TELEVISION AS A SOCIO-CULTURAL PHENOMENON AND SUBJECT OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Abstract

The article examines television as a socio-cultural phenomenon and highlights the relevance of applying a cultural approach to its study. The author emphasizes the fallacy of interpreting television as a mass medium exclusively and draws attention to the need to consider television as a space, environment or even medium in which cultural values are produced and transmitted. It is underlined that the study of television within the framework of cultural studies involves the use of specific methods and approaches that, without denying the achievements in its examination, would allow an interdisciplinary analysis of it as an essential media structure, as an attribute of globalization, and as a socio-cultural phenomenon. The necessity of continuous adjustment of theoretical provisions describing a particular stage of television development and its specific features due to the complexity and rapid transformation of the object of study is justified. The stages of television transformation are briefly described: 1) from a broadcaster of the most famous works of cinema and theatre to a social institution (the essence of which is determined by artistic and entertainment, economic, informational, political and technological components, and at the same time factors of development) and a cultural and communicative institution (influencing the perception of reality, the style and lifestyle of millions of people); 2) from a utility tool for transmitting information to a tool for managing viewer perception, to a sense-generating element of the world's most complex communication system. The author mentions the tools for understanding the phenomenon of television: 1960s – artistic, 1970s – philological approaches; 1970s–1980s – institutional, 1990s – industrial; in the 2000s – communicative approach. It has been concluded that none of the mentioned approaches to the study of television can provide complete information not only on television programs and their audience but also on the above components/factors of television functioning, which is possible with the cultural approach. The article focuses on the relationship between television and mass culture, which is one of the promising areas of cultural studies – the study of television as a channel for the distribution of artefacts of the latter and as a catalyst for the process of cultural massification.