World of Media-2020. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies. Issue №4.

The issue was published in 2020 by the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

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Kampes, C.F.,  Brentel, I. (2020) The German online media market: Online-born information offerings and their audiences – A shift towards digital inequalities? // World of Media. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, 4: 5-34.

M edia market and media-related inequalities in society have been intensively discussed in academia. Yet it is unclear if the online media market environment reproduces existing inequalities, smoothens them or even creates new ones among media offerings and users, potentially reinforcing a social divide. In this study, we test to which extent inequalities found are truly digital-induced or reproduced from offl ine context using the German Longitudinal IntermediaPlus 2014-2016 dataset and descriptive statistics. Based on an integrative analysis we combine the perspectives of German media offerings (supply side) and media audiences (demand side). We rely on the comparison of the genre portfolios of offl ine-originated and online-born media offerings to evaluate inequalities in the German online media market, based on past research, assuming that offl ine-originated media providers primarily replicate their strategic product portfolio from the offl ine media market to the online media market. Using the media providers’ origin, we identify a typology of offl ine-originated and onlineborn media offerings. For inequalities in media use and potentially resulting social divides we refer to research on the knowledge gap hypothesis and digital divide studies. For 2016, we found German online-born media offerings having a thematically contradictory, entertainment-focused product portfolio that balances existing offl ine-originated inequalities. However, it provokes a ‘silent’ de-polarization, with political offerings almost exclusively offl ine-originated evolving into a niche market on the supply side. On the demand side, we found stronger inequalities in the use of offl ine-originated online media offerings by gender, education and socio-economic status. These mainly mirror the inequalities known from the offl ine context. For age, we found uniquely digital inequalities in online media use.

Key words: Digital inequalities, German online media offerings and use, online-born offerings, knowledge gap, digital divide

Received: 12.10.20

Accepted: 12.12.20

ARTICLE

Tolokonnikova, A., Dunas, D., Kulchitskaya, D. (2020) Social media and adolescents: Possibilities for satisfying psychological needs. Results of in-depth interviews with Russian pupils and university students // World of Media. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, 4: 36-55.

The article examines the possibilities for satisfying adolescents’ basic psychological needs in a digital environment. The study is based on a series of in-depth interviews with youth representatives with profound knowledge of digital technologies that are strongly integrated into their daily routine (a total of 20 interviews). The sample group included school pupils and university students from Moscow, Rostovon-Don and Nizhny Novgorod aged from 10 to 19 (born in 1999-2008). According to the most common childhood periodization in Russia by Daniel Elkonin (1989), the chosen age range allows to fully cover the period of adolescence, as well as early juvenility. This simplifi es the task of matching schoolchildren’s motives when addressing the media with their basic psychological needs. The analysis of the collected data indicated that such basic needs of adolescents as desire to obtain knowledge, pursuit of communication and grouping with peers, interest to ‘try on’ various social roles, formation of one’s identity, etc., today can be fully satisfi ed within the digital environment. This makes certain Internet resources (in particular, social networks and instant messengers) especially attractive to the young audience, as the main media and communication platforms for the modern youth.

Key words: Digital generation, digital youth, psychological needs, satisfaction of needs

Received: 23.10.20

Accepted: 04.12.20

Lopes da Silva, A. (2020) Theoretical interrelationships between television studies and excess in media discourse // World of Media. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, 4: 56-78.

This article aims to bring fi ve possible views on the theoretical and compound relationships between excess and television. Therefore, the hyperbolic excess, semiotic excess, stylistic excess, bodily excess, and palimpsestic excess are brought into the discussion as combinatorial aesthetic modalities that permeate the TV media discourse. More than just systematizing the debate on such theoretical combinations, what is concluded in this work is that television is based on an ontological vision where the excess is understood as a qualitative discursive production. Consequently, the excess is present in the television language and is an intrinsic part of its form as a medium of social and cultural communication. 

Key words: Excess, discourse, language, style, television

Received: 14.10.20

Accepted: 09.12.20