Media violence in the information society in the context of media anthropology

Abstract

 The article discusses media violence as special case of deviant manifestations of the individual and collective social body. It’s stated that in the late 20th century emphasis had shifted from the sociological and ethnographic works towards a more wide format of a man and the media studies. According to the author, it was caused by the forming of the media anthropology as human­oriented paradigm of the postmodern media. The place of media violence in problematic field of the media anthropology field is defined. It’s considered as a result of the somatic transformations in the media and the cultural space of the information society. Mass media have been products of culture and social life and at the same time factors of the identity’s construction. Such characteristic properties require more conscious of morality and responsibility. Media need to understand and represent new modes of physicality / spirituality and rationality / irrationality in the media and socio­political life. Due to weakening or decline of spiritual and intellectual component in the psycho­somatic existence threatens to turn society into collective grotesque body, and media that exploit these social strain, into media spectacle, distorted and grotesque in the worst sense of the word. In this article, the method of anthropological reduction, and elements of cultural­historical and structural­functional analysis have been used.