The Image of Russia in Italian Expats\' Blogs and Social Media

This paper is devoted to the study of the image of Russia in Italian expats' blogs and social media. The objective of the work is to reveal and form the ideas of Italian society about Russia, Russian people and Russian culture. Historically, Russia and Italy have had friendly and strong relations. In connection with the modern changes in the world and to some extent directly in the economic relations between our countries, it seems relevant to address the origins of the relationship between the two peoples. The relevance of the work is to overcome the existing gap on the basis of a deeper understanding of the characteristics of the cultures. The first chapter reveals the structure, reasons for the popularity and role of social networks and blogs in forming public opinion, as well as the main provisions of the theory of intercultural communication, and determines the place of Russia and Italy in it. In the second chapter, we analyzed the image of Russia in the Italian media on the basis of selected articles of Italian newspapers and publications on various topics. The third chapter presents a detailed analysis of articles and videos from the Italian expats' blogs on topics related to Russia and Russian people, culture and traditions, and traces the main changes in attitude to the country after the immigration.