POLITICAL HUMOR IS AN ACTUAL TECHNOLOGY OF PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION
Currently, humor is increasingly becoming a tool of politics. The purpose of the study is to define political humor as a technology of persuasive communication. Research method - content analysis. On the example of the Russian comedy show "Comedy Club", an analysis of media content was carried out, which made it possible to identify various "manipulative points". According to the results, the most popular topics for jokes are stereotypes about ethnos and peoples, corruption in Russia, the negation of images of famous world leaders, Russia's unfriendly relations with European countries and the United States, and the role of the President of Russia in the world. The study gives reason to talk about the regional nature of political jokes based on the composition of the audience. The success of a joke with a political matrix directly depends on race, nation or gender. Field performances and political jokes reflect the place where the shooting takes place, and correlate with the current political and news agenda. The political jokes used in the Comedy Club latently integrate into society specific political ideas related to the official position of the current government. The practical significance of the study is the potential for using political humor as a communication tool to form public opinion. The humor used in politics and about politicians optimizes the process of influencing electoral moods, and also appears in the form of a social indicator that reflects the mood of society, which makes it popular in political discourse.