Transformation of Communicative and Pragmatic Role of the Headline in the Era of Digital Technologies

the article is designed to study the peculiarities of transformation the communicative and pragmatic role of the headline as a text type in cyberspace. The goal of the research is to analyze the effectiveness of the headlines created by the special generators and determine the new functions of headlines in cyberspace. By employing the method of description and comparative analysis on the basis of a communicative approach we research the phenomenon of promotional headlines modeled on the 4U pattern and created through special generators. It is the promotional headlines that boost the conversion of the companies' websites, draw the audience's attention to the blog, to SMM-posts, the Landing Page and other communication products. The English language and Russian language headline generators served as the research material for the article. The analysis of the generated results allows us to draw the following conclusions: first, the chief function of the headline changes which, aside from traditional communicative and pragmatic function, would increasingly perform a marketing and manipulative function; second, the English language generators are more successful in tackling that goal what is explained by the analytical nature of the English grammar and fixed word order. We are in need of further software products to refine the Russian language headline generators.