3. Promising directions of political communication development on the Internet.

The most promising directions of political communication development on the Internet are:

1. The use of the Internet as a new electronic media;

2. Political campaigns on the Internet;

3. Creating an Internet-based "electronic government” (McLuhan, 1962; p.432).

Each of these areas will be reviewed more closely.

1. The use of the Internet as a new electronic media.

Internet gained tremendous importance as a favorable environment for the media. For the first time the whole force of the Internet as a tool of mass communication had been shown during the scandal involving the relationships of U.S. President Bill Clinton and his intern Lewinsky in 1998 (Newman, 1999). Internet was the only suitable place for the material publication, representing a typical defamation on the surface (Starr, 1998). The importance of networking media as a channel of political communication in particular, confirmed the study of Kenneth Dautrich and Thomas H. Hartley (Dautrich, Hartley, 1999), conducted in the United States in 1998. According to it, the Internet media is more popular than the information resources of political organizations and politicians. According to Dietrich and Hartley, 61% of respondents had a computer at work or at home. Among them only 5-8% have visited political sites, while visiting news sites was at 12% (Dautrich, Hartley, 1999; p. 33-34). Michail Grigoriev (Григорьев, 1998) highlights several features that give "network publications" a number of advantages over traditional media:

1. A substantial depreciation of the process of creating and distributing online publications and materials;

2. The comparative simplicity of creating online publications;

3. The existence of a developed process of information search on the Internet (Григорьев, 1998; c. 296-297).

In addition, the major advantage of online media is that they are not sensitive to the temporal or spatial restrictions. At any point on the globe and at any time of the day the Internet user can get information from online publications. As a result of serious advantages "even the smallest network publisher, ideally, can get the entire international readership (King, Reddick, 1995; p. 320).

Also necessary to add one more important aspect of the new media, which connected with a high-speed placement of information. The Internet today is perhaps the most expeditious tool in mass media. The delay between receipt of the information and publishing it on the site, ideally takes no more than a few minutes. Spreading in the avalanche mode, the news for an hour gets all the news sites. Let’s illustrate this thesis on the example of Russian-language online media. On April 28, 2002 at 6:15 a.m. helicopter carrying the governor of Krasnoyarsk region Alexander Lebed crashed. According to Yandex.News (http://news.yandex.ru/), information about the tragedy appear in this order on the sites:

1. 08:39 «Эхо Москвы»

2. 08:45 Regions.Ru

3. 08:52 Gazeta.Ru

4. 08:57 BBGRussian.com

5. 09:04 ВолгаИнформ

6. 09:14HTBRu.com

7. 09:17 Финмаркет

8. 09:26 RBC (Бондаренко, 2002; p. 17).

These advantages have led to the emergence of online media, online versions of traditional media. As well it is obvious, that on the media landscape increasingly important role played by news and stories from cyberspace. Interpenetration and mutual influence of traditional media and the Internet have led to the emergence of the so-called “on-line style journalism" (King, Reddick, 1995; p. 325). One of the most serious consequences of the emergence of a new medium is primarily a redistribution of the media audience. For example, the emergence of the Internet in the United States has led to the fact, that the audience of television in prime time during the period between the mid-eighties and the beginning of the new millennium was reduced from 57% to 25% of the total population (Graber, 2001; p. 160).

At the same time, we should not overestimate the features and benefits of the Internet as a medium. They also have serious disadvantages as:

1. High speed of network media can lead to making unintended distortions in the transmitted information. A striking example of this is a false story about the death of Bob Hope, published by Associated Press web site in 1998, after which the death of the star was announced in the U.S. Congress (Seitel, 2001).

2. Level of reliability of the Internet information is much lower than in traditional media. There are several reasons for this situation. One of the most important - legal unregulation of the Internet. Using the imperfection of laws of some countries and the mismatch between the legal approaches, the creators of websites have the ability to violate the fundamental rights of communication scope on the intellectual property protection and use the information without identifying the source and the associated fees (Gringras, 1997).

3. Network resources are often created specifically for distribution compromising materials and gossips. These sites serve as a source of compromising information for subsequent retransmission and animations of traditional media (Cutlip S.M., Center A.M. Broom G.M., 1994).

Thus, the media as independent participants in the process of political communication has successfully absorbed the global computer network. In this case, the most important trend in the modern media has become their convergence on digital technology. Merging Media occurs several ways. First, the technical convergence implies the emergence of the concept of multimedia, that is, a tool of mass communication, which combines all possible media. Second, the convergence of contents and cross media content leads to the fact that it is virtually impossible to distinguish one from the other media. And, finally, the union of media markets gives rise to both national and transnational media empires (Вартанова, 2001). The convergence of modern media as well leads to a radical change of style of mass communication. If the "product of the television era was “infotainment” (information + entertainment), the era of the Internet has created “edutainment” (education + entertainment), then the customized channels of modern information generated “infortorial” (information + editorial)” (Вартанова, 2001).

Moreover, many researchers have noted that increasing possibilities of new information technology is gradually blurring the boundaries between mass and interpersonal communications. Increasing exponentially the number of network communication media, the unresolved legal issues, ease of copying and transfer of low cost deployment of an information resource from one Internet address to another, making the task of control over them formidable (Graber, 1993; p. 410).

An excellent example of network media resistance is given in book of Richard Jackson Harris (Harris, 2004). He tells that after the suppression of the main rebels forces in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994, the battle continued, not only in life but also in cyberspace. Separatist Army of National Liberation (EZLN) transmuted the revolutionary message over the Internet and use e-mail and websites by which it contacted with individuals and society as a whole, bypassing government censorship. Group web-site “Ya-Basta” collected money for the rebels and provided the latest news about the local situation. Subcomandante Marcos - leader of the organization, wrote the communiqué on the computer, built into his truck. These messages then transferred to the disc and went to the website. The use of new technology by rebels has forced the leading Mexican broadcaster, such as “Televisa”, to say about the rebels, as the public learned about them from other sources (Harris, 2004; p. 415).