Axiological aspects of mass media functioning

In the 21st century, mass media has achieved outstanding success, gaining the status of a cultural factor no less influential than religion, literature, and arts, all of which are immediate generalize of social events. 15 Mass media have attained active leadership positions in terms of individual and collective ideological influence, transmitting cultural achievements, and determining the acceptance or rejection of cultural values by the society. With mass media becoming the generally popular form of crosscultural intercourse and interaction of the individual with the spiritual, material and historical experience gained by generations and nations. The efficiency of the mass media phenomenon is beyond debate. However, it does manifest significant detrimental characteristics, in particular, its threatening potential of a substitution for true spiritual and social values by artificial counterparts generated by a particular outlook oriented authors. It is at the same time obvious that cultural values are being dissociated and divided to meet the needs of a certain social class or social group. This makes research into the axiological functions performed by mass media in a democratic multi-channel society a vital necessity. Research into the axiological and creative function of mass media is one of the current lines of philosophical research and it requires a distinctive methodology ensuring effective axiological insights into the phenomenon of mass media. It is through mass media that millions of people acquire knowledge of current events and values, which is bound to affect the integrity of a society''s orientation, and determine the lines of cultural development. No creative, effective activity is possible outside the scope of mass media, as it is only through and by mass media that the behaviors of social groups are coordinated and conformal and coherent worldview and ideological paradigms are molded.