Medialogy: cultural and historical turns and the development trajectory book review: Kirillova, N.B. (2022) medialogiya: nauka globalizovannogo mira [Medialogy: the science of the globalized world]. Moscow: Akademicheskiy proekt. ISBN 978-5-8291-3895-0 (University textbook series)

The reviewer analyzes a new textbook on medialogy, an emerging scientific discipline that studies the peculiarities of media comprehension in various fields of humanitarian and social knowledge. She notes that the currently observed socio-cultural diversity requires a comprehensive study of the evolution of science, technology and the information society in terms of their relationship. According to the reviewer, the book reflects the representation of media in a historical aspect and traces the expansion of the research field of medialogy. The reviewer consistently considers the content of all the chapters of the book. She positively evaluates the author’s conclusions that new media arose every time as a realization of the needs of the individual for freedom of choice and freedom of interaction, and notes the author’s high-quality analysis of the 20th-century media culture’s evolution, which is considered in the unity of the development of technical innovations and an almost simultaneous theoretical understanding of the possibilities of invented new means of communication. The reviewer also notes the author’s creative approach to the analysis of the mythologization and myth-making in the field of media culture, her desire to show the multidimensionality of communication through the variety of approaches that exist in the philosophy of media, and her deep study of the features of the media environment depending on the transformation of the screen as a spectacular form and as a mass media. The author’s analysis of the paradoxes of interaction between media and society from the ideas of integrating the global media space to information warfare is cognitive and simultaneously academic. The reviewer agrees with the author, who proves the need to integrate media policy into the structure of state cultural policy. The reviewer positively evaluates the examples of successful media practices considered in the context of managing the media sphere. The reviewer characterizes in detail the content of the section on the problems of media education. According to the reviewer, the main idea of the book is that medialogy is a synthesis of the humanities that have been transformed in the era of globalism and the intensive development of information and communication technology that affects public consciousness and the individual’s socialization.