Media Time in the Optics of Social Culture

The article examines challenges of the formation of social culture and human personality in society within the framework of work, everyday life, and leisure; a new category of everyday communication is identified – media time, associated with regular consumption of social information in the media. Using functional analysis, the author separates verbal and visual modes of assimilation of information received in the media in terms of content and format: “reading – thinking” and “watching – experiencing”, and classifies social information consumed by people in the total volume of media time by mega-reflex (self-preservation) and mega-interest (development). In conclusion, the author emphasizes the surplus of vi[1]sual (screen) and a deficit of verbal (text) media products in the modern public sphere, and illustrates the predominant perceptual effect of the readable way of consuming information over the watchable analogue in the formation of social culture. Based on these observations, the author considers the possibility of establishing public, i.e. organizational, legal, financial patronage over the newspaper, magazine, and book segments of production, distribution, and consumption of socially significant information in the media.