National and regional schools in the sociology of the mediatization process

The article is devoted to the analysis of the theoretical understanding of the process, which has received the name of mediatization in the world scientific literature. Modern media research is driven by several factors, including the growth of technology and an increase in the number of types of media. Rapid transformations in the communicative sphere lead to the simultaneous emergence of several approaches in world sociology. Mediatization began to study in different countries in parallel and at the same time in dissimilar disciplinary fields. In this way, modern discourse about mediatization divides into several areas of study. Novelty: in the modern research field, scientists usually resort to highlighting either schools or approaches in mediatization, practically without considering them in their interrelation. However, even the existing classifications do not have a generally accepted structure - two-part, three-part or four-part bases for classification are put forward. None of the researchers turned to an attempt to analyze all the available classifications and approaches in their interrelation and consider them in a single context. This article fills in the indicated gap. Its aim is to systematize the existing national and regional schools of mediatization and the theoretical and methodological approaches that have emerged within their framework over the past three decades. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) to identify relevant works and characterize the scientific discussion on the problem of theoretical conceptualization of the concept of mediatization as a process; 2) to propose an author's classification of national and regional schools of mediatization research, substantiate the possibilities and boundaries of this classification; 3) to clarify the general and different in the context of the formation of schools, as well as to highlight the theories of society that formed the basis of these schools; 4) to highlight the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of mediatization. The research materials were theoretical and empirical studies by domestic and foreign authors devoted to mediatization as a process affecting the entire society on an equal footing with globalization, starting from the 1980s. In turn, on the base of thematic and conceptual analysis, an attempt was made to original theoretical and conceptual understanding of the process of mediatization, substantiation of the allocation of its stages and their substantial components. On the base of the study, the author shows that the studies of mediatization have their own national and geographical specifics. The direction of mediatization as thinking about modern society, intertwined with new media, has not yet come to its conceptual design. In the discussion on the most functional direction of mediatization research, 4 national-regional schools and 4 theoretical approaches can be distinguished now.