Mass Media as an Object of Scientific Research in the Republic of Armenia (on the Example of Dissertations, 1991-2022)

Abstract

Key words: journalism, press, radio, television, online media, cinema, advertising Every year, the study of the means and forms of influence of mass communication expands its scope, constantly enriching itself with new theoretical and applied concepts. Starting from the period of independence, the scientific paradigm of media research has changed in the Republic of Armenia. Media, as an object of scientific study, left the traditional field of philological and historical sciences and began to be studied in the system of other scientific areas. The purpose of our article is to create a scientific overview of media studies in the Republic of Armenia and determine the place of journalism in these dimensions. The task is to identify the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of media research. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that it allows us to get an idea of the thematic framework of media research in the Republic of Armenia and may have a guiding role for future researchers. In order to achieve the set task, we used the principles of quantitative and qualitative analysis, as well as the comparative method during the study of the topic. The source base of the work is the list of dissertations’ titles, which are available in the relevant specialties in the “Archive of defended dissertations” section on the website of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) of the Republic of Armenia. When compiling the list, all those dissertations were taken into account, in the titles of which there was the name of mass communication media or forms of mass communication influence. Summarizing the analytical review of media studies, we can say that the media, as an object of scientific study, are an interdisciplinary phenomenon. Research, devoted to the media sphere in the Republic of Armenia in the specialization of “Journalism”, in relation to other scientific fields is practically equal in quantitative terms. From 1991 to 2022, in the Republic of Armenia, researchers in the direction of “Journalism” did not study only topics in media linguistics. The number of narrow-profile studies related to mass media and journalism is 16 works, but among these dissertations one can also notice thematic elements of other scientific disciplines.