Vol 26, No 4 (2021): MEDIATIZATION IN THE DIGITAL ERA: FROM TRANSITION TO TRANSGRESSION

-

Journalism as a definition emerged more than two centuries ago and became actively promulgated in the study of media by core Western countries. Meanwhile, this term is often interpreted too freely, the term and practice are transgressing in the 21st century. This is a theoretical paper that seeks to understand how the role of journalism and mass media have mutated and why as interpreted by scholars. On the one hand, it is followed with a lack of its complex essence is hindered by contemporary political, social, economic and technological challenges that occur in the way of its development. It is caught between the utopian and idealistic theoretical and conceptual projections that are intended to be the basis of its social capital and legitimacy and the practical dilemmas and hardships (economic and political) of the contemporary era that shift the profession away from the aforementioned ideals.

The paper presents the current transformations of media culture in the conditions of crucial digitalization of society. Everyday life is fundamentally mediatized and this process is beyond the control and understanding, both by an individual, and by the professional community and society as a whole. Rather, we observe a general disturbing sense of violation of the usual boundaries of definitions and norms. In response to the crisis of comprehension and understanding, philosophy of language and communication turns back to the idea of discursivity of human civilization and proposes to adapt and rethink the concept of possible worlds and its descriptions in the aim to renew social strategies and communications. The increasing demand for methodological support of communication activities indicates the growing significance of cabinet philosophy, in particular philosophy of language and communication. This strategy of the scientific approach will allow us to build a research relevant to the subject-transdisciplinary. Based on an analysis of history of ideas and modern Russian methodology of transdisciplinarity, the authors put forward a hypothesis in terms of the philosophy of language on the development of digital mediated discourse in a transdimensional unity and the generation of different discourses.

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of the figurative approach to the deep mediatization study, developed by Andreas Hepp and Nick Couldrie. To what extent is figurative theoretical optics sensitive to the processes of social worlds and practices transformation under the media influence? What are the possible directions of revision and further development of this approach? The figurative approach to deep mediatization is a powerful theoretical tool to explore this complex, non-linear meta-process. Focusing on figurations helps to avoid media centrism and emphasize the social life procedurality. At the same time, the figurations concept (understood as collectives, organizations, and institutions) raises some questions. In particular, the thesis about special media ensembles inherent in different figurations does not always work. This is due to the emergence of multifunctional platforms that can become a single digital infrastructure for many figurations. Such platforms have the potential of the ecosystem for a mediatized social life. Further analysis of the relationship between figurations and platforms is required, which does not reduce platforms only to the technological component of figurations. Bridging the deep divide between human actors and technology would also lead to new readings of medialogics (such as human-machine logics).

This article addresses the mediatization of the European public sphere(s) and the issues it creates for the implementation of EU-wide public outreach efforts. As applied to the EU context, the concept of mediatization is understood as a relationship between the media and political institutions that causes societal transformation. In this sense, the public sphere is seen as a mediating infrastructure of debates of political legitimacy. In the context of mediatized politics, European public opinion is fragmented and bound to national public spheres. EU public outreach efforts are increasingly filtered and shaped by the media of its member countries. Due to multiple implementation issues, the EU has not been able to offer its members an attractive and unifying identity narrative promoting European values. This article offers some conceptual solutions to the problem.

The theory of mediatization focuses on discussions on the intertwining of the media with social institutions such as politics, family and religion, influencing and being affected by these structures. In general, mediatization refers to the social and cultural process in which a field or institution becomes to some extent dependent on the logic of the media (Hjarvard, 2011). Hjarvard draws attention to the processes of mediatization as a concept by cultural and social phenomena through the media, and their symbolic content is more or less under the influence of the media. The media is determinative on the fictional world with it produces and, on its audience (consumers). It influences, directs and shapes them through the discourse it produces. Mediatization is an important issue in the context of media literacy and especially transmedia methods. Because transmedia content practices and methods increase the mediatization effect and affect the orientations of the individual and society, especially when it comes to inadequacy in the context of media literacy. Therefore, this study focused on the awareness of the audience (consumers) about transmedia applications. It is seen that the studies conducted in the field of transmedia have developed in terms of content production methods, strategies and audience engagement. It is understood that there are not enough studies on subjects such as audience impacts or audience awareness. In this context and in this study, the competence of multimedia viewers who use social media and follow a traditional media tool to understand and be aware of the content transitions between different media tools has been examined. The television channel was chosen as the traditional media medium for the research study due to its widespread viewing.

The paper emphasis is made on corporate mediatization process conceptuali-zation, which role is of high importance in Russia, because it influences sociopolitical situation on a legal basis, creates a form of business corporations’ citizenship. The concept reveals a changing role of corporation in sociopolitical relations: due to encompassing corporate communication technologies it becomes necessary to meet communities’ expectations, sociopolitical, socioeconomic, ecological issues. Thus, sociopolitical sphere mediatization in the context of complicating media discourse forms the situation when the modern business organization should become a corporate citizen giving a boost to societal development, well-being, confidence-building.

The relevance of this article is determined by the growing ubiquitous digitalization of mediatized communications, including under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. The consequence of this process is the transformation of the structure of social space and approval of virtual interaction as a basic method of communication - instead of interpersonal. These transformations entail institutional changes, manifested in axiological and normative transitions of communicative space, semantic restructuring of communications under the influence of changing social reality. Induced by the technological infrastructure of communication, a “mediatized social reality” emerges, which also entails semantic changes in communication. All these circumstances actualize the phenomenon of communicative competence of an individual, which determines the effectiveness of interactions in the context of technological, semantic and institutional changes. The article presents some outcomes of empirical verification of communicative competence in contemporary Russian interaction practices. The phenomenon of hybridization of communicative competence during the transition of a person from the environment of real communications to the environment of virtual communications, contributes to the construction of “mediatized social reality” and expands his social reality. This ability of an individual and his communicative competence for transgression, combined with hybridity, is a factor in the integration of the communicative space of society with its contradictory characteristics.

-

An intensive study of V. Rozanov’s work naturally actualizes the question of the reasons for the contradictory assessments that have accompanied it for more than a century. The author explains their polarity by the prevalence of subjective or stereotypical ideas about the fundamental novelty of V. Rozanov’s approach to the psychology of literary creativity and to the aesthetics of “secluded nudity”, which the creative subject of his books invariably followed. The article examines the space of “solitude” as a sphere of creative realization of Rozanov, where the main attention is paid to the intuition of “intimacy”, interpreted by the writer as a genuine spiritual act underlying the true creativity of life and literature. In “solitude” the author’s intuition of intimacy penetrates into the phenomena and objects of life, endows them with related intimate meanings, is reflected in them and contributes to the creation of a mythopoetic picture of the world, filled with a variety of subjective and personal ideas of V. Rozanov about God, the world, cultural and literary values, about to yourself. In the above examples, V. Rozanov’s “faces” appear in the process of intimate rapprochement with the Absolute and revealed in ontological insights. “Disguises” are figurative dialectical projections of the “intimate faces” of the author, opposed to the traditional views on the writer’s personality. These are polar, familiarly traversed projections of his “intimate faces” designed to enhance their ontological and aesthetic significance. The philosophical concept of “detachment” in myth and literature, developed by A.F. Losev in Dialectics of Myth , served as a methodological basis for the study of the phenomenon of “solitude” and unity in V. Rozanov of the myth-maker and writer.

The article aims to study D. Prigov’s series of prose texts “Sovy” (Soviet texts) artistic subtleties as a conceptualist work. The author of the article analyzes genre and style modifications owing to use of parodic stylization. The research exemplifies how a fairy tale, epic, legend, anecdote, hagiography are modified by the Soviet myth content, whereas creating a quasi-history. Historical characters, politicians, poets and writers, mythologized by ideology and commonplace consciousness in the “Sovy”, are presented as cultural and progenitor heroes. Life journey of characters, cultivated by the Soviet myth, is often depicted according to the hagiographic canon. The mask of a storyteller/propagandist is the starting point of folklore stylizations and parody imitations of the Soviet art in the “Sovy” series. Parodic tale was crafted by mimicking folklore and journalistic styles, their hybridization at the lexical-grammatical and rhythmic-syntactic levels. Styles, genres and masks mocking in D. Prigov’s “Sovy” series is examined at the methodological perspective of text narratological analysis for the first time, thus emphasizing the study’s novelty and relevance. The author of the article concludes that D. Prigov deconstructs Soviet mythologems, showcasing transformations of a myth to an anecdote, a famous name into an empty sign, a story into a simulacrum.

The review reveals the specificity of the author’s approach to the phenomenon of acmeism. It has been proven that the work under review is a tutorial of a new type. So, at the substantive level, the book is included in the scientific discourse and correlates with the genre format of the monograph, at the formal compositional level, it is associated with the genre format of the tutorial.