For a long time, the Internet was practically not covered by legal regulation, but the increase in its importance and prevalence has led to the fact that many online media have been able to successfully compete with traditional media sources. Amendments were made to the legislation: to clarify what mass media is, to add new types of media and regulate their activities. Thanks to the development of telecommunications, society has received new ways of informing, but this has also created a number of threats to information security.
To resolve the situation, it was necessary to develop integration solutions that combine classical media law and Internet law. This is a subsection of legislation that determines the procedure for the activities of online media. With regard to intersectoral institutions, a number of provisions ensure the relationship between the law for online media and the constitutional sphere, as well as administrative, civil and criminal legislation.
Legal macro-institutions for mass media
Since any media are full-fledged participants in social and legal relations, they function in accordance with the requirements of economic, labor, and financial law. If we consider specifically the mass media, several legal subsections can be distinguished in this area. Main legislative categories of mass media:
- radio and television;
- printed publications;
- cinema;
- news agencies.
The listed macro-institutions are among the leading ones, which means that they are the largest and most complex in structure.
History of origin and development
In general, mass media means a set of specialized institutions and technologies involved in the centralized dissemination of information. But there is another side of the mass media – it is one of the key tools for the formation and maintenance of the existence of modern mass culture.
The word “media” comes from “medium” and suggests a way of transforming the accumulated experience into knowledge through an external visual form. Under the medium can be understood any means used for communication purposes – it can be radio communication, printing, fine arts.
At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between direct communication means and the media, since the latter have a much wider functionality and potential. At the same time, they also have specific restrictions related to legal, territorial, and social binding.
Mass media in the development of society
Many media systems gradually acquired such an important state and social significance that they became isolated into full-fledged social institutions. At the same time, ties with society and mass culture were strengthened. This is especially noticeable in the Internet media, which arose on the next wave of the development of the consumer society, therefore they are an integral part of it.
Many scientists and researchers pay attention to the fact that newly emerging communication technologies are in direct and constant interaction with society, with its characteristics. At the same time, one should not be mistaken in the definitions.
Mass communications are directly a system and a set of technologies that ensure the transfer and dissemination of information.
Mass media is, to a greater extent, a social factor that performs a consolidating, integrating function in public relations.
This direction and means of public communication is one of the complex tools used by man to perceive and cognize the world around him. The nuance is that the constituent parts of the mass media cannot be considered as completely independent objects. The societal context as well as historical and cultural factors must always be taken into account. The interaction of the media with the society is two-way, they mutually influence each other, forming the current public and information picture.
Analysis Methods and Technological Innovations
The system of mass communications includes many methods and tools for transmitting information; there is a developed differentiation by genre. Because of this, researchers have to apply a huge number of techniques and approaches to analyze the mass media:
- narratology
- genre theory, discursive form of analysis;
- content research;
- psychoanalysis;
- semiotics;
- means within the framework of receptive aesthetics.
One of the key aspects is semiotics. Over the past 50 years, the world’s mass media have formed an extensive information dissemination system, which includes various television and press formats, data transmission on physical media, new content generation technologies (including automated and self-learning complexes).
The emergence of new tools and means in the media leads to the formation of new links that unite the “classical” media sphere and online media. The so-called video culture is still of great importance: it is very diverse, and its different directions have specific specifics. The distribution of such information is uneven, accentuated by certain social categories, but at the same time, the impact on cultural aspects can manifest itself globally.
