MEDIA FREEDOM AS A CONTEMPORARY PHENOMENON: A HISTORICAL ASPECT

Leisure should be interpreted as an independent sphere of social practices, where rest, communication, cultural consumption and production of meanings are combined. The interdisciplinarity of the phenomenon explains the variability of definitions: different approaches shift the emphasis between sociological, psychological and culturological aspects. The expansion of the leisure industry and the growth of the role of cultural practices in everyday life caused the evolution of leisure: social changes and technological progress made free time more diverse and structured. In the twentieth century, a significant factor in this shift was the media as an institutional and technological mechanism: they rhythmized everyday life through regular formats and program grids, offered a standardized cultural product, fixed typical scenarios for spending time and served as a platform for the promotion of entertainment. In this dimension, the media gradually acquired the status of infrastructure through which leisure practices are organized. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, there was a transition to the digital phase: the Internet, mobile devices, and social networks transferred a significant part of leisure to platforms and changed the ways of organizing free time – in particular, through network interaction and recommendatory mechanisms of services. In this context, the mediatization of leisure can be defined as the penetration of media into everyday leisure practices, when media flows set the rhythm, time frames, and scenarios for spending free time. The article examines the state of reflection of the outlined processes of mediatization of leisure in foreign and Ukrainian scientific literature. It has been established that, firstly, the digital transformation of leisure is unanimously recognized as a key trend of this social institution, and secondly, scientists speak of at least four interrelated, but not identical, phenomena associated with the digitalization of leisure: mediatization of leisure, virtualization of leisure, media leisure, and commercialization of leisure