Mass culture as a social phenomenon
Mass culture as an integral specific phenomenon of post-industrial society has a complex structure, various functional manifestations and acts in the modern cultural space as one of the most common forms of cultural existence. Mass culture cannot be regarded simply as a pseudo-culture-primitive and standard. This is a complex and contradictory phenomenon: thanks to modern technical means, the masses of people have access to all forms and types of culture. Understanding the mass nature of cultural phenomena and the laws of their distribution leads to the idea of a specific way of functioning of mass culture and culture as a «culture of information», determined by the direct influence of the media on the format of the final cultural products. Today, it is necessary to develop mechanisms for selecting promising and necessary areas of mass culture and to weed out those that lead to the irrevocable degradation of cultural values and samples.