Infographic as a Type of Publicistic Text: Author’s Position

Abstract

Purpose. Revealing the basic ways of creation of publicistic image and defining the means of expression of author’s position in this popular type of media text after the analysis of publications on the web-site “TASS. Infographic”. Results. Publicism as the most demanded type of art in native mass media and developing during three centuries faces now the challenges of the 21st century. Abilities of publicistic perception of reality based upon the dialectic interaction of a fact and an image, a standard and expression, an active dialogue between an author and an addressee which leads to co-creativity, preserved and developed traditions in contemporary media. Evolution of digital and multimedia technologies, informational globalization on all the levels of mass communication, content visualization – all those demanded a search for new formats and genres from the authors of journalistic works. The transformation touched both communication channels and text formation principles with the problem of author being especially acute; his “death” was announced by post-modernists and he seems to have no place in the infinite flow of news generated with the help of new technologies. Remaining a high unit of communication, publicistic text changes under the influence of various tendencies: development of news journalism and personification of media text; visualization and digitalization; convergence and diversification. Infographic became the most convincing and effective response to the challenges of the new age. The main research methods are textual, discursive and cognitive analysis as well as case-method. Conclusion. As the result of the analysis the following conclusion has been drawn: infographic as a convenient format of “package” of a large informational volume is developing towards publicism; the author’s role enhanced in this kind of multimedia text is supported by such tendencies as “visual turn” and personification of journalistic text.