Political Myths in the Armenian Media Environment

Key words: political myths, media, new reality, manipulation, social media, social-psychological environment, influence, public opinion Nowadays, modern mass media have changed their functions, turning into a unique socio-psychological environment of myth-making, wherein a new reality is constructed or reinterpreted. This article is an attempt to study new possibilities of mass media. Our goal is to reveal the connection between the media and myths, highlighting how they shape public opinion. The goal of the research is to identify the features of mythmaking in mass media and their potential ramifications for how the public forms opinions based on the modern real-world examples. Methods of combining scientific materials, historiography, and comparison were used in the paper. The conducted research shows and proves the fact that mass media, using manipulative rhetoric, technologies of influence on consciousness, construct a special virtual reality, that often does not correspond to objective social reality. From this perspective mass media use myths as tools. Having a complex and multi-layered structure, mythologizing, creates new challenges and forces media representatives to develop a new strategy, as a result of which sufficient skills for the effective use of myths along with the new methods and mechanisms of resistance will be developed. This is the reason why the structure, content and function of modern socio-political and cultural myths become the object of study by researchers. This fact highlights the article’s relevance to the current events.