The Notion of Media Culture: An Attempt at Deconstruction

Abstract

In modern Russian cultural studies, the concept of “media culture” appears: as a marker of a popular research trend, and as a “floating signifier” — a conceptual “semi-finished product” that blurs the content of this research trend, introducing elements of chaos into its scientific space. The concept of “media culture”, its theoretical foundations, and conceptual parameters are identified as the object of this research. The aim of the research is to deconstruct the concept of “media culture”. The research methodology combines some ideas of poststructuralism, hermeneutics, axiology, phenomenology, and self-organization theory. The main content of the article is: a) “demolition” (dismantling) of the process of formation of the concept “media culture”, identifying the elements of which are assembled the modern theory of media culture, detection of inherent contradictions; and identifying bottlenecks in the domestic theory of media culture; b) build a theory of media culture, aimed at overcoming existing contradictions and gaps. Conclusions: the concept of “media culture” means a certain fragment of cultural reality, one of the forms of culture that has a multi-layered phenomenal and nominal content, a complex structure, vital functions and complex mechanisms of dynamics.