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A SOCIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE CONDTRUCTIVIST POTENTIAL OF THE MASS MEDIA
I.V. Trotsuk, E.Yu. Gruznova
Sociology Chair Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
Miklukho-Maklaya str., 10/2, Moscow, Russia, 117198
The phenomenon of constructing social problems by the mass media is a very significant and symbolic feature of contemporary society. The article systematizes the basic characteristics of the so called "constructivist approach" to the analysis of the functioning of the mass media that was developed in the 1970s as an alternative interpretation of 'public institutions', primarily, of the mass media, their role in the actualization of social problems and assigning this status to the events in the world around. On the basis of a bright example of the approach under consideration — the agenda-setting theory — the authors make an assessment of the constructivist potential of the print mass media in contemporary Russian society.
Key words: mass media, social problem, constructionism, agenda-setting theory, media-hype, content analysis
The mass media are a powerful social institution representing the main distinctive feature of contemporary society. They play a key role in the majority of social processes and seem to be the basic agent in the circulation of information. The strengthening of the mass media's social role largely results from weaker traditional forms of communication (family, kin, religious, communal, etc.) — this situation expands the mass media's manipulative capabilities to the extent that they often become the only source of information for the person. This primarily concerns information about the part of social reality that lies beyond the individual's direct reach — and here one is inclined and compelled to rely on news reports. It is through this obvious monopoly in the sphere of information today that the mass media are able not only to inform but also to create meanings and images, form opinions and ideas of the world in the mass consciousness, consequently, provoking certain actions, i.e. changing the world with the help of simple words and images skillfully combined together. Thus, the mass media have become a powerful management tool in the hands of those who gain control over them — politicians, businessmen, journalists or civil society institutions. All this leads to the conclusion that in the contemporary society the mass media, possessing an extremely complex structure and a very specific logic of functioning and control, fulfill rather a socially constructivist than informational function, which makes it possible to change and manipulate public opinion, as well as to bring about certain socio-economic consequences.
The very appearance of the phenomenon of constructing social problems has become possible in the second half of the twentieth century due to the following conditions: the fundamental change in the understanding of social problems (the possibility to design them artificially was admitted); a stable institutional framework of the mass media was developed; a sufficient number of empirical studies that revealed the main characteristics of the mass media, the mechanisms and effects on the audience, as well as patterns of perceiving mass media reports, was conducted.
Until the mid-twentieth century, social problems were interpreted either as widespread negative phenomena (proved with the statistical data) or as the result of interaction between different social groups (implementing some forms of social control). These interpretations are obviously objective, for they emphasize the need for objective conditions and contradictions for social problems to emerge. Since the mid-twentieth century social problems have been regarded mostly as the result of mass media construction, i.e. ascribing this "status" to any events: the public response, invoked by the mass media reports, can dramatically exceed the true problematic value of the events presented in the media and become nearly apocalyptic. This phenomenon is perfectly shown and explained in the famous "Thomas theorem" stated by W. Thomas in 1928: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" [6. P. 200].
The key ideas of the constructivist approach were formulated by M. Spector and J. Kitsuse in the 1970's [11. P. 65]: social problems are not objective conditions but the rhetoric, i.e. individuals' and groups' expression of discontent and making statements and demands considering certain alleged conditions. In other words, social problems are constructed by people who draw public attention to the anticipated conditions and demand them to be changed.
The agenda-setting theory suggested in the second half of the 1960's by M. McCombs and D. Shaw is rightfully considered the most theoretically developed scheme of studying the constructivist impact of the mass media. This theory describes the mass media's influence as resulting in a situation when the individuals consider some events and phenomena as being more important than the others. Thus, those who control the media decide what should be told to the audience — these "facts" form the agenda of the media for a certain period of time. During the implementation of the agenda, a high-level correspondence can be traced between how much attention and in what form is given to the problem in media reports and how important the public considers it. To establish an agenda one should understand the relationship between the ways of covering the problem in the media and the identification of its importance and significance in the public consciousness. So the agenda-setting theory does not suggest that the mass media should dictate to the people what to think and what to do about any problem — it states that the mass media dictate to the people what they should think about and what to consider to be worth taking care of [4. P. 400—401].
The effect of agenda setting is rather superficial and does not imply that the audience would acquire a complete, comprehensive view of acute social problems. The mass media are only capable of drawing public attention to certain questions and convincing the audience that they do exist and are very important. But the inherent limitations of human attention lead to the fact that at every moment of time the audience can focus only on one or at best on several problems, so to transfer the audience's attention to a new topic the mass media need to distract it from the previous subjects of interest — such a loss and transfer of public interest is called "a phenomenon of exchange" of attention between problems [1. P. 165].
To demonstrate the connection between the content of news and the audience's interest priorities, G. Zucker divided all social problems into "obtrusive" and "unobtrusive": people face the former in everyday life directly and permanently, i.e. their status as social problems is clear due to one's personal experience (unemployment,
inflation); the latter are more difficult to identify as problems for people who have no such personal experience and know about these social problems solely through the media. This division has detected "a strong positive correlation regarding unobtrusive issues and a weak, mostly negative correlation in the case of obtrusive issues" [9. P. 68]. Thus, the mass media can easily manipulate with unobtrusive issues, but they cannot hide the obtrusive problems that the audience has already discovered through its personal experience.
A series of experiments showed that the news presentation affects the agenda setting (for instance, the plotline determines the attribution of responsibility). The studies revealed two forms of organizing the news: the episodic plot involves a description of single events, i.e. social problems are shown on concrete examples; the thematic plot places social problems in an abstract context pretending to provide an analytic description of causes and consequences. Thus, the news content sets a system of priorities for the audience, while the news design determines the subject of responsibility: within the thematic representation of social problems people tend to lay responsibility on society and the state; in the episodic representation the audience tends to blame particular individuals ("it's their fault") [2].
The varied importance of social problems in the agenda is not the result of someone's thoughtful decisions — rather the outcome of everyday news production comprising several basic components: the inner structure of a particular medium (organizational and technical) and the influence of external social structures and institutions. The conception of "public arenas" explains the impact of technical and technological factors on the news production: many situations pretend to obtain the status of social problems, but only few achieve that status, thus causing public concern, while other threatening events remain "invisible". S. Hilgartner and Ch. Bosk [12. P. 18—53] identify a social problem as a situation "labeled" as a social problem (publicly declared dangerous) and its scale is determined by the extent of public awareness. So we can consider as public arenas the executive and legislative branches of power, mass media, judicial authorities, cinema, books, religious communities and professional organizations — it is here that discussion, selection, formulation, dramatization, designing and presentation of social problems take place.
Similarly to all public arenas, the mass media's ability to construct social problems in a certain period of time is quite limited. The indicator of such ability for the television is the length of broadcasting time, for the press — the number of pages and columns. Social problems have to compete for a place in the information space: the smaller the ability of the media, the greater the competition between social problems. Therefore, the growing importance of one social problem is usually accompanied by a decline of interest in several others. In other words, if a problem disappeared from the information space it does not mean that the situation has improved — one problem was simply replaced by another. To compete successfully the problem must meet several criteria [12. P. 18—53]: dramatic character — the mass media prefer dramatic situations, this is why conflicting groups often use strategies of de-dramatization (denying the very existence of the problem declared by one's rival or announce it natural, unavoidable and not deserving attention in the light of other more important and dangerous issues); originality — excessive saturation of the information space with news reports about
only one social problem may automatically lead to its de-dramatization; cultural preferences — problems relevant to the common cultural preferences are more competitive; political preferences — most public arenas are strongly influenced by the dominant political and economic groups, so social problems reflecting their interests have greater chances of success.
Considering the organizational structure of the mass media, it should be noted that we cannot identify the only agent of media production: there are a lot of people making decisions as to what events deserve the title of a social problem (reporters, operators, editors, commercial directors, mass media owners). Their motivation can be dual [13]: 1) they may desire to represent the reality objectively, to realize the ideas ofjournal-ists' freedom, social responsibility, education and self-expression; 2) they may seek personal benefits from the mass media as a business project or indirect benefits (advertising of goods and services, self-promotion of public people, promotion of a law, buying shares, etc.). Both motives as well as their realization depend on the external agents determining the functioning of the mass media: the state, the legal system, the media market, the ideological environment, the living standards, the control exercised by industrial and financial groups, the level of the mass media professionalism and competition, the level of technological development, the civil society state, etc.
Furthermore, the presentation of social problems in the mass media obeys a certain inner logic which was named "the phenomenon of news waves" [5. P. 508—530]: the first news report is based on reality, the next ones stem from the previous messages. Periodically, the mass media generate surprisingly huge news waves in response to a specific event: the topic becomes the focus of media interest for a long time; more and more reporters "hunt" for more and new details of the event; new sensational revelations appear in the media every day (even the most trivial details may become the news of the day); due to the amount and design of the news the audience gets an impression that the situation has suddenly moved to a critical stage. Thus, the phenomenon of news waves has the following features [5. P. 509—510]: 1) the number of news reports does not correspond to the importance and significance of the event (it becomes an important issue only because the media present it as demanding increased attention); 2) news reports develop regardless of the actual state of affairs, for the news waves are the result of journalistic work where every subsequent report is an echo of the previous one rather than a reflection of reality; 3) the number of incidents displayed in the media and the real frequency of those do not match — every new incident that fits into the theme attracts more and more attention creating the impression of a terrible disaster (a "key event" temporarily changes the criteria for news selection — reports tend to emphasize similar and thematically close happenings); 4) news reports construct a sequence of events that does not reflect reality.
Sometimes news waves are denoted by the term «media-hype», for the media encourage public interest and exaggerate the severity of the events to the level of "social risk": a risk gets blown up to the extent that causes secondary social, political and economic consequences, such as imposition of sanctions, curfews, etc. We can identify a media-hype only if the situation meets certain requirements: the sudden rise of a large news wave that slowly fades away; the presence of a key event — the starting point of a news wave that attracts more attention than any other comparable event; the
creation of the event instead of reporting it (for instance, by reporting similar events or by binding them with the key event, etc.); an active interaction of the mass media with different social actors, which manifests itself in the increasing number of social actions and reactions provoked by the news wave.
It should be emphasized that the agenda-setting theory did not assume any political-technological content at the beginning: its authors, M. McCombs and D. Shaw, and their followers tried to describe the mass media's role in the construction of socio-political problems and in the development of the population's political culture without raising the question of its purposeful influence. This assumption was justified by the following reasons [8]: the scientists pursued solely research objectives — to understand why most sociologists were confident of the minimal impact of the mass media, although it was obviously high; the political pluralism in the United States (diverse and multi-level systems of influence, tough competition between different mass media) cast doubt in the intended effect on the mass consciousness (implementation of only one will); the political and public reality of the United States was characterized by a lack of sharp social and political polarization (radical views remained marginal, extremist views were rejected, a stable consensus on basic values was evident). Therefore, the mass media in the United States, while setting a new agenda, represent the reality with a minor redesign of its elements not affecting its underlying structures. So here the social construction of reality by the mass media is a permanent and never-ending process in a stable environment focusing on reproduction of the usual instead of creating something new. Accordingly, attempts to misuse one's powers or financial authority in setting a news agenda can lead to undesirable consequences (judicial and other forms of responsibility) for the initiators of such actions due to the strong restrictive rules, competing political forces and mass media, as well as a powerful social control. All this led to the solely scientific development of the agenda-setting theory in the United States and to the lack of interest in its political-technological potential.
The situation in Russia in the 1990's was quite different — there was a lack of stability and a sharp political polarization. This transitional period was characterized by lack of basic social consensus and by promotion of radical views in the public debates [10] that led to the purposeful construction of social reality models (aimed at satisfying "a customer's" targets — those of the government, political parties, private industrial and financial groups and big business) with the help of the mass media creating a corresponding agenda. During this period a number of successful general strategies of constructing social problems were developed [3. P. 81—93].
1. Identifying the different within the familiar: anything new and unusual attracts the attention of the audience that experiences boredom and apathy as regards the familiar social problems. But the new should not be entirely new: the audience does not like anything unclear to threaten the clarity of their picture of the world. This strategy can be implemented in two ways: 1) by constructing a new problem on the model of the already existing one (the problems of equal rights of women, gays and people with disabilities in the United States were correlated with the problem of equal rights for Afro-Americans); 2) by expanding a category denoting an already well-known problem (the labor of illegal immigrants and forced prostitution were identified as "slavery").
2. Identifying personal reasons of the problem: the audience is more interested to know about particular people than about a social situation.
3. Identifying a widespread condition: "the game in social problems is based on the law of large numbers: the larger the number of victims of a particular condition, the more likely will the audience assess this condition as a social problem" [3. P. 84]. Thus, the most successful strategy of constructing the drug addiction problem is to represent as its victims not only the drug addicts but their families, "taxpayers" and the society as a whole, because of the economic burden created by monitoring the drug addiction situation. Emphasizing the number of "victims" helps not only to categorize the conditions as a social problem but to convince the audience that the problem is quite close (for example, the mass media represent HIV and bankruptcy as unscrupulous in choosing victims, so that anyone can get infected or become homeless);
4. Demonstrating casualties among the middle class.
5. Designing "terrible" consequences, representing the problem in question as a "crisis", "catastrophe" (for example, the problem of drunk driving presupposes emphasizing its most serious consequences, such as death in a road accident).
6. Personalizing the problem: the audience wants to know not only how many people are affected by the condition, but also the details of this effect from personal stories. Quantitative data provide logical arguments as to why the condition should be taken seriously, while personal stories affect the feelings of the audience (for example, in 1985, the reports about the illness and death of R. Hudson, a famous American actor, personalized the problem of AIDS for the American society) [3. P. 87].
7. Constructing the simplicity: the complexity of real life is ignored and the problems are constructed in an easy-to-understand format. One way to implement this strategy is to design an image of a condition as producing only undesirable, "terrible" consequences; another way is to emphasize the "innocence" of the condition's victims (underlining that they are not to blame).
8. Constructing problems at the appropriate time: one can organize a big and successful protest march, but it would not receive an adequate coverage in the mass media if at exactly the same time there happened to be a huge hurricane or another event that diverted the journalists' attention. This strategy presupposes, for example, that winter is a more suitable time for constructing the problem of "homelessness" than summer.
9. The construction of social problems is more successful when relevant events are reported: for example, the wreck of a tanker and the resulting oil spillage are an advantageous background for speaking about environmental threats.
10. Constructing social problems and taking into account the entertaining character of most mass media messages.
Let us consider the mechanism of setting the agenda and the related phenomenon of "a news wave" using the example of the information campaign that highlighted the alleged "pandemic" of swine flu in Russia. Given its relative shortness and the fact that many analysts repeatedly named this "pandemic" an artificial commercial campaign, we can trace the mechanisms of its construction as a global social problem aimed to achieve quite obvious commercial purposes. The situation with swine flu was really perceived by people as a significant social problem which was evidenced by the sur-
vey (based on the semantic differential) conducted by the authors in December 2009. The questionnaire contained eight urgent social problems — criminality, terrorism, corruption, immigration (explained as a population inflow from other regions and countries), infectious diseases (like swine flu), poverty, the demographic crisis and unemployment. It was a pilot study (we aimed at evaluating the heuristic potential of the method), an exploratory research (we wanted to understand the public opinion orientations): thirty respondents were interviewed — boys and girls of 20—24, undergraduates or recent graduates.
Twelve scales were used in the survey: seven classical scales designed by Ch. Os-good (meaningful-meaningless, old-new, fair-unfair, weak-strong, soft-solid, femalemale, slow-fast), a scale adapted from the research of V.F. Petrenko (monotonous-dramatic), and four own scales (deliberate-accidental, light-heavy, fading-blooming, cold-hot). According to the results of the factor analysis the scales formed three basic factors — Strength, Activity and Evaluation — and the distance between objects in the semantic space was calculated (Fig. 1, 2, 3).
♦ terrorism ■ corruption ▲ immigration X criminality
X infectious diseases • poverty + demographic crisis unemployment
Fig. 1. Strength and Activity factors
Fig. 2. Strength and Evaluation factors
Evaluation
+
0,25
0,20
0,15
0,10
0,05 0,00
♦
X
X
-0,20
-0,15
-0,10
-0,05 -0,05 0,00 0,05
0,10 0,15
Activity
-0,10 -0,15 -0,20
♦ terrorism
■ corruption
▲ immigration X criminality
+ demographic crisis unemployment
Si infectious diseases ♦ poverty
Fig. 3. Evaluation and Activity factors
The results of the survey showed that the problem of swine flu (marked on the graph as "infectious diseases") within the space of Strength and Evaluation factors is close to such serious and long existing social problems as the demographic crisis and immigration. It must be taken into account that we interviewed young, socially active, intelligent and broad-minded respondents; therefore, if we had interviewed other so-cio-demographic categories, the estimates of swine flu "pandemic" as a significant social problem would have been even more persistent.
Thus we have sufficient grounds to consider the situation with swine flu as a perfect example of constructing social problems by the mass media, and we can look at it from two angles: firstly, we can identify the main strategies used by the mass media to cover the topic of swine flu and the corresponding information campaign as a deliberate technology to form the public opinion; secondly, we can consider the given example as an implementation of the news waves phenomenon according to which the mass media fell victim to its own technologies, for each subsequent media message was determined by the logic of the previous messages. To achieve the set goals we conducted the content analysis of relevant press reports for the year (April 2009 — April 2010): the first reports of swine flu in Mexico appeared in April 2009, the discussions of this topic had not abated until the spring of 2010, when the question of producing a huge amount of vaccine against the AH1N1 virus was raised.
We chose four daily newspapers — the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" (KP), "Moskov-sky Komsomolets" (MK), "Kommersant" and "RBC daily" — on the following grounds: the MK and KP are leaders in the daily newspapers rankings in Moscow [14] (the average numbers of every issue readers among the whole readership of the newspapers are 7,8% and 5,4% respectively); the circulation of the MK is 0,32—0,9 million copies daily, of the KP — 0,64—2,27 million; the "Kommersant" and "RBC daily" were included in the sample as their readership has a higher social status (we can analyze the similarities and differences of messages designed for different audiences); the circulation of the "Kommersant" and "RBC daily" is 0,12—0,135 and 0,08 million copies respectively, besides, the "RBC daily" is a leader of Internet projects devoted to business issues and the "Kommersant" is a leader of the "Top-20 most cited editions on TV" [15], also leading in the number of references on the radio.
The articles on the official sites of the newspapers mentioned above were selected on a very simple basis — the mere mention of swine flu. As a result, we selected 360 articles: in "RBC daily" — 27, in "Kommersant" — 29, in KP — 146, in MK —158. They were analyzed in the context of searching for answers to the following questions: To what extent does the swine flu "news wave" meet the criteria of media-hype? What are the implications of this "news wave" for the construction of the social problem of the swine flu pandemic? Does the constructed social problem differ from scientific interpretations of the scope and seriousness of the epidemic of swine flu?
First, we counted the number of relevant articles in every newspaper for each month of the period under study (Table 1, Fig. 4). It should be noted that the number of articles on swine flu in the MK and KP is incomparably greater than in the "Kommersant" and "RBC daily", probably, due to the fact that the audiences of the latter newspapers possess higher levels of education and living standards, therefore, they are less prone to panic and less interested in the information on swine flu.
Table 1
The number of articles on swine flu in four newspapers
Months Kommersant RBC daily MK KP Total
April 2009 3 3 10 7 23
May 2009 6 1 13 8 28
June 2009 1 1 14 6 22
July 2009 2 1 16 7 26
August 2009 3 2 18 8 31
September 2009 2 1 14 14 31
October 2009 6 5 26 23 60
November 2009 5 10 33 70 118
December 2009 1 1 8 2 12
January 2010 0 2 4 1 8
February 2010 0 0 1 0 1
March 2010 0 0 1 0 1
Total 29 27 158 146 360
Fig. 4. The distribution of articles by months
To identify what part of the news messages was devoted to the coverage of real events and what part represented the artificially constructed themes, the following classification was built (Tables 2, 3; Fig. 5):
Table 2
Categories and subcategories of the content analysis
Incident-related news Thematic news
Key event Similar incidents Media-generated news Source-generated news
Actual events Isolated incidents Incidents compared to the key event Opinions Backgrounds Marginal references Actions Reactions
Table 3
Distribution of news by categories
Months Key event Similar incidents Media-generated news Source-generated news
April 2009 3 0 15 5
May 2009 7 3 15 3
June 2009 3 5 14 1
July 2009 6 9 6 5
August 2009 4 5 17 4
September 2009 2 6 13 9
October 2009 10 5 32 13
November 2009 18 11 66 22
December 2009 2 1 9 1
January 2010 0 1 6 1
February 2010 0 0 1 0
March 2010 0 0 1 0
Fig. 5. News wave on swine flu
The obtained data allow us to answer the questions given above.
1. The information campaign on the epidemic of swine flu satisfies all the media-hype criteria: it began suddenly and quickly acquired a large scale (all the newspapers showed interest in the topic in similar dynamics); the news wave is characterized by the obvious key events (the first cases of contracting the disease and the first deaths
in Mexico in April 2009; the first cases of swine flu among Russian tourists returning from vacations abroad in July 2009 and the peak of the news wave in September — November 2009, when the first deaths were registered); from the very first day the mass media did not just inform about events but created a tense emotional background of the theme, reporting on a lot of unconfirmed cases of swine flu (later they turned out to be just a common cold or acute respiratory viral infection) including cases among famous people (politicians, singers, show business stars) and their relatives; the press published a lot of incompetent and hysterical opinions on the theme; as a result the information campaign quickly provoked a public outcry.
2. The information campaign had serious social consequences: swine flu became widely accepted as a social problem demanding huge material, human and institutional resources to be solved. Thus, the government established a Commission to combat swine flu, the Ministry of health and social development issued interim methodological recommendations to treat and prevent the AH1N1 flu. The Russian population in Moscow and other cities began purchasing an incredible amount of anti-flu drugs and individual protection means (disposable masks). There was an obvious anxiety and panic in the community [16]: the mass opinion polls showed that in November 2009 the number of people greatly scared of swine flu increased from 14% to 27% compared to September; 45% of Russian respondents believed that swine flu was much more dangerous than an ordinary seasonal influenza due to the more severe clinical course of the disease, more difficult treatment and higher probability of serious complications; 70% reported taking various measures to protect themselves and their relatives (which led to the acute shortage of disposable masks and anti-flu medicines in pharmacies). Thereafter the news wave caused serious economic consequences: after the first reports on the virus, stock prices of all companies except for the pharmaceutical industry dropped sharply — the latter, on the contrary, sold practically all the supplies of anti-flu drugs and received high profits. Thus, the impact of the constructed social problem turned out to be quite real and in full compliance with the famous "Thomas theorem".
3. The scientific research data on the extent and severity of swine flu absolutely did not justify the activity and emotionality of its discussion and presentation in the mass media [17]: at the beginning of December 2009, 8.768 people died of swine flu, while in the United States alone the ordinary seasonal flu annually kills 36.000 people and all over the world this number amounts to half a million. In Russia, in the ten months under consideration 23,7 million people contracted flu or acute respiratory viral infections — among them 480 people died, the share of AH1N1 was only 0,1% [18].
We can conclude that the "pandemic" swine flu is a vivid example of constructing social problems. Here the printed media used a number of strategies: identifying the different within the familiar — the problem of swine flu was constructed on the example of the past pandemic of avian flu (the articles suggested a lot of parallels between the two viruses in strength, speed and complexity of treatment); personalization of the problem — most articles told about concrete people who had fallen ill with a detailed description of events preceding the disease; constructing a widespread condition — the articles systematically published data on the number of deaths and infections which later proved not to be connected with swine flu, and at the same time the authors tended to "forget" to mention any comparative statistics about the victims of swine flu and the
ordinary seasonal flu; constructing the problem at the appropriate time — the peak of the news wave came in November, a month preceding the season of flu and acute respiratory viral infections.
In other words, the contemporary mass media construct rather than represent social reality: they construct social problems with such a degree of realism that they cause real mass behavioral consequences. This process can be both spontaneous and purposeful (for example, to distract attention from real problems). Therefore, the mass media products result from the interaction between different social actors competing for the distribution of different interpretations of reality. The mass media "reflect" reality only when there are single and verifiable events, the rest of mass communications is a process of collective creation of meanings which begins with selecting events and formats of their coverage and ends with providing judgments the audience acquires during and after the consumption of mass media products. Due to the mass media's agenda individuals get a joint picture of the socio-political reality and afterwards perceive it as a true social world.
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СОЦИОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ ОЦЕНКА КОНСТРУКТИВИСТСКОГО ПОТЕНЦИАЛА СРЕДСТВ МАССОВОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ
И.В. Троцук, Е.Ю. Грузнова
Кафедра социологии Российский университет дружбы народов ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 10/2, Москва, Россия, 117198
Феномен конструирования социальных проблем средствами массовой коммуникации — важное и символичное для современного общества явление. Статья систематизирует базовые характеристики конструктивистского подхода к анализу функционирования средств массовой коммуникации, разработанного в 1970-е гг. как альтернативный взгляд на роль публичных социальных институтов, в первую очередь средств массовой коммуникации в актуализации социальных проблем и придании событиям окружающей действительности данного статуса. На примере яркого образца рассматриваемого подхода — теории «повестки дня» — авторы дают оценку конструктивистскому потенциалу печатных средств массовой информации в современном российском обществе.
Ключевые слова: средства массовой коммуникации, социальная проблема, конструктивизм, теория «повестки дня», новостная волна, контент-анализ.
