Media Triggers Shaping English-Language Media Discourse on War: Linguistic, Journalistic, and Legal Aspects
Abstract
Purpose. To provide a philosophical and communicative understanding of media triggers as key elements in shaping English-language media discourse on war, taking into account linguistic, journalistic, and legal aspects, as well as to identify their role in constructing the moral, ethical, and normative frameworks for the perception of war in the global information space.
Method. To based on a combination of critical discourse analysis, pragmatic and linguistic analysis of media texts, elements of the philosophy of language and communication, as well as ethical and legal analysis of journalistic practices. The empirical basis is a qualitative analysis of the English-language report in The Guardian (“I wondered if I would be a coward or not”: five Ukrainian men on how war has changed them, February 5, 2026), which allows us to trace the functioning of media triggers at the lexical, syntactic, stylistic, communicative, and normative levels.
Findings. To show that media triggers act as interdiscursive nodes that not only describe military events but also actively shape the ontological and ethical model of war. It has been found that linguistic triggers (lexemes with high normative load, euphemisms, modal markers), journalistic triggers (editorial decisions, genre and narrative strategies), and legal triggers (the use of terms from international humanitarian law) interact in creating a framework of legitimacy, moral evaluation, and interpretation of war in the English-language media space. It has been proven that media triggers determine which events, subjects, and meanings become recognizable, acceptable, and meaningful to a global audience.
Theoretical implications. To lies in the conceptualization of media triggers as a philosophical and interdisciplinary category of media discourse that combines linguistic, communicative, ethical, and legal dimensions. The proposed approach broadens the understanding of the role of media language in shaping the collective understanding of war and clarifies the limits of journalistic responsibility in the context of global conflicts.
Paper type. Theoretical and analytical, with elements of qualitative discourse analysis of media text.
Downloads
References
Danyliuk, I., & Bohucharova, O. (2023). The Russia–Ukraine war in Western media: A psycholinguistic modelling of the ‘hybrid’ phase. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 10(2), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2023.10.2.dan
Demchuk, P., & Barmak, M. (2024). The Russia–Ukraine war in American media. Grail of Science, 41, 342–347. https://doi.org/10.36074/grail-of-science.05.07.2024.055
Geiko, S., Heiko, T., Lauta, O., & Prytyka, O. (2023). The role of media discourse in coverage of military conflicts. Humanities Studios: Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, 11(4), 190–195. https://doi.org/10.31548/hspedagog14(4).2023.190-195
Kovalova, T., Tokar, Y., & Kolodych, Y. (2025). Emotional triggers in Ukrainian media discourse during wartime: Challenges and influence risks (on the example of Sumy regional edition “Kordon.Media”). Obrii Drukarstva, 1(17), 233–244. https://doi.org/10.20535/2522-1078.2025.1(17).334089
Markiv, O., & Markiv, I. (2025). Military intelligence and media: The boundary between secret and public during war. Social Development and Security, 15(5), 114–123. https://doi.org/10.33445/sds.2025.15.5.9
Novytskyi, O. (2021). Concepts of priming and media trigger application in political life. Political Life, 69–73. https://doi.org/10.31558/2519-2949.2020.4.9
Putra, E., & Gulo, I. (2025). Framing war through words: A critical discourse analysis of the Russia–Ukraine conflict in the New York Times. Linguistics and Literature Journal, 6(1), 50–55. https://doi.org/10.33365/linguistics_and_literature.v6i2.604
Rahma Wardani, E., & Pradipta, B. (2025). A critical discourse analysis of war-related terms in BBC and CNN of Gaza Israel: NOW Corpus (2024). Proceeding of Conference on Literature, Linguistic, and Cultural Studies, 4(1), 307–319. https://doi.org/10.30996/uncollcs.v4i1.6082
Serafin, A. (2025). Euphemization of war in news media discourse (based on Ukrainian and English materials). In Language Space of the Modern World: Proceedings of the IX All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference of Students, Postgraduates, and Young Researchers (pp. 299–303). Kyiv: National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”. https://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/handle/123456789/36780
Varlamova, A. (2024). War in Ukraine through the eyes of the foreign press. Studia Linguistica, 24, 9–16. https://doi.org/10.17721/StudLing2024.24.9-16
Yaroshenko, O. (2025). Academic and media narratives about Russia’s war against Ukraine. Scientific Notes of the Institute of Journalism, 86(1), 132–145. https://doi.org/10.17721/2522-1272.2025.86.13
Zarivna, O., Markiv, O., Markiv, I., & Chebotaev, V. (2025). Media analytics in the context of interdisciplinary understanding: Integration of legal, social science, and English-language competencies. Cultural Almanac, 3, 417–423. https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2025.3.51
Abstract views: 86 PDF Downloads: 67
Copyright (c) 2026 Олександра Марків, Оксана Зарівна, Іван Марків
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors agree with the following conditions:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication (Download agreement) with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors have the right to complete individual additional agreements for the non-exclusive spreading of the journal’s published version of the work (for example, to post work in the electronic repository of the institution or to publish it as part of a monograph), with the reference to the first publication of the work in this journal.
3. Journal’s politics allows and encourages the placement on the Internet (for example, in the repositories of institutions, personal websites, SSRN, ResearchGate, MPRA, SSOAR, etc.) manuscript of the work by the authors, before and during the process of viewing it by this journal, because it can lead to a productive research discussion and positively affect the efficiency and dynamics of citing the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
