Mass Culture: Transformations of Social Phenomena and Contents of the Concept

The article states that the concept of "mass culture", widely used in humanities, is not keeping pace with the development of the phenomenon itself. Mass culture is a direct result of media development and media transformations. Changes in mass culture functioning patterns in contemporary society affected its properties and manifestations – standardization, kitsch, "mass man" appearance, lower taste indulgence, an unavoidable opposition to high culture – previously considered as its fundamental characteristics. The recent Russian cultural studies not coincidentally tend to avoid the term "mass culture". The logic of the emergence of the concept reveals the need in revising the very functions of mass culture. Otherwise, according to the authors, it is impossible to find effective theoretical tools, which can grasp significant transformations of socio-cultural reality. Now, mass culture is obviously a social communication mechanism and it should not be reduced to its content.