Representations of social reality: communicative aspects of their construction under the information singularity conditions

Abstract

The article analyzes the role of modern mass communication in the construction of social reality representations. Based on the phenomenological and postmodern approaches to social analysis, the authors draw a conclusion about the determining and specific influence of the mass media on the individual in the context of the information society. The modern socio-informational exchange is greatly complicated by the information redundancy factor and the impossibility to fully process the entire volume of information. Excess of information puts a person in a situation of choice: he needs to choose certain channels. Then the chosen ones become the main media providers of social reality representations. Consequently, those representations in many respects are influenced by the content broadcasted through the selected channels. Theoretical and empirical data show that this plays a special role in the structure of individuals’ everyday informational practices and affects the level of trust to information sources and the processes of self-identification and socialization in the current social reality. The authors draw a general conclusion that people’s representations of social reality are, to a large extent, of an image nature. In many ways, this process also depends on the media concept of the selected channels. It is constructed and promoted by the communication efforts of the modern mass media. The authors emphasize the simulated and controllable nature of this process. The article presents data which may be useful in further sociological analysis of the modern mass communication process, in interpretation of its institutional characteristics, in determining their role in the construction of social reality representations.