Headline as a tool to prevent escalation of interethnic conflict (against the background of Annalena Baerbock's visit to Syria)

The paper considers news headlines from popular German media outlets covering the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany to Damascus in early 2025. The relevance of the study is determined by both the high interest in resolving the Syrian crisis and the role of the media in covering the interethnic conflict, namely the role of news headlines, which often deliberately implement a strategy of exaggerating the scale of the conflict and its significance for the addressee. The aim of the work is to conduct a linguosemantic analysis of German-language news headlines from the position of a discursive approach. The study also describes the structural specificity of German media headlines, characterized by a three-component form: headline-announcement, headline-text and subheading. The research material was based on the headlines of such German media outlets as Tagesschau, Süddeutsche Zeitung, ZDF heute, TAZ, Deutschlandfunk, Echo-Online, die Welt, Stern, BR24, etc.The results of the study showed that most of the analyzed headlines showed a shift in semantic emphasis to issues that are more important for the German government: providing financial assistance to Syria, possible cooperation between the new Syrian government and Germany, resolving the migration issue, which is pressing for the imminent return of Syrian refugees living in Germany. By refusing to actualize the semantic concept of “conflict,” the headline acts as a tool for reducing tension and polarization in the German media space, and also prevents the escalation of conflict at the international level, which is largely due to the geopolitical situation and national objectives.

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