Media Studies in Russia: Defining its Academic Status

Abstract

In the last decades Russian media scholars have attempted to identify a research field that focuses on media: defining it as "theory of journalism" (teoriya zhurnalistiki), "communicativistics" (kommunikativistika) (the russism from "communication science"), "media theory" (mediateoriya), etc. Such a definition as the "theory of mass communications" (teoriya massovoj kommunikacii) has not expanded outside the sociological field. The history of media studies development in Russia demonstrates, how media researchers, focusing on different fields — from journalism and mass media to media communications — have sought to indicate a unique field of knowledge — outside of sociology and even humanitarian knowledge — with its own theoretical and conceptual apparatus and methodological tools. As a result a deeply rooted in Soviet philological tradition and strongly established system of theoretical views was formed under the name of "theory of journalism". However, the "theory of journalism" has not become a leading name in the field, unlike "communicativistics", which studies the humanitarian aspects of the development of media processes in different regions of the world. The communicativistics (together with communication theory, or communicology) occupies a priority place in the academic discourse and creates a large system of knowledge that analyzes and explores the universal laws of communication in the information society. This field of research connects journalism with a huge amount of communication processes and issues. Widely spread determination is "mediology", whose task is "the synthesis of the theory of the media and the theory of journalism. But "mediavistics" as a study of the aggregate of real and virtual communication processes that provides to a public a sociocultural dialogue in the society is not a widely spread title. The theoretical consideration of media communication has become topical recently. Media communication is not tied to either a mass audience or to mass information, as well as to exclusively interpersonal communication, but it is accurately characterized by the availability of a media channel, digital channel, first of all. Nevertheless, the theory of media communications as an independent field of knowledge takes a quite modest place. It is obvious that at present in the Russian academic community there is no consolidated position on the definition of the research area, which studies media. This is a direct evidence of the activity of the four-level fermentation process in the Russian media studies. The research aims to identify the place of media studies in Russian scientific classifiers, in fundamental academic institutions and in the system of basic scientific funds. The authors relate the designation of the field of knowledge by media researchers to the sections of organization classifiers, raise questions about the academic status of media research in comparison to other humanities research areas. This appears to be highly important in the context of scientometric challenges of modern science.