On the transformation of the models of interaction between the authorities, mass media and society in regional print editions

Scientific and political community takes special interest in the analysis of theoretical bases and factors in optimizing models of interaction between state bodies and the mass media.

The research in mechanisms and models of the dialogue “power-society” can help assess the effectiveness of interaction between state and civil structures and identify the existing contradictions and factors hindering this process.

In the conditions of modern socio-political space the issues of sustainable and stable development of the state are of particular importance. One of the factors to maintain the balance between authorities and emerging civil society is the communicative environment, where state bodies exercise their powers. The dialogue between authorities and society is one of the basic values of the modern state, a regulating and system-forming factor of sociopolitical reality.

The problems of interaction between the public authorities, media and society are reasonably reflected in the works of foreign and domestic authors working in different scientific fields: political science, sociology, journalism, national history, psychology, social psychology.

If we focus on domestic researchers’ recent works in this sphere, we can see a significant diversity in the coverage and solution of the issue of information interaction between government and society.

A.A. Zinov’ev, A.S. Panarin, S.G. Kara-Murza touch upon the problem of interaction of the power, media and society institutions at the theoretical and philosophical level [1-3].

A.A. Grabel’nikov, I.I. Zasurskii, Ya.N. Zasurskii, L.M. Zemlyanova, E.P. Prokhorov, M.V. Shkondin, I.I. Yuzvishin, S.G. Kor-konosenko, A.I. Solov’ev, M.V. Shkondin, L.G. Svitich1, S.V. Konovchenko, A.G. Kiselev dedicate their work to the analysis of communication processes (social, historical, modern) and the study of the mass media functioning, as well as the theory and practice of journalistic activities [4-11].

The pragmatic potential of the media in the context of socio-political and economic reforms is studied G. Diligenskii, M. Gorshkov, I.N. Tarasov [12-14].

Recent research is focused on the problems associated with a transforming political system of the modern Russian society and activities of the media in the context of political and economic reforms. N.R. Balynskaya, A.V. Bondar, E.V. Brodovskaya, E.V. Galkina, S.P. Potseluev, V.V. Kravtsov, S.S. Bodrunova are interested in this issue2.

A significant amount of work is devoted to the role and importance of the media in the formation of a new political system in Russia. This is evidenced by a number of collective monographs, collections of scientific papers, as well as dissertations on this topic. For example, the most complete scientific analysis of the presidential elections of the Russian Federation in 1996 is carried out by a group of authors representing academic scientific organizations [15]. This topic is reflected in the works of scientists, such as V.M. Yur’ev, D.G. Sel’tser [16].

Processes of the RF electoral system formation, issues of its improvement and results of its impact on the country’s transformation, as well as the use of mass media in the elections are considered in the studies of well-known foreign political scientists and specialists, such as M. McFall, D. Simon, E. Schneider [17-19]. Methods of detecting the ideological content of mass media messages during the elections are considered in the work of English sociologist John. B. Thompson [20].

The transformation processes that occurred in the media field and influenced the formation of a new system of mass-media are reflected in the work of M.Yu. Galkina, K. Lekhtisaari [21].

However, in our view, academic studies lack works devoted to the study of communicative-informational relations between the state and society and those transformational processes that occur in the Russian mass-media. This indicates the presence of some gaps in theoretical research on this issue. The article is devoted to the study of the causes and factors that form current transformational changes in the models of interaction of the government, media and society.

In the Soviet times the country had a hierarchical model for government-media interaction, they were under the ideological control of the CPSU. This dependence allowed the authorities to use the media as a tool of domination over the society, forming public consciousness through the introduction of ideological attitudes.

In the mid-1980s the model of the state’s domination over the society was transformed into a completely opposite model – the society’s domination over the state. Moreover, a special role in this model was played by the media, which for some time turned into an independent institution of the political system. But at the beginning of the 21st century Russian media returned to the model that was characteristic of the Soviet period, however, in a bit different, not homogeneous, but heterogeneous quality.

The modern Russian media system combines features of the Soviet (hierarchical) and other models considered by researchers: communicative, libertarian, social responsibility, social partnership, etc. But due to the impact of specific features of the Russian socio-economic reforms on the media, as well as the manifestation of characteristics of different types of existence and consciousness in the Russian society (the use of ideas characteristic of the Communist ideology, Eurasianism, Western liberal values, and Orthodoxy by different social groups), the state nature of the Russian media prevailed, led to the restoration of the hierarchical model of interaction between the government, media and society3. Thus, the Russian media made one complete circle in its development, returning to the hierarchical model, predetermining the inevitable presence and active participation of power structures in communicative and information space of the country [22, pp. 189-190]. The need for authorities’ active participation in regulating the media and the entire information and communication space is substantiated by the protection of national interests of the country.

According to L.I. Yakobson, the information space is formed by the media and the blogosphere, which unites communities of politicians, officials and journalists [23, p.135]. In this regard, it is important to consider the model of information interaction between the authorities and the media, its effectiveness and possible transformation directions in the Vologda Oblast.

Speaking about this model, it is necessary to take into account the fact that their joint performance influences formation of the society of small towns, creation of a positive information field, identification of the population, formation of the sense of small homeland and involvement in the overall civilizational process. In addition, the regional media are an effective means of implementing people’s social activity within small territorial entities.

However, population’s social needs are not always adequately understood by public authorities. Therefore, the need to coordinate state interests and civil society’s needs becomes more acute and the problems to monitor models and mechanisms for state-media interaction require constant scientific analysis and reflection.

Scientific interest in the regional media’s activities is obvious, as the local press, television, radio are not only an important link in the chain of solving the problems of single information space formation, but also have great opportunities in connection with reassessed importance of the region.

Among numerous studies of the regional press, there is a sufficient number of works devoted to the processes of authorities-media interaction [24-30]. Scientific novelty of the proposed study is associated with the identification of a special model of interaction of the government, media and society. It has similarities with the Soviet, but its vulnerability is associated with incorrect construction of an addressee’s image with identity of a naive subject. The novelty of the research lies in the combination of cognitive modeling methodologies and political methods to study the press.

Methodology

The Vologda Oblast regional periodicals, included in the Federal register, having the status of NGOs, and their web sites are a study object. The existing model of information interaction of the authorities, media and society in the Vologda Oblast is a subject.

In the course of the study the methods of comparative analysis are used to determine similar and specific properties of the regional media in the Vologda Oblast; the method of reconstructing a media text addressee to identify key typological characteristics of a regional newspapers reader. The method of content analysis is used to single out semantic units in texts of the regional print media, establish relationship between different text elements and the general meaning, purpose, and text information volume. Spatial, temporal and functional factors are taken into account to develop approaches to the formation of an optimal model of relations between the media and authorities.

Study data

Survey data are obtained due to the analysis of 39 regional publications, 26 of which – regional newspapers. The study includes publications for 2018 in the newspapers “Sokolskaya Pravda” (“Sokol Truth”, Sokolsky District), “Sovetskaya mysl” (“Soviet thought”, Velikoustyugsky District), “Sel’skaya nov’” (“Rural Novelty”, Cherepovetsky District), “Zvezda” (“Star”, Sheksninsky District), “Nasha zhizn’” (“Our Life”, Babaevsky District). The choice of publications is determined by the principle of geographical determination and the desire to study features of the modern content of regional newspapers. Most regional newspaper offices are now NGOs and act as founders. However, regional publications are significantly influenced by the agreements on information cooperation concluded by editorial offices and district administrations. In our point of view, this factor has a significant impact on a character of publications. Most regional newspapers have a rigid content model, similar ideological and stylistic characteristics.

Most district residents, for example in Babayevsky, Sokolsky, Velikoustyugsky districts, are the audience of 45+ with a certain attitude to the information “consumption”, therefore, regional newspapers remain familiar information channel for readers.

To substantiate the approach objectivity, the study uses sociological data of the Vologda Research Center of the RAS (VolRC RAS) about regional population’s attitude to the media.

According to I. Dzyaloshinskii, the most effective model of media-society interaction is a model of social partnership. Its goal is to increase the “transparency” of economic, political, social, information processes, as genuine dialogue, genuine partnership, genuine trust are possible only in the atmosphere of information openness [29].

The most important indicator of the media performance is assessment of their activities by the region’s population [30]. The Vologda Oblast is one of the few RF regions, where for twenty years the team of the VolRC RAS has been monitoring the economic situation and social well-being of the population. One of the monitoring areas is related to the identification of people’s attitude to the media’s activities. The data from these studies are published in the VolRC RAS Bulletin “Efficiency of public administration in the population’s estimates” [30].

The surveys results show that in 2012–2017 the proportion of people who believe that the media provide objective information about the economic and political situation decreased from 53 to 48%, and the share of region’s residents satisfied with the volume of relevant content went down from 49 to 43%. Thus, given the fact that the media are a state-society interaction channel and one of the information policy tools, we can assume that in the current model of interaction of the government, media and society, there are certain shortcomings. We should mention a biased simplified image of the information recipient in the regional media, which involves a flawed, one-sided communication model of media-society interaction.

The regional media should take into account problems and interests of their readers. Their universality is found in the desire to be useful to the most concentrated audience. The communicative model specifics is the ability to be understandable and accepted by the regional audience. Accordingly, modeling of the media-authorities interaction system should be associated with projection of the created discourse on an addressee.

The effectiveness of the transmitted information impact is determined by objectivity of the ideal image of a reader constructed by the publication, who, identifying himself/herself with the constructed subjective position, acquires his/her identity within the discourse. However, a real information recipient is usually different from the ideal, which leads to conflicting assessments of the media.

According to E.V. Chepkina, the discursive identity of an addressee is based on a special subjective position constructed in texts. The addressee identity has no constant characteristics and completion, since communication within the discourse framework has no completion [31, 32].

The position of a regional press addressee is formed by a set of factors, such as a choice of events, a way of their actualization, key concepts, ideological and evaluative coloring of subject positions. Thematic preferences of a publication, construction of a title complex, selection of vocabulary are of particular importance in this case. The main attention is paid to repetitive meanings that help reconstruct the position of an addressee prescribed by the discourse.

First of all, the local press refers to meanings of the conceptual field “regional affiliation”. The analysis of scientific literature shows that the most relevant factors to identify the media audience are territorial and economic [33, p. 77; 34, p. 25; 35]. They determine the course of our research. In the article most attention is given to the ties, a recipient has with a particular area (which is associated with representatives of the local authorities), and his/her (recipient’s) pragmatic interests and collective values.

Construction of the subject position of an addressee is primarily associated with the territory of his/her residence, the locus. Any indication of an addressee location unites a reader with publication subjects. Often this method is used in headings: “Sheksninsky cathedral: miracle that happens day after day”; “Bridge named after M. Zarodov has new clothes”; “Sokol is successfully implementing the concept of active longevity”; “Fair in Erga”; “Veliky Ustyug has begun to repair yard territories”.