Indygenizacja treści współczesnych przekazów medialnych

Abstract

Indigenisation of the content of contemporary mass media message

The nature of the mass media functioning in the contemporary culture provides new research opportunities for a cultural anthropologist: the analysis of the message content indigenisation process. Drawing on the writings of Arjun Appadurai, the author speaks about indigenisation and not “localisation”, so as not to associate this phenomenon with a specific spatial location, but to put the emphasis on the locality as an indispensable element of human life. The author analyses the process of the “production of locality” under the influence of the mass media. The audience gives meaning to global content by “reducing” it to a comprehensible, “familiar” image of the world; thus, this content differs locally. As the result of indigenisation, the audience share not only the same information but also imagination. The activity of the audience, which maintains sustained communication interaction with the mass media and among audience participants, as well as the culture space making it possible to “create meanings” of approved content, determine the necessity to regularly “sustain” the process of the “production” of locality, and thus to ensure durability of a specific audience. Thereby, new phenomena emerge in the culture: the “production” of locality leads to the emergence of virtual neighbourhoods, and the fan type prevails in the reception of the content of contemporary mass media messages.