PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS OF THE MEDIA INFORMATION REPRESENTATION IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE OF THE XXI CENTURY

The contemporary media world of the first quarter of the XXIst century aims not only to highlight the diverse human activities, but also to contribute to their further development, thereby acting as an indicator of the evolution of human consciousness. The modern media have a powerful influence in shaping people's lives and they are also influential in the way they facilitate the spread of culture and lifestyle. People have come to depend on the media world for information, education and entertainment, and in doing so the individuals let the media affect the important aspects of their lives. Hence, in terms of functionality the present-day media can be compared with a sort of the information matrix that purposefully and deliberately penetrates into human nature while dissolving and transforming it from inside. And therefore, the principle objective of the media as a conductor of the information policy is to continuously influence the consciousness and personal experience of the individual [1]. That is why, our study focuses on analyzing such a scientific phenomenon as psychological mechanisms of the mass media information presentation which are based on cognitive, affective and behavioral spheres of the human consciousness. Special psychological mechanisms questionnaires and surveys were designed and conducted to estimate the level of influence of each psychological mechanism of the media information presentation by interviewing Russian students in three higher education institutions: RUDN University, Moscow State Pedagogical University (Moscow); and South Ural State University of Humanities and Education (Chelyabinsk). University students' media perception and everyday experience were used as predictor and criterion variables in a series of quantitative and qualitative analyses. The findings managed to show the interrelation of the psychological mechanisms of the media information presentation in the present-day virtual reality and their increasing influence on the human consciousness and people's perception of the modern social environment.