Protest and Mass Media as varieties of communication: the problem of semantic interconnection

The article contains an analysis of the phenomenon of protest based on the conceptual features of the system-communicative approach. The author makes an attempt to express the essential characteristics of protest as a form of social communication, which represents the mobilization of “society against society”, using the method of socio-philosophical analysis. This analysis raises the question of the potential of social networks and the Internet as a tool of protest activity, due to the close dependence of protest on the mass media as a special functional system. The author concludes that despite the wide reach of social media users, this resource is a weak mechanism for protest self-organization.