Journalism as a Value in a Digital Environment

The article deals with the value processes in journalism at the present stage The interaction of humanitarian knowledge with the interests and needs of society is marked by an increase in the demands on the pragmatics of this knowledge and, at the same time, its value consistency. The appeal to spiritual values is noted at all levels of modern society. The reality is discrete and is divided into numerous factions - social practices which include both the sphere of human activity and its dynamic status and role in society, ideals, values, norms of interaction with society, professionalism and morality. Journalism is also a social practice. And its value denominator is becoming increasingly important. We live in the era of communications abundance, which changes the world and the media; societies rich with the media are prone to disputes and disagreements (John Kin), and the illusion of freedom and diversity may be a way of producing ideological hegemony (Teun A. van Dijk). People are drowning in the "media sea", previously reliable forces and supports are disappearing. The foundations of journalism are also intensively loosening: the press is less engaged in the civil and social participation, which causes loss of values, fundamental for the profession, that prompt the journalist to be on the side of goodness and justice. Civilizational changes transform the media environment. The media become diversified: some of the media ceased to be bearers of journalistic works; the social and axiological identity of editions becomes uncertain. Social and technological changes actualize the transdisciplinary study of ideals and values that may shape the world tomorrow because the thinking members of society that bear moral responsibility for the state of society's spiritual life are increasingly convinced in the timeliness of the formation of value constants in social practices and in counteraction to social destructions in the spiritual sphere. In this sense, journalism has absorbed the latest methods of information transfer and translation of cultural values, has become a noticeable phenomenon of culture responding to the socio-historical request of the era. The attitude towards the mass media from the society has changed, and the impact on the person from the media is intensifying. Journalism operates in a dynamic social space when the technogenic factor of the new environment is on a par with the economic, political and cultural ones. At the same time, the new environment exerts its influence on the institutions that gave rise to it; perceiving the former value ideas, the environment processes them with the active participation of journalism. Being a part of the spiritual life of society in which new ideas, meanings, understandings, images, scientific truths are born, journalism generates and distributes values that can be both consonant with the time of their creation and ahead or behind it. Journalism as a social practice is a social value.

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