Institute of Sociology NASU

Institutionality vs prosperity: Changes in the media landscape and methodological gaps in the sociology of mass communications

stmm. 2019 (1): 56-72

UDC 316.28.:004.07

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2019.01.056

OLGA SUSSKA

Abstract. The paper focuses on the current understanding of institutional nature intrinsic to communicative relations in the mass media. These relations have an asymmetrical status marked by non-antagonistic confrontation with regard to a new status of privacy-agency. The latter is characterised by self-sufficiency and prosperity, which is illustrated by “participatory journalism”. This confrontation takes place in professional journalism as well, whose agents (in particular, members of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine) have their own, sometimes rather divergent views on the understanding of processes occurring now in the media-communicative space. Being blocked by the owners’ instructions, these subordinate media are unable to facilitate the development of democratic levers in society. As for violence against journalists, it has been driven by the opposition of the institutionalised communicator to a new status known as a “personified entity”, which is not subject to any authority. The author researches into the particularities of the journalist community’s perception and awareness of changes occurring in the behaviour of media audiences, position of the media themselves in today’s society and the nature of prospective relationships between the institutionalised communicator and journalists. The former (despite trying to preserve
asymmetry in the media-communicative space) is gradually acknowledging the presence of new personified entities and their success in building symmetrical communicative relationships and formulating relevant principles of information exchange in the present-day mass media.

Keywords: sociology of mass media, mass communications, communicative interaction, information exchange, journalistic community

Publication in: ukr | rus

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