Specific features of music reviews in convergent journalism

The article is devoted to the analysis of music reviews as affected by transformation of the genre and its framework in the convergent media environment. The proposed original structure of analysis is developed and reasoned based on the ideas presented in works by Russian and foreign scholars on the specific features of the review as a genre (Y e. A. Nabiyeva, A. A. Tertychnyi, and others), media convergence (H. Jenkins, T. Rogers, and others), interpretation of music images (T. Adorno, Yu. Strakovich, and others), suggestiveness of media texts (A. Beck, D. Burns, J. Baron and others). The analysis structure includes three basic sections: content, environment of publication, communicative tactics; each section is expanded in several criteria grades. The review is considered as an analytical genre that is traditionally based on suggestion as the leading communicative strategy. However, today this genre is transforming intensively in the mutable deinstitutionalized environment of the network mass media. Distortions, which are inevitable in conversion of an artistic image into a text, become especially identifiable in music reviews and increase subjectivity initially typical for this genre. The structure of analysis elaborated in the article engages particularly a classification of heuristics, or cognitive biases, which are considered to be cognitive distortions turning in opinion journalism into the means of expression and suggestion. These means are regarded as the foundation for the genesis of local media myths. The proposed method is tested on the review published at the Colta web portal. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the significance of the research done for some general issues of communication studies, and in particular notes the method’s applicability to the analysis of inner cognitive triggers a person feels exposed to in the network society.