Danylenko S. Openness and Transparency of the Authorities: the Mechanism of Regulation of Interaction with Mass Media at the Regional Level

The dissertation proposes, first, the solution of the urgent scientific problem regarding the theoretical revealing of the regulation mechanism of interaction between the public authorities and the media at the regional level while ensuring openness and transparency, and, secondly, the development of recommendations on its introduction into the practical activities of public authorities. The first part of the thesis analyses various scientific approaches to the formation of communicative paradigms in the context of the information society's development. It is proved that under the contemporary conditions the effectiveness of public administration depends on the degree of implementation of democratic principles of openness and transparency in the activities of the public authorities. It is revealed that the development of the new information and communication models and the convergence of the multimedia technologies with the traditional media have changed the accustomed system of interaction between the public authorities and the mass media. The second chapter analyzes and discloses current legal acts regulating the openness and transparency of public authorities, proposes innovative management tools related to the development of legal mechanisms for ensuring information openness and transparency of public authorities, as well as organizational activities of administrative structures in the process of setting up information interaction at the local level; generalizes foreign experience in using legal and economic mechanisms of media functioning, which promote the informing of the society, public control over the activity of the authorities, as well as the development of adequate managerial tools that will effectively regulate the status of subjects of information interaction. It is necessary to increase the level of the existing regulatory acts on openness and transparency of the public authorities' implementation, to introduce the unified standards and forms on the coverage of their activities in the media. Contradictions and conflicts in the sphere of cooperation between the public authorities and the media can and must be resolved by the development of adequate administrative tools of the subjects of the system of information interaction and participants of information relations. Organizational transformations should be implemented according to the agreed program, which is formalized as the Concept of information management of the public authority. It is determined that state regulation of the media sphere at the regional and national levels is carried out in the following strategic areas: the equalization of the national and regional levels of mass media: the balance between the state and business-oriented media is necessary for each of them, the main condition for the efficient functioning of the media at the regional and national levels is determined; financial support for the local media, which is objectively incapable to function as a business entity; improvement of the regulatory framework for ensuring the full economic existence of the media, which have the status of commercial enterprises. In the third part of the thesis a situational analysis of the interaction of regional authorities with the media was conducted taking the case of the Odessa Oblast State Administration; the process of technological level improvement in information openness of public authorities, which is conditioned by modern processes in our country and demands fundamentally new approaches to the development of information resources is analyzed; the conceptual approaches to the formation of a dialogue model of interaction between the public authorities and the mass media are revealed, which will promote the openness and transparency of the authorities in Ukraine; the recommendations on the main directions of improvement of information interaction between the public authorities and the mass media of Ukraine are developed.