1. - Latvijas Universitāte

50 Pe d a g o ģ i j a un s k o l o t ā j u i z g l ī t ī b a
Summary
Changes in the mass media environment affect the social habits of people. Social
mass media instruments have a significant impact on deeply-rooted human behaviors
and beliefs. At present, shopping online is an essential change in behavior, and now it
is rather typical to have a PC and a TV-set in one room switched on at the same time,
flashing different messages to adults, children, and adolescents. A huge portion of our
everyday life is devoted to the mass media. Time spent in front of television or in virtual
world shows how easily we can travel, take part in the events around the globe and feel
the effects of presence, identify ourselves with the most frequently used media whose
content we like. The individual’s life situation and convergence of personal interests
are the determining factors, which are affected by the social environment, education,
and self-upbringing experience. The capital of popular culture promotes an individual’s
self-socialization with the intermediation of the media and influences children, teenager
and adolescent identities and formation of behavioral patterns. Mass media usage
patterns within the upbringing process are worthy of a number of research topics:
parents’ media usage competence, their responsibility for the values and traditions of
the family, transformations of educational interaction in the family environment, the
growing influence of media usage patterns on the upbringing process by actualizing
self-socialization of an individual.
The environment of the information society and in the life of every individual
is a new and significant social phenomenon. This paper analyzes how this complex
phenomenon transforms the upbringing and education process today. In order to
recognize media usage patterns and their role in the modern family, the author explores
the potential of the media in the upbringing process.
Based on communication theory and research on theoretical and practical aspects
of the media in the upbringing process, the paper puts forward the following research
questions:
• What are the dominating media usage patterns in the family?
• How do these patterns affect education and upbringing in the family?
• What transformations did the upbringing and socialization process undergo
within the context of the media usage?
The author explores the media-constructed identity and the development aspects of
youth culture. The social reality actualizes media usage patterns of children, as well as
socialization processes and upbringing in the family. The modern family experiences
continous qualitative changes. Thus, families must constantly adjust; previous views of
what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong are not relevant anymore.
Successful functioning in the environment of perpetual change becomes the priority.
Conduct of culture accepted within the family and with friends is often the decisive
factor in forming the dependence based on conditional behavior. If parents do not want
their children to replace parents with modern technology, they have to devote sufficient
time to their children. Advertising and television is becoming a powerful agent of
socialization for children: television constructs reality, focusing on consumers’ diverse
needs: the need for entertainment, lack of time, abandonment, the need for information,
inquiry, the need for attention, personal relationships, self-knowledge, satisfaction,
self-affirmation.