Fragmentation of Media Audience: from global village to global theater

Abstract

The development of mass media and social networks has radically changed the consumption of content by the audience, which has in fact turned into relatively separated communities of users, i.e. subjects of communication processes. Users get and actively use the possibility to choose the format, the channel and the content based on their personal experience, psycho-emotional state, socio-cultural characteristics. However, the users choice is not always conscious, and besides that, the users self-identification and further choice of channel and content is often based on ‘friend-or-foe’ principle, which leads to an increase in social and political polarization in the process of media consumption. The paper is based on the analysis of Russian and foreign sources dedicated to the behaviour of the audience of modern media and to the processes associated with fragmentation and demassification of the media audience. As follows from the analysis of these sources and from the standpoint of a structural approach to the study of social systems, the fragmentation of the audience and the polarization of public opinion are conditioned, besides arising political barriers, by the peculiarities of the functioning of the modern media system, i.e. make part of its attributive characteristics.