Media Culture: Essential Features and Functions

The purpose of the article is to reveal the essential features and functions of media culture. The development of modern society is closely connected with information and communication technologies, therefore, it is relevant to determine the essential and special features of media culture. The research methodology is based on the application of the method of adaptiveactivity cultural studies in combination with an interdisciplinary approach, which allowed us to reveal the essence, functions and structure of media culture. The scientific novelty lies in the cultural studies research of the dialectic of interaction and mutual influence of media culture as a phenomenon of the information society and the processes of informatization at the beginning of the 21st century. Conclusions. The article has demonstrated that the core of the entire media culture is the screen and audiovisual culture, which often compete with each other. It has been noted that media culture as a sociocultural phenomenon can be interpreted in a broad (the social environment that actively communicates through the symbolic exchange) and a narrow (the mechanism of cultural activity that is relevant in every cognitive act) sense. The author of the article has outlined the functions of media culture: informative, communicative, normative, relaxation, creative, integration, mediatory. The relationship of media culture with culture in its traditional sense, as well as the connection and interdependence with other systems of reality, has been proved. The peculiarities of the functioning of media culture in the modern information space, its multifunctionality, impact on all spheres of life, in particular, the individual negative influences of the studied phenomenon and their causality have been indicated. The article has shown that the main mechanism of formation and reproduction of media culture is media education, which should contribute to the identification and realization of the creative potential of the individual, the development of an analytical attitude to the phenomena and facts of reality. The article deals with the formation of a “person of media culture”, the actualization of the anthropological concept of media culture, which will ensure the continuity of traditions of existence in culture at the individual level