Issue

Content:

• Sociology of Journalism

  «Socio-Political Segment of Media Consumption of Modern Youth Living in the Saratov Region as a Factor in the Formation of Political Attitudes and Preferences»

  Within contemporary scholarship, various aspects of media consumption of the “digital” generation are actively studied. However, there is still not enough research on the relationship between young people’s typical media practices and their inherent political ideas, values, and attitudes. This article is aimed at partially filling this gap by revealing a connection between the kinds of mass media and media sources young Russians use to get information about everything that is going on, on the one hand, and what they feel about politics, which ideologies they share and how they see their country’s future, on the other. The empirical data of the study contain the results of an online survey of more than five hundred young people (from 14 to 35 years old) living in the Saratov region, and three focus group interviews in which 36 people took part. Some of the results obtained are brought into correlation with the conclusions made by Russian Public Opinion Research Center and Public Opinion Foundation specialists. Among other things, it is confirmed that many young people do not trust the sources from which they receive information. It is also found that the attitude of respondents to ideologies and various options for future political structure of Russia depends on the source of information they use.
  Keywords: media practice, media consumption, youth, political preferences, mass media, Saratov region
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.334
  Alexander A. Kazakov, Alexander A. Vilkov, Nikolai I. Shestov 3

• «Internet Usage of Primary School-Aged Children»

  The paper presents the results of a survey devoted to identifying the online media usage of primary school-aged children (8–10 years old) living in Moscow. All in all, 142 questionnaires were analysed. As a result, it was found that the children predominantly watch the entertainment content created for kids and adolescents. In the meantime, the desire to communicate in online spaces starts to emerge, but so far it is mostly conditioned by necessity as all communication with parents, teachers, classmates and the like takes place on the Internet. If the children of this age do not have a gadget with Internet access, they will prefer to engage in activities traditional for their age group – they will play, walk, do creative work, read books.
  Keywords: children’s media consumption, developmental psychology, child development, children’s media audience, primary school-aged children, the Internet, new media
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.3559
  Mayya I. Davletshina 35
• New Media

  «Mediatization and Demediatization in the Digital Environment: the Case of K. Bogomolov’s Conservative Manifesto “The Abduction of Europa 2.0.”»

  The article is devoted to the theory of mediatization of local newsworthy events with value-political content in a digital society and an empirical study of the processes of mediatization-demediatization in relation to a particular case, namely the reaction of social network users to the publication of the Manifesto "The Abduction of Europa 2.0." by Russian theatre and film director Konstantin Bogomolov (February 10, 2021). The authors show the transformation of the processes of political agenda setting on social networks in the conditions of the expansion of influencers and traffic monopolists of various scales. They discuss the category of mediatization, highlight the levels of mediatization, and show the possibility of implementing mediatization processes at the micro level. The concept of a cultural and aesthetic incident as a reason for mediatization is introduced, the factors influencing the mediatization potential of such an incident are specified. The concept of demediatization is introduced and its characteristics at the macro and micro levels are described. Empirical verification of hypotheses about ontology and tools of local demediatization is carried out on the example of network discussions around K. Bogomolov's Manifesto "The Abduction of Europa 2.0." The study shows how the network community transferred the incident discussed to the trajectory of demediatization, blurring the value narrative and bringing down the discussion to the mundane level. The empirical basis was the original text of the Manifesto, published on the website of Novaya Gazeta and distributed on social networks Instagram/Facebook/Twitter (blocked in Russia by court order). YouTube social network users' comments were analyzed for the period from 10.02.2021 to 10.03.2021. The processing of the material collected by the hashtags #Bogomolov #Manifest with the help of the continuous sampling method was carried out by lexico-semantic analysis of the identified value narratives in posts and comments and a comparative analysis of the semantics of the identified narratives.
  Keywords: manifesto, political agenda, influencers, culture, mediatization, demediatization, social networks
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.6086
  Dmitry P. Gavra, Elena V. Bykova 60

• «Characteristic Features of the Approaches of Russian Media to Working with Content in Their Groups on Social Networks»

  The importance of social networks for the dissemination of media materials greatly increased in the 2010s. As a matter of fact, social networks began to be listed as the main sources of traffic to media websites and as the primary sources of information for the audience. While in 2010 the traffic to media websites from social networks was around 1%, in 2014 it was already more than 10%, and in subsequent years it continued to grow, reaching 48% in 2017. Now, almost all media outlets in some way face the question of representing their content on social networks. The success of media itself depends on understanding which approaches to working with media content on social networks should be taken. The study sets a goal to answer the following questions: 1) did the media outlets increase their number of posts on social networks? 2) what are the key features of media outlets’ approaches to working with content on social networks? The analysis reveals some distinctive features such as the prevailing theme of accidents in the messages and the negative sentiment of the posts, the active use of media content (illustrations and videos), and the growing number of posts using videos and emojis. A large empirical base was used for the analysis, namely more than 200 thousand Russian media posts on social networks such as VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook* and Twitter*.
  Keywords: social network, media, content, topics of posts
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.87105
  Elena D. Pershina 87
• Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

  «Principles of TASS Editorial Policy in Dealing with Regional Information»

  This article comprehensively examines the concept of editorial policy and proposes a definition covering many aspects of the concept at the level of conception and its practical implementation. In a case study of the TASS news agency, the article investigates the editorial policy in dealing with news from the Russian Federation regions. By employing an approach based on semi-structured interviews with the agency’s managers, the author of the article identifies the basic principles of the regional direction of editorial policy, as well as their impact on the organization of the production processes, and predicts the risks associated with their introduction. The study showed that at the national level TASS sees its mission in integrating regional news into the federal agenda and revealing the information potential of the regions, which may be treated as a sign of state information policy. The agency declares the priority of national interests among the basic principles of its editorial policy, understanding it primarily as information support for the so-called strategic topics, which creates the risk of content "bureaucratization". At the same time, in developing the concept of its editorial policy, the agency considers itself independent and has not experienced pressure from its owner – the government of the Russian Federation.
  Keywords: news agency, editorial policy, regional agenda
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.106131
  Ekaterina A. Slabkovskaya 106
• History of Journalism

  «The Illustrated Magazine Dobryak Published by Prince V. P. Meshchersky in the Context of Conservative Journalism Development in the Second Half of the 19th Century»

  The article examines the problem-thematic complex and genre originality of Prince V. P. Meshchersky’ unique publishing project – the satirical illustrated weekly Dobryak, published in 1882. The originality of this publication is accounted for by the fact that it is actually the only example of Russian conservative journalism turning to the genre of political satire and satirical graphics. Despite the increased attention of researchers to V. P. Meshchersky’s publishing activity, the Dobryak magazine has not been specially studied so far. The study reveals the evolution of the publishing concept of the magazine. In the first period, the author of the article points to an intensive search for new forms and a recourse to the experience of the best examples of Russian political satire of the Catherine era, as well as an abundance of satirical graphics; later on there was a gradual decrease in the number of illustrations and a shift in focus to the textual part simultaneously with a change in the general tone of the magazine, namely the transition from political polemics and satire to politically neutral fiction and illustrative graphics. The reasons for these changes were the censorship circumstances, the lack of authors and artists among the editorial staff and the special aspects of the publisher’s literary reputation. The study also analyzes the specifics of understanding the traditional motifs of the doctrine of Russian conservatism in the form of satirical graphics.
  Keywords: Dobryak, V. P. Meshchersky, satirical illustrated weekly, caricature
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.132151
  Olga S. Kruglikova 132

• «The Branches of the Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok Newspaper (1869–1892) in Volga Cities»

  This article examines a little-known episode from the history of the provincial press: the opening of the Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok newspaper’s branches in Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod in the late 1880s, which played there the role of an oppositional media body. The introduction substantiates the goals and objectives of the article, provides information about the history of the newspaper, which passed the following stages: (1) a newspaper for business communities (2) a universal socio-political newspaper (3) a mass-circulation liberal newspaper. The literature review includes works that highlight the trends in the development of provincial journalism in Russia in the 19th century, as well as works in which various aspects of the history of the Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok were studied. Further the author of the article examines in detail the work of the newspaper’s branches and its resident correspondents in Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod and Simbirsk. This article aims at studying the interaction of journalists from several adjacent provinces of the Volga-Kama region. The article restores a significant gap in the history of Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok (1868–1892), one of the main newspapers in Kazan, whose importance in its best years went far beyond the borders of the province. For all its significance, however, not a single special monograph has been devoted to this newspaper so far.
  Keywords: Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok, 1880s, Nizhny Novgorod, Simbirsk, Ufa, newspaper
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.152169
  Airat Sh. Bik-Bulatov 152

• «The Photocor Newspaper (1931–1933): Publication History, Structure and Content»

  This article reconstructs the history of the Photocor newspaper, analyzes its structural and content specifics. This unique publication of the early 1930s organized with the participation of the Society “For Proletarian Cinema and Photography” and Soyuzfoto was addressed to a narrow target audience distinguished by professional characteristics, namely to photojournalists. Its circulation fluctuated between 6 000–25 000 copies. In historiography, Photocor has not previously been given due attention, which justifies – regarding the international interest in the photographic culture of the early USSR – the relevance of the study and testifies to its novelty. The newspaper might be referred to the group of special purpose industry publications, and this determined its structural and content features. The author studied 1449 publications from 51 issues (1931–1933) and codified them into 14 thematic groups, analyzing distribution by groups. The following groups proved to be the richest in materials: “The photocor movement in the USSR”, “Activities of individual photographers”, “Development of the photographic industry and photo trade”, which corresponds to the guidelines of the editorial board. More than half of the advertisements are self-advertisements: announcements of publications and the so-called phototrips, calls to subscribe to the newspaper and the Photocor Library book supplement. This, together with a large number of editorial materials about the activities of the Photocor newspaper, testifies to a certain expansiveness of the editorial policy, the desire to struggle for its readers, establish trusting relationships with them, as well as relative transparency of the editorial activities.
  Keywords: Photocor, Society “For Proletarian Cinema and Photography”, Soyuzphoto, photoсor movement, mass media, Soviet press, photo agency, photojournalism, 1930s
  DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.3.2022.170191
  Maria A. Romakina 170