Journalism is one of the most important social phenomena of modern life, a type of mass information activity that ensures the smooth interaction between an individual, a group of people and society as a whole, as well as between different social spheres and even between generations. The process of journalistic activity consists of collecting, processing, storing, and periodically disseminating relevant socially significant information.
Synonyms for the word “journalism” are the phrases “mass communication media” (MCM) and “mass media” (mass media).
Indeed, the work of a journalist is an act of mediated communication with readers, radio listeners and television viewers. It is a communicative (from the Latin communicatio – to make common, to connect, to communicate) act, which in its simplest form consists of three components:
In order to understand the essence of this or that means of mass communication, it is necessary to answer at least the following questions: who? to whom? in what way? what is transmitted? And to complete the picture, it would be good to know: how effective is this communicative act?
As for the most common, most frequently used term “mass media,” we should agree on an understanding of each defining word. “Mass” is how much? Including hundreds, thousands, millions of consumers of information? Both, depending on the medium (channel) of information. For a national television program in a large country, it is millions of viewers. For a solid newspaper, it is tens or hundreds of thousands of readers. In any case, it is not an individual (as a rule, personal) dissemination of information, but a public, social act intended for the mass of people (no matter how quantitatively this “mass” varies).
The term “information” (from the Latin informatio – explanation, exposition) has many interpretations. On the one hand, it is a general philosophical concept characterizing the ability of living and dead nature to reflect (“theory of reflection”). On the other hand, after N. Wiener created the theory of information, the term became the basis of cybernetics and, in the age of general computerization, it has occupied its own, very extensive niche. For journalists, in turn, information is the object of their work: they collect, process and disseminate not any information, but (note the definition of journalism at the very beginning of this chapter) relevant, socially significant information.
Journalistic information has characteristic features.
First, it is usually news. The search for new information in all spheres of social life – politics, economics, science, culture, sports – is the main thing for a journalist. However, journalism is not limited to social subjects, although it gives priority to them. Little-studied natural phenomena, discoveries on earth, in the heavens, in the ocean and outer space, in the macrocosm and microcosm, in the behavior of people and animals – the limitless spiritual and material world around us presents many surprises every hour, which journalists must record and report to their audiences.
Second, journalistic information must be original. When the press tells the same story day in and day out, the audience loses interest in both the information and its source. Public importance makes information interesting, and in a sufficiently large part of the audience.
Third, journalistic information must be useful. Unfortunately, media workers often forget this in the pursuit of sensationalism. A textbook example: a dog biting a man is not sensational; a man biting a dog is sensational. However, the second part of this paradox deals with a clinical case that is of interest only to psychiatrists; society as a whole is unlikely to derive any useful information from such a report. Of course, the press has a right to entertaining information, but it is marginal (on the margins of the main content, on the sidelines, literally – in the margins of the print media) news. It is no coincidence that materials of this kind are usually published under the headings “At the end of the issue”, “Notes in the margins”, “A funny mix”, etc.