Ambient Media as a New Trend in Socio-Cultural Space of Russian City

Abstract

This paper explores the reasons for emergence and the features of ambient media in an urban socio-cultural space. Global socio-cultural changes in the contemporary world lead to informational oversaturation, trauma-generating factors and, as a consequence, search for new adaptive mechanisms for an individual to accept the social reality. Ambient media become an unobtrusive advertising communication built into the environment and people’s daily practices in the contemporary society. To analyze ambient media as a new form of communication, the authors applied the method of structural and functional analysis and a systemic approach. The paper argues that ambient media are a breakthrough, new and comparatively young advertising communication disproving traditional views of advertisement types, methods and forms. This is a communication offering innovative patterns of interaction with the consumer and the environment and changing individuals’ notions of a socio-cultural space where they exist. The authors identified the main features of ambient media, as well as the human trauma symptoms that can be caused by communication processes in the contemporary society: It is demonstrated that ambient media as a new type of communication are in all respects integrated into the urban space of European countries and the USA. For contemporary Russia, however, ambient media as a type of communication are a new trend in the socio-cultural space of Russian cities.