Media activity in the sphere of culture: the search for specifics

The article aimed to analyze the concept of media activity in terms of its essence, structural and classification characteristics, and to identify the characteristics of the media activity of cultural institutions. This analysis became the theoretical basis for a pilot study conducted by the authors, which aimed at identifying the level of representation of regional cultural institutions in social networks and determining indicators of their media activity. The materials used were the results of philosophical, sociological, cultural, linguistic research related to the study of the digital communication environment, as well as media content posted on social networks by regional cultural institutions in the South of Russia. The authors consider media activity from the standpoint of a structural-functional approach, which involves identifying the basic concept “social activity” that determines various characteristics of an individual’s functioning in society. A contradiction was identified between the active expansion of the presence of cultural institutions on social networks and the lack of recommendations reflecting information policy and a description of positive practices in this domain. The authors carried out a theoretical analysis of the concept of media activity, explored its structure as one of the professional activity domains aimed at producing and consuming digital content, and at creating conditions for an effective organization of these processes. The authors emphasize that successful activity in the field of media content production shows in its quality, the number of posts over a certain period, the variety of forms of presentation of material, and the content creators’ sufficient skills. The authors developed a multidimensional classification of media activity based on the direction of media activity, its levels, the intensity and initiative of its manifestations, the localization of content on Internet resources of various nature; they also determined the specifics of the manifestation of media activity in the field of culture. The authors jusitfied the indicators for conducting a comparative analysis of the level of media activity of regional cultural institutions, the main ones being the number of subscribers, the number of views and likes. As a result of the pilot study, the authors calculated average values, which can serve as a starting point for developing appropriate standard values