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One of the most important characteristics of media communication in the 21st Century is the active participation of media audience members in creating cultural meanings. The scholarly article deals with a particularly important way media audiences actively participate in media culture and its processes - fandom. The authors aim to reflect on 'the culture of the fans' and its current understanding in the light of media culture and media studies, drawing attention to related cultural phenomena. Given the scope and range of the topic, there are many facts to consider; for instance, new ways of seeing fans as more than just people obsessed with specific celebrities, motion pictures, television shows or musicians, social competence of fans, emotional ties fans develop towards artefacts of media culture, or manifestations of fan culture within the digital environment. The authors work with the basic assumption that fan cultures of the new Millennium are transformed, developed, encouraged and influenced by so-called "institutionalized fandoms" and that media producers nowadays not only support but also actively initiate and encourage fan activities in order to maintain their target audiences' interest and attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living in a transitional time - contemporary television industry is rapidly evolving in order to meet uncertain and ever-changing preferences of the mainstream television audiences. Reacting to advanced technologies and different consumer practices related to mobile devices and digital media, 'traditional' television production companies are turning into hybrid media enterprises. As television is still seen as the most influential medium on the global scale, these development tendencies shape today's media culture as a whole - i.e. media production (and distribution) processes and reception practices alike. The aim of the text is to offer a complex set of theoretical knowledge on so-called post-television era and its cultural implications. The author discusses the contemporary television culture in the light of the latest theoretical findings by renowned scholars and works with an assumption that there are various different mechanisms through which the television audiences of today express their feelings and expectations. Some of these reception practices are reflected on in detail - the author's aim is to focus on the current theoretical framework in order to better understand the cultural implications of the television industry in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author analyzes in her study a process she calls carnivalization of media production in the society of post-millennium era. She shows anti-intellectualism as an indicator of world image in which traditional moral and educational principles are pushed to the edge of society's interest. She claims that based on the transformation of media production paradigm the hedonistic approach is superior to the creative principle and becomes a base for creating media reality affected by hyper-consumerism, antiintellectualism, juvenilization, narcissism or extreme individualism. The author uses hermeneutic method tightly connected to critical reflection of socio-cultural reality and also standard methods of logical analysis. Based on them she defines basic terminology, attributes and tendencies of late modern society's habitus, formulates definition frames of researched phenomena and processes and provides the reader with typological features of carnivalization process of current media production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]