The article analyzes main trends in the transformation of modern media that influence the subject and methods of media-linguistics. It examines integration of different media platforms and integration of the national mass media into the sphere of global mass media; transformation of structural components of mass media system, and institutionalization of mass media. According to the author, these processes change the traditional model of mass media and causes fundamental changes in the structure of media texts. Among these changes are a significant complication of the semantic load of each text element; responsiveness; and visuality.The article presents the analysis of communication matrix used to construct media texts. It is shown that we talk about such linguistic characteristics of modern media, as a simplification of the content based on the perception of editorial boards target audience; structural-compositional simplicity of the media texts, due to the fact that members of audience must decide on the desirability for themselves certain information in a single glance at it; the transformation of the language of communication, which entailed the removal of a large number of linguistic norms, especially for Internet communications. In particular, incorrect speech transforms from a communication error into the source of creating distinctive author’s individuality.