Journalism in the Digital World

With the entry of humanity into the stage of digital development, all social institutions are undergoing profound changes. Journalism as an institution that arose as a result of information technology development in the XVI–XVII centuries, as a result of the digital revolution, is losing its dominant role in the new media space. The main core of the media system’s existence, its institutional nature, is undergoing signifi cant changes in the context of increasing technological convergence and the development of the economic phenomenon of platform capitalism. The appeal to the problem is actualized by the need for updates in substantiating the ontological and functional characteristics of the institutionality of journalism in the context of rapid digitalization of the social environment. The purpose of the article is to study journalism as a transforming social institution in a competitive institutional environment. The methodology of the article is based on a dialectical approach in understanding the current state of the Institute of journalism, considering the existing contradictions and collisions as a moment in progressive development. One of the methods of analysis chosen is the direction of institutionalism, which is relevant to the sphere of functioning of social institutions – institutional logic. The system-structural and system-functional methods are used as an analysis tool. The results of the study indicate the identifi ed ontological and functional changes in the state of the Institute of journalism. It is established that the loss of the status of a monopoly entity by journalism is caused not only by the impact of exogenous factors: a technological explosion, the emergence of new institutional and non-institutional subjects but also endogenous ones: structural changes, as well as a crisis of normative and value foundations. The novelty of the article is revealed in the understanding of journalism as a convergent ontological model, which forms the basis of its changing institutional status at the digital stage of its development. Keywords: journalism as a social institution, institutional approach, institutional and non-institutional subjects, institutional logic, media system, functional complex, digital platform

Digital divide · ICTS · Information and Communications Technology · Journalism · Media studies · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Law · Media Studies and Communication