Portrait of a Politician in modern Russian Media: An emerging genre?

Based on the material of a conglomerate of texts devoted to the reconstruction of the image of a modern politician, the author tried to characterize genre processes in journalism of the early 21st century. The material of the article was mainly texts for 2016–2024, published in popular print editions and their electronic versions and allowing us to come to a number of conclusions about the specifics of genre formation. The author believes that there is no single, invariant genre form of political portrait in journalism: information about politics is presented in the form of genre modifications relevant to the journalistic style of speech. The repertoire of genre modifications is constantly expanding by including speech genres correlated with spoken speech (rumors, tales, hoaxes, etc.). The degree of genre diffusion, interweaving and interaction in the text of various genre forms is increasing. The political portrait acquires a discursive (expanded in time) character; the dynamism and evaluative bipolarity of the textual fabric are enhanced. The discreteness of texts increases through their creolization, the degree of polystilism and intertextuality of the political portrait also increases, which contributes to the inclusion of the image of a politician created by publicists in the general mental space and in the collective cultural memory. These processes, from the author’s point of view, allow us to talk about the permanent development of the genre of political portrait, its dynamism, the ability to adapt to extralinguistic factors of text formation and change in accordance with the requirements of the time.