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FMMC [pdf, 82 K]

About FMMC [pdf, 844 K]

Employment rate of FMMC graduades [pdf, 274 K]

International affairs [pdf, 217 K]

Photographic atelier [pdf, 6.9 M]

Student activities [pdf, 8.3 M]

The Roles of the Faculty and Its Mission in the University System in Slovakia

Thanks to its university life in the past and present, Trnava has been one of the cities which have shaped and influenced the young generation and new perspectives. The University of SS. Cyril and Methodius continues in this tradition and its existence has made it an irreplaceable institution. 

During its existence the Faculty of Mass Media Communication (hereinafter FMMC) has achieved a fixed position in the system of Slovak university institutions, it has made many contacts to universities and faculties abroad and it undergoes a permanent and dynamic development.

FMMC has had an irreplaceable position in the structure of Slovak universities and colleges. The students´ education is aimed at professional activity in media and marketing-media area. FMMC is the only institution in Slovakia dealing with a complex preparation for these difficult and socially important areas of our every day lives in the system of constituted universities and colleges and in this way it prepares highly qualified professionals.

For the university study concept at the FMMC the complex nature of communication activity in mass media has been the cornerstone and determining factor.

A distant relationship between the FMMC and other faculties can be found in relations to philosophical faculties (in the study programme journalism, marketing communication), with faculties of economy (in specialization management, marketing, marketing communication), with film and television faculty at the Academy of Performing Arts (in the study programme Documentary film, Production) and with some other study programmes of a technical kind (Informatics).

The education of a university qualified employee in the mass media field requires knowledge taught separately at five universities. It regards courses from the area of human, art, natural, law and economy science. The pedagogical staff is fully aware of the necessary internal coherence of the taught subjects. Therefore, the stress in education is laid upon the integration of cultural-value area (philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, semiotics, communicology, sociology, psychology, culturology), technical and technological (functions and the principles of functioning of devices used in media field, technologies for creating and transmitting semantic contents) as well as upon creative artistic and economic area.

The outlined content uniqueness of the education and teaching at FMMC cultivates the university student with a creative invention. It demands from the student to acquire and use in practice the theoretical knowledge with and engineer and manager regard to their use. It also presumes the skills in using the technical and technological means of creating and spreading the mass media contents via electronic media.

The main mission of faculty

The main mission and objective of the present-day FMMC is to educate in the Christian principles, national ideals and in accordance with the democratic and humanistic principles of the Slovak Republic, Europe and the world of university-educated professionals for the mass media and marketing communication field in public life and civic society. The faculty as a part of university takes part in fulfilling its main goals in the specified area of knowledge expressed in its name, it develops study specializations and performs several study programmes in these specializations and in accordance with its aim it carries out research, development, artistic and other creative activities.

The lack of graduated professionals specialized in journalism or media lead to a gradual formation of condition needed to introduce this area to other Slovak universities. The offer of study programmes at the faculty was an answer to the needs of the society, which is documented also by an intensive interest of students applying to enlist. Their number exceeds the current possibilities of the faculty. It was the University of SS. Cyril and Methodius where the first faculty of this kind was established. Without exaggeration, this event can be compared to 1952 when the university education of journalists was entrenched.

The main field of interest for FMMC is the communicology (science of communication) researching the nature and features of media activities and the products of media creative activities implemented in traditional but more and more innovative, non-traditional media. Regarding the processes, it reflects on the functioning of structured system of the current mass communication means (journalistic) and updated or other contents (artistic, didactic, etc.)

It pays attention to mutual relations and interaction of its elements and layers of effect, it studies the nature and preconditions of communicability of communicated contents, forms, ways, procedures, genres and methods of their interpretations, the ways of increasing the effectiveness of mass media contents and many other relevant questions. In the process of its development and founding, influenced by the objective changes in the development of its institutional and institutionalized basis, the communicology has defined its scope, crystallized its methods and a complex system of knowledge has been created.

The process of founding the science of communication took place simultaneously with the development of university education of media workers and journalists as well as with the development of scientific and research basis. The objects to its research are the media contents (journalist or non-journalistic) in press, broadcasting, television and in new media perceived as creating complexes and individualities in a broader social context: media institutions, means (media) spreading the utterances, by their content and ways of depiction distinctive, considering also the process of spreading and particularities of their recipients (audience).  

The used methods of socio-scientific research match the complexity of the subjects researched. Some of the research procedures elaborated in the media content research (e.g. the method of content analysis) make up an element of socio-scientific methodology. Even though the media literature is examined by the methods of several scientific disciplines, the knowledge is integrated in the system of communicology. It has basic and applied; we can say technological research, developed theory, history and self-reflective criticism.

The theory analyzes predominantly the particularities of mass communication as a special kind of social communication, in the process of which diverse current and updated contents form the communicator to the recipient are transmitted through technical means, and sometimes – in case of wider and deeper scope, it researches also the processes preceding or following the mass communication, also the bounds to more global communication context, the communication background including.  

The general theory focuses on the features of mass communication without regard to medium performing it. Specialized theories deal with contents mediation in press, broadcasting, television and other means (the Internet). 

In the history framework the relations of mass media communication in national (state) and international (world) scale are researched, the particularities in different development levels are explained, the genesis is observed and the timeless and period formats of creative procedures of individual and group communicators are discussed.

These simplified and briefly described objectives are followed by the criticism of theories (as a science of science), concepts and communicology history creating reliable preconditions for a permanent self-evaluation of the study field. An integral part of communicology is also the sub disciplines with obviously didactic focus dealing with specification of general theorems of the discipline, with the ways of communication processes and communication skills cultivation (e.g. theory of editing, methodology and techniques of media work, etc.)

The look at the world situation, mainly in the developed countries with developed communication structures shows that the discussed scientific field of study (considering the number of professionals, institutions and schools) in an unprecedented expansion. It has its reputation in the scientific community and its products (theoretical and pedagogical work and practical advice) are widely accepted. The revitalization of social sciences taking place in Slovakia requires the offer of education in all three levels of study and in this way it creates more positive situation in the area of international cooperation and scientific workers preparation.  The Faculty of Mass Media Communication at the University of SS. Cyril and Methodius has all three levels of education accredited and by its activities reinforces the conditions for systematic, coordinated and cooperative theoretical and research work at Slovak institutions of the same or similar kind.