Scientific journal
Название журнала на английском
ISSN 2500-0802
ПИ №ФС77-61154

FUNCTION AND DYSFUNCTION OF THE MEDIA SPHERE IN PROBLEMATIZING SOCIAL CONTRADICTIONS

Pankova G.K. 1
1 Saint-Petersburg State University
Media sphere is the main space, where happens the construction of socially important problems, because media are not only a source of informing about the controversy of society’s functioning, but also a kind of communication regarding the development and resolving these contradictions. Through communications various social contradictions get involved in media sphere, problematizing and becoming the subject of public attention. Based on the existing approaches to the identification of social functions of the media sphere and based on an analysis of the role of the media in the problematization of the social contradictions, the article highlights the functions of the media in the construction of a socially significant problem. In conditions of saturation media socially significant information there is inevitable competition between the problems for public attention. Socially significant problems also compete for the sense of compassion that people are experiencing in relation to events beyond their everyday life. The ubiquity of media presence is based on the expansion of the communication channels, media convergence, the frequency of messages in a variety of media, which creates the effect of «normalization» deviations due to their visible prevalence. This «normalization» contribute to such practices of journalism, which are based on the pursuit of sensational information, the predominance of negative news, reluctance to provide the broad context of socially significant problems and the ways of its solution. On the basis of the analysis of the dysfunctional media sphere in the problematization of the social contradictions in the article the following hypothesis is expressed. These negative trends in “media construction” of socially significant problematic can be tolerated if: 1) the information about the problem is more specific, corresponding to the special characteristics; 2) the information is structured as a result of interactive interpersonal communication; 3) socially significant issues are integrated in local knowledge about the contexts of development and resolution of socially important problems. All three conditions can be created in interactive media landscape.