirical data is received based on the review of 71 advertising projects – winners of ADCR Awards 2023 – Russian professional competition in the field of creativity, design, and advertising, established in 2004. Of these, 26 communication solutions are labeled as created on the basis of gamification – an approach characteristic of computer games used in software tools and non-game content to attract audiences and increase their involvement. The author makes an attempt to classify gamified solutions based on technological solutions in order to identify the main trends in the organization of communication messages in the advertising industry. The review showed that advertising practitioners are adopting different techniques: AR technology, MR reality technology, modeling a special event as a format for creating a viral environment, and the active introduction of artificial intelligence into advertising practice. It is concluded that gamification techniques are aimed at generating creative solutions that are similar in values to target audiences of brands.

The paper examines the influence technics on human conscience, the dialectic of interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence within the system: information technologies –mentality and psychology of society – control over people’s minds and technologies. The emphasis is on the essence of the concept of mentality, mental identity, the role of informal institutions, and the speed of changes in biological and information time. The author represents a conceptual view on the problem of the role of artificial intelligence in the development of mental management as a humanitarian problem in the logic of the development of ideas and approaches previously considered by the author in the following works: The Future of Russia: transition to a new formation; Strategy of Reforms in Russia: from leader to leader; and in the context of the idea of social justice and economic growth, discussed at the First Russian Economic Forum.

The paper is based on an analysis of media and is devoted to the problem of preserving the purity of the Russian language in connection with the preservation of identity and the cultivation of patriotism. The authors identify the connection between the formation and development of language as a factor in the consolidation of the country’s multinational population with cultural and political processes, educational and cultural policies, as well as processes of ensuring internal and external security. The authors draw attention to the low efficiency of mechanisms and tools for implementing state language policy, and formulate proposals for the preservation and development of the Russian language as a factor. The used methods include participant and non-participant observation, document analysis and content analysis. The publication is of interest to cultural, political scientists and to all readers involved into Russian language, history and culture.

The importance of a doctor’s personal brand in medical marketing lies in its ability to create an additional competitive advantage when promoting the entire medical institution. A strong personal brand of a doctor attracts new patients and retains old ones, which ultimately contributes to the growth of income of the entire medical institution. Patients in the modern information society can easily obtain information about a particular medical professional, his professional successes and treatment results. The role of a doctor’s personal brand that is based on trust, professionalism, recognition and respect, is seriously increasing. The authors of the article represent the results of their own research on consumers of medical services and identify the influence of the doctor’s personal brand on establishing and maintaining communication with the patient.

There is little theoretical justification for integrated management in municipalities. This especially concerns the need to formulate the concept and use of digital technologies for municipalities at various levels. This implies the need to take into account the core values characteristic of public organizations, in particular public associations and individuals involved in this process. The problem of digitalization has been considered in many areas, but at the municipal level there are only the results of fragmentary descriptions, and, most often, only at the level of converting previously created content into digital format. The authors show various approaches to the use of digital technologies in management: e-government, digital city, smart city, digital projects in municipalities, digitalization of administration, information and communication technologies in state and municipal government. This study examines a rarely considered aspect, namely the transformation of digital technologies in the management process at the city level, as well as its impact on urban infrastructure assets. Besides, the study attempts to methodize the objects of the municipal structure in a digital format and to attract the attention of the practical world to the value that a complex development system integrated into digital space can bring to the system.

The field of journalism in Russia is undergoing continuous transformation influenced by the intricate political and legal landscape, as well as the dynamic advancements in technology and resulting social shifts. These changes disrupt established professional norms, roles, values, and practices within the journalism community. These changes disrupt established professional norms, roles, values, and practices within the journalism community. The discussion surrounding professional journalistic standards is not only prompted by the aforementioned factors but also by the gradual integration of AI technologies into everyday journalistic practices. Against this background, the author conducted a study based on 11 semi-structured interviews with the representatives of the professional community and devoted to the issues of professional identity of journalists, the boundaries of the profession and the transformation of professional standards. The study showed that despite some discrepancies in viewpoints, professionals emphasize the paramount importance of clearly defined “rules of engagement” that are comprehensible to both the journalism community and its audience. While core values remain largely unchanged, practical aspects such as formatting requirements and acceptable journalistic practices demonstrate adaptability to shifting socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts. Notably, values are consistent across traditional and new media platforms, whereas technical and practical standards exhibit greater flexibility and responsiveness to evolving norms. Ultimately, the specific standards adopted by individual editorial teams are contingent upon the media format and niche they occupy within the industry.

The article is devoted professional values of public relations specialists in the context of the formation and management of public opinion in the context of current social challenges. The media space of media specialists is associated with certain professional risks. The high level of media activity of students increases the level of such risks. Negative consequences are associated with the possible occurrence of professional deformation, violation of a specialist’s psycho-emotional state of a (professional burnout, etc.), the destabilization of his system of value orientations. The analysis of theoretical and empirical material, including the results of the author’s research of future public relations specialists’ media literacy, indicates that there are certain concerns about the understanding and formation of professional value among future media specialists. Public relations specialists are directly involved in the formation and filling of the information space and its agenda. They have a significant impact on the mood in society and social reality, on the preferences and views of the target audience. The results of the study allow the authors to assert that in modern conditions it is necessary to create a system for the development of professional values of public relations specialists, taking into account the new risks of modern social reality. Such system should be aimed at creating a safe information space, protected from fake and deliberately false information, negative manipulation of public consciousness, destabilization of political, social, economic and other processes and the values of citizens.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the position of museum discourse in the communicative system of modern Russia and, more broadly, in the national security system. In the context of geopolitical challenges and the development of political discourse in the semantics of the pervasive cancel culture in the format of applying new ethics as a symbolic act of oblivion, the national museum discourse acquires a particular significance. The “memory war”, the purpose of which is to delegitimize the previous discourse using techniques of rewriting, ignoring, neutralizing, and denying, actualizes the study of museum discourse in the context of national security strategy. Considering museum discourse as an imperative to strengthen national security, the authors identify a separate research area of socio–humanitarian sciences – “memory studies”, and introduce into the scientific categorical apparatus rather interrelated concepts of political discourse: “identity politics”, “memory politics” and “memorial politics”. The authors implement a strategy for analyzing the communicative effects of ensuring cultural sovereignty and overcoming the cancel culture, and conclude that museum discourse and the discourse of memory in the logic of cognitive and structural aspects represent mental constructs with the potential for dialogism and conversion (including the conversion of cultural capital into political capital), and determine the multilevel combinatorics of various communicative effects in the development of national identity. Hence, the authors propose to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of the state policy of memory – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to the modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

The article analyzes the specifics of the Chinese national brand as a tool of cultural diplomacy. The concept of “soft power” is considered, which is part of the narrative about the cumulative power of states and the revival of the Chinese nation and occupies one of the significant places in modern Chinese politics. One of the tools of “soft power” is cultural diplomacy – a branch of public diplomacy based on the exchange of ideas, information, systems, values, beliefs, traditions and other aspects of culture to promote mutual understanding between people. The activities that are used to implement cultural diplomacy are given. The main goal of China’s “soft power” concept is to achieve the correct perception of national ideals by the world community. It is noted that Chinese “soft power” differs from the classical Western concept and is purely culture-centric, interpreted as a combination of Confucian political and social values, Chinese art and language, folk customs and traditions. China is working to globally scale its nation brand, which is based on the concept of nationalism, drawing on the country’s cultural capital. The specifics of the national brand from the perspective of macroeconomics and its structural elements are considered: exports, domestic and foreign government policies, population, culture and heritage, tourism and investment. It is noted that when developing a brand and international communications, the Chinese government actively uses the historical context as a tool of cultural propaganda. The features of the national image are identified, designed to form a positive attitude of society towards the country, contributing to increased trust in it. The objectives and instruments of China’s policy to form and maintain its own image in the international arena are given.

The article is aimed at describing the current state and role in modern culture of the main traditional mechanisms for transmitting culture, preserving cultural memory and passing it on to next generations (customs, rituals, traditions, religion, myth, folklore, art, education, family). The research was carried out on the basis of systemic, activity-based, integration, historical approaches, methods of historical analysis, structural-functional, and axiological approach. It has been revealed that traditional mechanisms of cultural transmission continue to play a vital role in the modern cultural space. At the same time, their transformation, observed at the present time, reflects objective trends in the development of society and civilization as a whole, their accelerated development. Culture exists as a combination of traditional and innovative; it cannot be static and is constantly evolving. The problem is the reaction of a number of representatives of the scientific community to the modification of cultural instruments. The dynamics of social and cultural development in recent decades have become more obvious than before, which has caused a number of researchers to desire to go back and revive the traditional mechanisms of cultural transmission. The unity of traditional and innovative mechanisms for transmitting culture is a ground for its positive development.