THE FORMATION OF THE SYRIAN MEDIA SYSTEM: ACOMPARATIVE HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

The Syrian Arab Republic is considered a key and important country in the Middle East. It played an important role in the formation and development of the Arab media system as a whole. The article analyzes the formation of the media system of Syria, taking into account historical data and socio-cultural context for a deeper understanding of the evolution of mass communications in this country. Particular attention is paid to the main characteristics of the Syrian media – their structure, propaganda content and communication strategies, their influence on the formation of public opinion and political processes at the national level. The author pays special attention to such integrative properties of the Syrian media as publicity and communicativeness. The purpose of this study is a comparative historical analysis of the formation of the Syrian media system at different stages of its transformation. Due to the fact that the theoretical basis of Syrian media studies is not yet sufficiently developed, the author relied on classical scientific approaches to the role of the media in society and the typology of Russian authors. This work is one of the first to study the formation and development of the media system in the Syrian context. Particular attention was paid to the classification of media by such a typological feature as the founder, as well as to the analysis of the formation of a new media environment. Theoretical and comparative historical analysis methods were used to assess the historically different forms of media, journalistic practices and relations between media subjects and their audience. The study concludes that the historical development of the Syrian press can be divided into several main stages, each of which was characterized by a political, social and technological landscape, which had a significant impact on the nature of journalistic practice.