Территориальные споры в Южно-Китайском море в фокусе медиагеографии

South China Sea Territorial Disputes in the Focus of Media Geography

The article presents the results of a media geographic study of the global Internet audience's behavior in relation to the conflict in the South China Sea. The study is based on the application of media geography methods in political science, which focus on the study of quantitative parameters (big data) characterizing the behavior of Internet audiences in various geographic locations in the context of international relations. The author adapts the theoretical and methodological tools of media geography to the analysis of the media and mental spaces of the conflict and analyzes Google Trends statistics within the framework of a spatial-temporal coordinate system. Main research methods: rank analysis, content analysis of mass media texts and documents from open sources, political media metrics. The author reveals correlations between the media space of the conflict, mediated by national media of different countries, and the mental space manifested and recorded in Internet users' requests. The author concludes that ideas about territorial disputes in the South China Sea in the minds of people in different countries of the world are formed under the influence of the media and the cultural and historical stereotypes and political narratives they broadcast, which is manifested in user requests and user reactions on the network. The interest of Internet users in this topic was registered in 110 geographic locations, the greatest activity was shown by residents of the countries involved in the conflict (China, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines), as well as other states of the Southeast Asian Region (Cambodia, Singapore, Myanmar). The obtained results can become the basis for predicting the vectors of behavior development of residents and political elites of the states involved in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.