The patterns of users’ activity in the media ecosystem: the results of sociological analyses

Abstract

The article concentrates on the analyses of the content characteristics of the users’ activity patterns functioning in the media ecosystem. Media ecosystem is viewed by the author as information environment of a modern individual which dialectically connects the users’ media activity practices as well as the institutional conditions of their realization. The author refers to such key practices of users’ activity in the media ecosystem as media consumption and media production, notably an important factor of such practices realization are definite patterns and normals, which are the behavior models articulates in the media ecosystem environment. It is shown that these patterns and normals can be localized in such media sources as the news in mass media, fiction texts and program manifestations, technological regulations (exploitation rules, access procedures etc.), society knowledge (etiquette, etc.) of the network community. On the basis of the author’s sociological research, carried out using the content analyses (N=300) method (different types of media sources in the modern media ecosystem were studied), peculiarities of actual patterns and normals of users’ activity in media ecosystem are analyzed. The author shows how the imperative character of the patterns and normals declared reveals in a number of characteristics that are the criteria of the analyses. As a result of the research it was found out that the level of imperativeness of articulated patterns and normals is defined not only by their immediate localization (the type of media source where they were placed) but also by the referentiality of these normals to the unique experience of the users and the prevailing types of media activity.