Department of sociology of culture and mass communication exists since the establishment of the Institute of sociology of National Academy of science of Ukraine. The first head of department became the prominent Ukrainian sociologist, philosophy doctor, Professor Anatoliy Ruchka. Since 2007 the department has been chaired by Professor Natalia Kostenko, PhD.

The department focuses at comprehensive research of social and cultural development, using quantitative and qualitative analysis of sociological data. Since the nineties the staff of the department studies social and cultural differentiation of the modern Ukrainian society, that provides a controversial influence on the social transformation, being impacted by the structural and status determination, global and local cultural factors, i.a. groups' and individual cultural preferences. Personal involvement into culture is researched through demographic and status features in accordance with values and meanings as well as subcultural segmentation of the population, cultural identities and media consumption typologies, social and cultural dynamics of the last decades. The department carries over the extra-curricular researches aimed at the values domain, modern media, communication and cultural practices, cooperates with cultural institutions and non-governmental organisations, represents its research results through mass media.