Experience shows that narratives are gradually becoming the main tool for organizing public discourse, gaining substantial significance for all political actors maneuvering in the space of power. This raises a research problem: how do the mechanisms of public promotion of political stories change the communicative environment in the space of power, while fitting into the general political course of the state and influencing the goals of competing actors, thereby transforming society’s reaction to the rivalry of political meanings and values embedded in stories.

One way to solve this problem is to consider the role of narratives in the area of public policy, where the latter is understood as a type of power space that reflects the competition of rival forces and their targeted projects. This perspective, which combines the established interpretations of state policies in the scientific literature with the targeted use of narratives, allows us to clarify the political functionality of this cognitive construct that influences public opinion and political change.

Methodologically, the solution to this problem involves the use of the principles of non-classical and non-classical methodologies with their nomothetic strategies, which make it possible to link the deployment of political narratives with public policy actors, as well as structures and mechanisms of political and administrative regulation. This allows us to correctly use the vocabulary of the targeted use of narratives, describing the relevant actions of structures and institutions through the prism of constructivist, communicative and narrative approaches that reveal the process of assimilation of target invectives by people and taking into account the transversal connections of public and latent actors, administrative and political methods of political design.

“Sovereignty” as a unit of language is rapidly beginning to fill a variety of semantic niches, while appearing in qualitatively different semantic statuses. Traditionally, the terminology of sovereignty is linked to its state, people’s and national versions, with the dichotomy of supremacy and independence, with the widespread taxonomy of S. Krasner (1) internal sovereignty of public authority in interaction with society; 2) international sovereignty as an international legal principle; 3) “Westphalian” sovereignty as equality of players in international politics; 4) sovereignty of interdependence as the ability of the state to control transboundary flows). In the current public information space, nominations related to sovereignty (more broadly – the properties of sovereignty) penetrate into a wide variety of subject areas. In the so- called “extralegal” meanings and phrases – with regard to political, cultural, technological, epistemological, virtual objects – in the form of concepts, or (in contrast to terms in the strict sense) – formations with open possibilities of multiple interpretations, with expressed subjective principles. Here, new contour schemes, conceptual frames, semantic formations emerge. Numerous derivatives begin to grow from the common root prototype. Sovereignty in political-linguistic communication ceases to be perceived as something self-evident, self-referential. Concepts appearing in abundance (in contrast to legally strict categories) appear in various semantic positions, taking on reversible subject-predicate roles. Along with political and legal terms, there appear concepts-experiences, concepts-events, conventionally loaded symbols and, finally, emblems of ideological dispositions. This process of proliferation of semantic nuances and variants of word usage is marked by its stages and occurs in various modes. Semantic derivation is organized according to the rules of regularity, logically consistently, and generates hierarchical structures of derivatives in their linearity. In another version, new concepts can appear outside of a certain usage. Rather, they are characterized by sporadicity, kaleidoscopic situationality, are used outside of the generally accepted meaning, multiply rhizomatically, penetrating into contexts that seem to be unrelated to each other. Such a mode of semantic derivation is characterized as occasional, or conditioned by individual cases. Depending on this, concepts of sovereignty serve diverse purposes.

The concept of “Eurasia” has gained significant prominence in Russian political discourse in recent years, yet its geographical boundaries and ideological content remain ambiguous. This study explores the transformation of representations of “Eurasia” and the region-building narratives within the discourse of Vladimir Putin from 2011 to 2024. Framed by interpretivist and poststructuralist paradigms, the study introduces an innovative narrative approach to examining the discursive construction of regions. Drawing on J. Wertsch’s concept of the “narrative template” and the hermeneutic theory of narrative, the author conducted a three-stage narrative analysis of key speeches by Putin related to the theme of “Eurasia” over the past 14 years. First, the article analyzes specific narratives on “Eurasia” articulated by Putin across various contexts. Second, the author identifies recurring themes and narrative elements. Finally, the study reconstructs narrative templates.

The findings reveal that the concept of “Eurasia” in Putin’s discourse operates on three levels with different boundaries: as a state (Russia), as a region (the post- Soviet space), and as the whole continent (“Greater Eurasia”). At the same time, two narrative templates can be identified: functional-economic and civilizational-sovereign. Within these templates, various storylines are constructed, based on different visions of the future, which reveals the dual logic of Putin’s imagination regarding “Eurasia”.

Currently, the “populist moment” (C. Mouffe) coincided with the fourth wave of the postwar far right, which increased potential of their coalition through the mainstreaming (C. Mudde). In Italy, examples of such parties were the Lega (League) and the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). The paper deals with the discourse of far-right populist leaders before and after coming to power. In order to determine the winning discourse formula of Meloni and Salvini the discursive configurations of the frames of populism and nativism and their transformation over time are identified. To this end, it was necessary to critically examine the approaches to populism and nativism; to make a content analysis of the frames of populism and nativism in the speeches of Salvini and Meloni and to carry out a discourse analysis of the construction and representation of “the people” and “others”. The analysis revealed different configurations of the frames of populism and nativism and different degrees of radicalization of right-wing populist discourse. In Salvini’s discourse the study detected the transformation of the image of the “people” (from the Padan people to the Italian nation), which was contrasted with the “elite” represented by European bureaucrats (previously political managers in Rome) and the group of “others” – Muslim immigrants arriving primarily from Asian and African countries. In Meloni’s discourse, the emphasis from symbolic nativism was redirected to economic nativism and welfare chauvinism; the “fight” against “strangers” was replaced by a proactive position of redistributing goods and supporting law and order. The paper concludes that Meloni’s formula for success was the gradual deradicalization of far-right discourse and the exclusion of non-core and controversial issues.

The article examines the words and meanings that form the basis of Türkiye’s foreign policy discourse, what significance in the international arena is growing year after year. Discourse is an essential part of any state’s politics and, at the same time, a significant indicator of dominant sentiments in society. Given Russia’s shift towards the East and its versatile partnership with Türkiye, studying its foreign policy narratives becomes particularly important in terms of strategic planning and bilateral relations prospects. The authors consider the “open” and “closed” discourses of official Ankara and identify the main verbal messages, or “total myths”, that the power elite embeds in the country’s foreign policy. A content analysis of Turkish President R.T. Erdoğan’s public speeches for 2024 is attempted to analyze the frequency and context of key words and foreign policy narratives such as: “leader”, “justice”, “hub” and “World is bigger than five”. The article reveals that the keyword that stands out in 2024 was “justice” that became the dominant narrative in most of Erdoğan’s speeches. The correlation between declared words and narratives and their corresponding semantic load has been also studied. The author concludes that almost all narratives are endowed with several meanings, and the narrative of “justice” is a collective one. However, Türkiye’s interpretation of some words and concepts may significantly differ from generally accepted norms or those of other societies. Therefore, it seems that not all of these narratives can compete with the discursive elements of the external environment.

The myth of American exceptionalism, although criticized and deconstructed, including by academic circles, continues to play an important role in the U.S. political process, which makes it important to identify the mechanisms of its reproduction. The present study attempts to contribute to the discussion in this problem area by assessing what political symbols are used today to maintain the aforementioned myth. In particular, it is based on the beliefs concerning U.S. statehood, U.S. values and U.S. power. Turning to the analysis of cinema as a form of public discourse, the authors chose Civil War feature film as a case for the study. The film centers on the collapse of the U.S. statehood and power against the backdrop of an internal armed conflict, which makes the feature a valuable empirical material. The authors undertake the task of identifying the symbols that are involved in reproduction of the myth of U.S. exceptionalism within the selected case-study. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is constructivism, and the main applied method is qualitative content-analysis. The study has shown that by demonstrating the collapse of the symbols of U.S. statehood and foundations of economic, value-based and military and political power of the United States, the idea of the inevitability and necessity of maintaining the belief in American exceptionalism is transmitted; its abandonment is equal to the end of the nation itself in its current form.

The article provides a systematization of political scandals in contempo- rary Russia. The study embraces modern approaches to the interpretation of trends in the personification of power expressing that the personal qualities of political leaders, such as charisma, sincerity and the ability to empathize, play a central role in shaping the trust and loyalty of citizens. The authors state that in the context of media-centered politics, the image of a politician in the media has become a key marker of his/her legitimacy. Since scandals in politics provide a high level of involvement and interest of the audience, they are one of the most striking and influential manifestations of the mediatization of a political figure.

The source base of the study was news information from 14 key online publications of modern Russia for the period from 07/13/2023 to 07/13/2024. Using a large language model (LLM) and quantitative data analysis methods, the article systematizes po- litical scandals by analyzing their chronological and geographical distribution, intensity, and the involvement of various officials. It is noted that corruption scandals occupy a central place in the media agenda of contemporary Russia. Attention is drawn to the fact that media personalities such as journalists, influencers, and political commentators play an important role in the aggregation and dissemination of scandals, enhancing their impact on public opinion and political stability. Key aggregators of political scandals in modern Russia are identified. The study emphasizes that political scandals are a critical mecha- nism through which society evaluates its leaders, which makes them an important element of political life in today’s Russia.

The ontological security of a macro-political community is understood as the community’s secure sense of being-in-the-world, expressed in a predictable social environment and in the stability of the representation of the Self in the past, present, and future. The mechanism of routinization is usually postulated by theorists as the repetition of certain social actions designed to bracket out the sense of collective anxiety and thereby become ontologically secure. The present article represents one of the first attempts to conceptualize the notions of “routinization” and “routine” in the theory of ontological security in international relations. The author demonstrates that routine is a kind of convention “established” through routinization. To unveil the practice of routinization, the author has chosen the victimhood as a routine for the Serbian macro-political community. The relevance of the category is substantiated by the existence and results of studies focusing on the victimhood in Serbian politics. The routinization of victimhood was examined on two cases: narratives on the World War II and the Yugoslav wars in contemporary Serbia. Victim representations of WWII are explicitly routinized through increased attention to civilian casualties (“Jasenovac Martyrs” or victims of Nazi terror). Victimhood in the Yugoslav wars is manifested both through the commemorations of traumatic episodes of national biography (Operation “Storm”, NATO bombings) and through the contestation of the fact of involvement in mass crimes (“genocide in Srebrenica”) that can “blur” the routinization of victimhood. Victimhood in WWII narrative is a consensus representation against the background of the existence of competing historical narratives. In relation to the Yugoslav Wars, the routinization of victimhood constitutes the main way in which the mechanism of “competition for victim status” is implemented. Hence, the routinization of victimhood contributes to ontological security seeking.

Political bias of Large Language Models has frequently become a topic for scientific investigation. Most of the researchers tend to compete in inventing more original ways of identifying bias rather than posing new research questions related to it besides “Is this model politically biased?” and “What is the character of its bias?”. To properly evaluate possible influence of the models on the political reality and finding answers to some questions regarding regulation of Artificial Intelligence it is essential to be able to study the linkage between the bias and its cause. With regard to how the question of dependence between the identified bias and its possible source is ad- dressed I have grouped the approaches to studying political bias of LLMs into three clusters: approaches that use political orientation surveys and questionnaires, studies devoted to investigating different ways of creating prompts and models’ responses and their interdependence, and interdisciplinary research in which manipulations with possible sources of LLMs’ political bias is conducted. The latter research trajectory seems to be the most promising one, despite its current unpopularity. Yet, it is impossible to advance in this trajectory without it being complemented by further developments in the approaches in the first two clusters. In studying the issue of LLM bias, not only computer science specialists but also philosophers and political scientists and other experts in the social sciences should be involved. Political biases at the intersection of LLM and other generative AI technologies – in particular, technologies for generating images based on prompts composed in natural language, recommendation algorithms, etc. – also require separate research. From a regulatory standpoint, further progress in mitigating, eradicating, and controlling political biases in algorithmic tools will require providing researchers with greater access to existing and actively used technologies. Furthermore, it appears necessary to establish specialized institutions dedicated to research on AI at the intersection of computer science, ethics, the philosophy of mind, neurocognitive and social sciences.

Sovereignty remains today a key political and legal principle of modern states. This article examines the development and features of the concept of sovereignty in the post-colonial Mexican state (1820–1830s). The work applies the methods of the British historian Quentin Skinner. The author analyzes the forms of the word “sovereignty” and its synonyms. The main source is the periodical press of that time, i.e. five newspapers that reflected both liberal and conservative sentiments. The research focuses on two northeastern Mexican states, Veracruz and Tamaulipas, demonstrating the traits of using the concept in port and border areas.

The main impetus for the formation of a new political language was the War of Independence of the Spanish colonies in America (1810–1826). Language has become an important tool for Mexicans to interpret the new political reality. The author concludes that in the 1820s and 1830s sovereignty was understood as independence in internal and external affairs, as well as the rule and legitimacy of the law. At the same time, liberals and conservatives had different interpretations of the source of sovereignty: if the former emphasized the supremacy of the nation's political power, the latter noted its divine origin. The combination of local (colonial) and European interpretations of the concept became a feature of Mexican discourse during this period.