CULTURAL ASPECTS OF THE POST-SOVIET REGIONAL PRINT MEDIA

DOI:10.24412/2470-1262-2022-2-119-125

Abstract:

Media, as a cultural and social text, defines the technological, economic, spatial and cultural criteria of the information society. Culture, as a discourse, creates the public mood and shapes its taste through specific types of communication. Media, like culture, demonstrates its goals through the use of verbal, acoustic and visual icons / images. Thus, culture is like a performance. It is inspiration for the media in the ongoing process of the world development. The object of the research is the cultural narrative of the Georgian media in the late 1980s and early 1990s. More specifically, the article deals with the transformation of the existing trends in the Adjara region and the process of formation of a new reality. The focus is on the factor of social change – trauma (Shtompka, 2004), inasmuch as the difficulties of the post-Soviet period entered the Georgian media agenda with particularly painful events. As we see, the media of that time actively used literary texts, poetry and prose rubrics. Reiteration of certain fragments and emphasis on certain facts aimed at uniting the society around common challenges and recurring tragedies. The cultural codes accumulated in the Georgian society clearly fitted into cultural meanings. The new trend established in the regional media, combined different types of journalistic material reflecting current processes and objective reality. This trend, like critical realism, aimed to lustrate the vicious sides of society for the reader. It should be noted that each style and sub-style of journalistic work had an informative, analytical and artistic-publicist direction, more precisely – genres. Analysis of the regional papers of 1980-1990s showed the role of the media in Adjara region – how it tried to transform the reality and form a new reality in Post-Soviet Georgia. We have observed the importance of literary texts and publicist letters in the process of rethinking new data. The regional governmental publication “Soviet Adjara,” published in 1980-1990, clearly reflected the content of the regional official print media policy, public sentiments, the disintegration of the common fabric of values and the beginning of inevitable changes. Regardless of the format of the print editions, they still reflect certain cultural aspects and the combination of the media texts is a cultural characteristic of the given epoch.

Keyword: media, culture, region, texts, narrative

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Information about the authors:

Shamilishvili Inga (Batumi, Georgia) – Candidate of Philological Sciences; PhD; Associate Professor at the Department of Georgian Philology at Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Batumi (Georgia); a participant of several grant projects, including Grant project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria “Sharing Bulgarian experience for the Capacity building of Batumi Shota Rustaveli State university”; USAID- Basic Education Program; U.S Embassy Democracy Commission Small Grant Program and Journalism research Center project “Learn Journalism Online; Grant agreement of the University of Ruse for Erasmus+ staff mobility for teaching between Program and Partner Countries; Has completed an internship in Media Education Program funded by the U.S. Department of State, administered by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy – in Chicago, USA; has participated in 20 international conferences and published 20 research papers.

E-mail: inga_shamilishvili@bsu.edu.ge

Gabinashvili Irma (Batumi, Georgia) – PHD; was a member of Digital Humanities, an International Doctoral Program at Goethe University Frankfurt; works at Information Center on NATO and EU, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, a representative of the Adjara Regional Bureau; engaged in pedagogical activity at Batumi State University as an invited senior teacher, where she leads educational program “Communication-Presentation Skills and Abilities” and innovative educational course “Strategic Communication and Policy”. She has completed various certificate and educational courses and was involved in various international projects; the author of 7 research papers on Media and Culture Policy Studies. E-mail: Irma.gabinashvili@bsu.edu.ge

For citation: Shamilishvili Inga, Gabinashvili Irma, (2022).

Cultural Aspects of the Post-Soviet Regional Print Media.

Cross-Cultural Studies: Education and Science, Vol. 7, Issue 2, (2022), pp. 119-125 (in USA)

Manuscript received: 10/04/2022 – Accepted for publication: 31/05/2022