The educational potential of podcasts in the context of formation human legal culture: a new format and new opportunities media sphere

Abstract

Problem and goal. The development of new media, new modern IT technologies is also aimed at promoting legal content. New formats of the media sphere create new opportunities for dialogue on legal culture. The aim of the article is to study the educational potential of podcasting in the context of the formation of the human legal culture. Materials and research methods. Methodological approaches: cultural-historical approach for revealing personality as a product of cultural development, contextual approach for understanding the role of public opinion in personality development, competence-based approach for identifying the educational process in podcasts and selecting content for the construct “legal culture”, personality-oriented approach for understanding self-developing and self-regulating personality in the process of forming a legal culture. An empirical study was carried out using the GetPodcast application on search queries for podcasts by words or phrases correlated with the theoretical construct “legal culture” in Russian and English, the time period for placing a podcast in the application was measured; the research is based on measuring, systematizing, comparing, summarizing, monitoring, interpreting the results of researching the audio content of podcasts. Research results. In 2020, on average, more than 2.5 million episodes on legal culture in English and more than 17.5 thousand in Russian were created in the media sphere. The authors calculated that the number of podcasts by one key concept in English is on average 234 times higher than the number of podcasts in Russian, which indicates the active spread of the new format of the media sphere throughout the world, while the demand for English-language podcasts is objectively higher. The growth rate of the number of podcasts in 2020 averages 66% and 58% for Russian-speaking and English-speaking podcasts, respectively, while the growth over the past six months is higher: 97% and 72%, respectively. This can be explained by the pandemic situation and forced self-isolation, as well as digital globalization and digital competencies of the population. Discussion and conclusion. The authors came to the conclusion that podcasts, as a new format of the media sphere, have educational potential, which must be used to a greater extent for the formation of the human legal culture. At the same time, the educational potential reveals the cognitive and epistemological interest of the listener. Podcasts form socially significant and personally necessary knowledge of a legal nature and meaning, which to a greater extent affects the condition and result of the process of forming human legal culture.