Mass culture as a factor of secondary socialization of modern student youth (case study of Barnaul)

The subject of the research is the influence of mass culture as a factor of secondary socialization of contemporary student youth. The author examines aspects of the topic in detail, such as the theoretical foundations of the concept of socialization in the works of foreign and domestic sociologists, the distinction between primary and secondary socialization, as well as the functions of mass culture – communicative, integrative, identificational, educational, and adaptive. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of influence of mass culture products (cinema, music, literature) on the formation of value orientations, behavior models, and social roles of students. The object of the study is students of higher educational institutions in Barnaul, which allows for the examination of the problem considering the regional characteristics of the socialization space for youth in a major regional center. The work also discusses the peculiarities of students' perceptions of mass culture and its role in everyday life. The research is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches: a survey of 250 students from Barnaul's universities and semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 respondents, which provided the opportunity to compare mass trends with individual interpretations of the impact of mass culture on the process of socialization. The main conclusions of the analysis are that mass culture is firmly embedded in the everyday lives of student youth and serves as a significant, but not the only, factor of secondary socialization among traditional institutions – education and immediate social environment. The novelty of the work lies in the empirical identification of specific mechanisms of the socializing impact of mass culture on the regional student audience – emulating screen characters, emotional identification with musical images, and reinterpreting life situations under the influence of read books. A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the combination of quantitative data with substantive qualitative interpretations from students, which allowed for the demonstration of the ambiguous nature of the influence of mass culture – both expanding horizons and shaping stereotypes and inflated life expectations. The practical significance of the work is related to the justification of the necessity for developing media literacy among students and a responsible approach by content creators to the images and values being transmitted.