Modeling of TV News in the Context of Information Policy of a Television Channel

Abstract

TV viewers build relationships with the outside world, focusing on the news, which is a television interpretation of reality. Media reality is created on the basis of the information policy of TV channels and determines the agenda of the audience. This paper uses M. McCombs' agenda-setting theory, N. Luhmann's cognitive system communication, W. Lippmann's public opinion concept, J. Baudrillard's simulacrum, J. Fiske's code structure, G. Deborah's Performance Society to study television news of Russian TV channels. Based on the systemic, structural-functional, and semiotic approaches, the application of models of communication, information, the cognitive model of the impact of the media on the mass audience and the model of Russian journalism, a TV news projection model was developed in the context of a television channel's information policy. The model was tested on the basis of analysis of 130 news stories of the final weekly news releases of two federal and two regional Russian TV channels. As a result, we have seen that the media reality is constructed as a result of a selection of facts, modeling of meanings and forms of submission of news. The differences in the themes and forms of the news delivery are due to the territorial affiliation and technological development of the channels. In the production process, the journalist acts as an informer, communicator and manipulator, and the news represent a socially constructed and thoroughly edited reality. The media create a similar media reality, a different level of fiction, intended, albeit for the post-Soviet, but still society of centralized spectacle (according to G. Deborah). Translated meanings correspond to the symbolically-oriented mentality of Russians (according to M. Zagidullina). The media reality formed by the TV channels proves that the domestic journalists follow the special Russian way.