CC BY
74
- KyMbmypoMoeun -
MEDIA CULTURE AS A PHENOMENON OF THE MODERN INFORMATION SOCIETY
N.Yu. Buryak, Candidate of Cultural Studies, Associate Professor Academy of Marketing and Social and Information Technologies - IMSIT (Russia, Krasnodar)
DOI:10.24412/2500-1000-2021-5-3-177-180
Abstract. The article presents contemporary concepts of media culture and describes its information and communication functions in modern mass media and internet discourse. The aim of the study is to define the role of media culture as a phenomenon of information-dependent society. The relevance lies in the active and aggressive influence of media and cultural processes on the development of contemporary society, which are at odds with the poor research, since many of these processes are still at a nascent and developmental stage. The article also draws conclusions and generalisations about the negative and positive characteristics of media culture, which promotes mainly mass culture products that have no aesthetic value, but which do benefit from their relaxing powers.
Keywords: the information age, media culture, internet discourse, public communications, media production, mass media, media text, relaxation, mass culture, visualisation, information revolution, communication theory, inculturisation.
The development of information technologies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has contributed not only to the creation of fundamentally new ways of storing, seeking and presenting information, but also to the emergence of a new cultural and linguistic environment, a new linguistic reality that is forming and rapidly developing with the expansion of the scope of modern communications: The Internet, mobile and satellite communications [1].
The distribution of information flows has accelerated immensely and the consumption of internet products has expanded considerably; new internet platforms, interfaces and social networks appear almost every year, while old ones (such as Odnoklassniki and VKontakte) are continually modernised, introducing updates to media presentation formats - mainly by intensifying the visualisation of content.
The concept of the information society emerged in the second half of the last century, and the term came into the scientific public light in the 1970s.
Information society is usually understood as a society generated by the development and convergence of information and communication innovations and technologies, in which "knowledge, obtained through easy
access to information and the ability to work with it, becomes the main condition for the well-being of every person and every state, <...> in which information exchange will have no time, space or political boundaries" [2; 9].
Moreover, modern information society, oriented towards a democratic model of development, is increasingly acquiring the status of a society of active public communications, by which, following M.A. Shishkina, we mean communications aimed at "transmitting information of public interest while making it public" [4;74].
Undoubtedly, the phenomenon of communication is among the most significant symbols of the 21st century, symbols of the rapprochement of people, their values and cultures. It is no coincidence that the founder of the French PR school, J. Sedel, predicted at the end of the twentieth century that "communication will be the first business of the third millennium" [5; 327].
Media culture and communication theory interact closely with each other, as they are phenomena of the information society with its increased intercultural connections and the possibilities of collecting, processing, storing and transmitting information, as well as simplified access to it. In this context, we can observe the increasing impact of information on
- KyRbmy^oRo^^n -
the development of various spheres of human activity. New formats of communication interaction between social communicants in the Internet as a second reality have emerged and are rapidly developing.
The rapid development of the Internet and the increase in the number of active users, especially among young people, immerses us in a new linguistic reality and promotes the spread of mass culture, whose creators and consumers are sometimes is one and the same person.
In this way, the culture replicated and promoted by modern mass media has been transformed into a different quality and has acquired the definition of media culture.
This phenomenon of the information age was discussed in the last third of the twentieth century by representatives of various humanities sciences: culturologists, musicologists, linguists, philosophers and others. Information culture, or, as it is more commonly referred to, media culture, is now a certain measure of the levels of development of a personality, who is able to adequately perceive, critically comprehend and analyze media text, act as a media creator, actively acquire new knowledge about media space, master the culture of perception and transmission of information in the noosphere.
The term was first used at the turn of the century and became popular in the 21st century. Nevertheless, due to the multiple meanings and multidimensionality of the concept it denotes, this terminological innovation has not yet received a generally accepted semantic definition and thematic completeness.
Media culture is ubiquitous and penetrates almost all spheres of human activity, including production, education and leisure.
It has the power to change the world of human relationships, influencing all types of communication, at times adjusting the value scale of perception of reality and infiltrating the system of self-knowledge and self-realization of the individual.
Media culture is a multidimensional and multifunctional phenomenon, just like culture in general. It is no coincidence that this phenomenon of information societies is assigned a unique role in social and public life. The classification of culture's functions, given in
the works of many researchers - philosophers, sociologists, culture experts, fluctuates between the numbers both upwards and downwards.
However, there are functions that characterize media culture specifically, making it an important factor in social modernization and the advancement of society towards development and progress.
The information function certainly comes to the fore, since media culture is a special type of information and communication process that nature does not know. And, of course, the communicative function, as it is the reverse of information.
This is why many researchers combine them. The essence of the communicative function is that media culture is an act of communication: between power and society, different countries, nations, social groups, individuals, etc. It is the communicative function of media culture that enables it to act as a powerful catalyst for dialogue between cultures, enabling the exchange of cultural information in a historical-philosophical and historical-literary context, thereby intensifying social progress.
The role of the information function of media culture has been strengthened in the last decade due to computer technology, including memory and information processing software. Modern media culture is thus the guarantor of the information provision of society.
Media culture continues to actively replicate ethically and morally questionable works, actively and aggressively engaging in the production of mass culture surrogates, in the promotion of immorality and permissiveness, violence and cruelty - anything that can increase the number of subscribers and thus maximize the profit.
The state has almost completely distanced itself from culture, forgetting that the most important energy source for the country is not gas and oil, but spirituality, as Andrei De-mentyev aptly put it, "spiritual energy is the dome of statehood" (Kultura Channel. -Report of Errors. -17.07.06)
It is known that the quality of media information circulating in society is determined by its "cultural properties". The latter come
- KyMbmypoMoeun -
down to usefulness, novelty, value and trustworthiness. It is the presence or absence of these properties that classify the information transmitted through media texts as media culture phenomena into three qualitative groups: constructive (useful or moral), neutral (useless and closer to immoral) and, finally, destructive (harmful or immoral).
Unfortunately, two types of information -neutral, (useless) and destructive (harmful) -predominate in contemporary internet discourse and in other channels of mass communication.
This fact allows us to state the crisis state of media culture, which directs people towards the consumption of mass culture rather than towards classical culture.
At the same time, media culture is penetrating virtually all spheres of human activity. It changes the very face and image of the modern world, introduces specific features into it, and alters human consciousness. It is a rather multidimensional phenomenon, which is part of the system of self-knowledge and self-realization of a personality, and it is related to such categories as nature, activity, morality and culture. In the age of information explosion, the active introduction of technology into socio-cultural processes is naturally changing the nature of cultural space itself. Thus, creolized texts as phenomena of contemporary media culture are becoming more and more widespread in Internet discourse.
The increased interest in the so-called cre-olized media texts is primarily due to the fact that the philological community is concerned about the loss of verbalism and the active introduction of the visual into the sphere of speech practice, especially in the mass media online space, which now largely determines the language taste of the era and influences the formation of a new linguistic reality. In general, all works created on the basis of and
with the help of technology acquire the status of works of media culture.
To date, the objective nature of the impact of media culture on the social life of individuals and society as a whole has been revealed. Media culture, first and foremost through mass media, attracts people to active participation in public life, contributes to their self-assertion, assimilation of various social roles, etc.
Media culture also establishes and regulates a system of values and defines their pa-rameterisation. The systemic and holistic nature of media culture is one of the basic characteristics of it, which maintains its integrity in a single media space for all members of society. However, a number of factors such as unequal opportunities in access to the media sphere, the dissemination of messages in it, and, consequently, the restriction of individual participation in the spiritual life of society through the media cultural process can threaten its integrity.
As we have already noted, media culture is an inherently mass culture, replicated by modern mass media, and the question of whether it will acquire the status of a global culture is now on the agenda. Considerations of V.T.Tretyakov are interesting in this connection. He has to admit with bitterness a more realistic scenario, "according to which mass culture with the help of television and the Net will fully destroy high art and culture (leaving them only as a set of artifacts of previous epochs and their visual copies). This would be cultural, but at the same time mass-cultural, totalitarianism" [3; 416].
And even though media culture is mainly oriented towards mass culture, it is still useful for the primary inculturation of the personality and for its great relaxation potential. Moreover, media culture also has its "peaks" - the best examples of song, film, and visual art, which are as close to works of high culture as
possible. References
1. Buryak N.Y. Language and personality in the context of information and communication culture // Theory and practice of social development. - 2011. - №5. - P. 119-122.
2. Vershinin M.S. Political Communication in the Information Society. - SPb, 2001.
3. Tretyakov V.T. How to Become Famous on Television. - M., 2016.
4. Shishkina M.A. Public relations in the system of social management. SPb., 1999.
5. Cited from: Lebedeva T.G. Public Relations. Corporate and Political Direction. - M., 1999.
- Культурология -
МЕДИАКУЛЬТУРА КАК ФЕНОМЕН СОВРЕМЕННОГО ИНФОРМАЦИОННОГО
ОБЩЕСТВА
Н.Ю. Буряк, кандидат культурологии, доцент
Академия маркетинга и социально-информационных технологий - ИМСИТ (Россия, г. Краснодар)
Аннотация. В статье представлены современные концепции медиакультуры и описаны ее информационно-коммуникативные функции в современных массмедиа и интернет-дискурсе. Цель исследования - определить роль медиакультуры как феномена информационного общества. Актуальность заключается в активном и агрессивном влиянии на развитие современного социума медиакультурных процессов, которые находятся в противоречии с их слабой изученностью, так как многие из этих процессов пребывают на стадии зарождения и развития. В статье также представлены выводы и обобщения по поводу отрицательных и положительных характеристик медиакультуры, пропагандирующей, в основном, произведения масскульта, не представляющих эстетическую ценность, вместе с тем, приносящих пользу своимирелаксирующими возможностями.
Ключевые слова: информационная эпоха, медиакультура, интернет-дискурс, публичные коммуникации, медиапродукция, массмедиа, медиатекст, релаксация, массовая культура, визуализация, информационная революция, теория коммуникаций, инкультуризация.
