Hybridisation of public discourse in the modern media space: Social effects and research prospects

The scope of the studies of mass-media and public discourse transformation processes is vast and multi-faceted, and requires some coordinated interdisciplinary approaches. Meanwhile the current stage of scientific comprehension of the above mentioned topic (from the beginning of the 21st century) may be designated as preliminary and a sort of “reconnaissance” within the “territory” of the modern media space and also an observation of all the diverse processes that are found within it. As a result of such observation, the phenomenon of public discourse hybridisation has been identified as comprising a mixture of cultural, genre, style and language features and characterised by blurring of the boundaries between elitist and mass cultures. This phenomenon is, first of all, based on information and technology development of post-industrial societies, namely, the World Wide Web (Internet) and mass computerisation (especially the fact of mass owning of mobile digital gadgets - smartphones, laptops, etc.). Modern media space public discourse, seen as a hybrid communicative phenomena despite its ultimate openness and flexibility or rather due to them, leads to situations where the risk of loosing initial meaning of transferred messages and also recipient’s attention is very high. That also may result in failure of certain communication attempts since the cooperative principles of communication are involuntarily violated. Additionally, the growing lack of trust in received information and the rise of social tension and protesting behaviours are observed as a negative reflection of hybrid public discourse. There is already some scientific evidence of these as caused by the destructive influence of information overload (“info-crisis”) on human cognition. It is of the main interest under the circumstances to find ways to raise people’s tolerance to information overload and, which seems to be even more important, to educate in them a rational and critical attitude towards any information and to make the learning and knowledge-acquiring processes more effective in general. The social significance of mass-media and public discourse is well recognised and foregrounds the task of conceptualisation and comprehensive studies of their influence on human cognition and world outlook of both reciprocating authors and audience, and also of the need of knowledge, beliefs and prejudices demarcation as well as the results of propaganda, ideology and information noise on information consumers. It seems important in the context of cultural and technological specifics of modern society to introduce the concept “adaptive social knowledge” - the type of knowledge that takes into account all the cultural and axiological features of the period of time studied and can provide both individuals and societies with tools for an optimum adaptation to the current environment changes and civilisation progress. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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