Youth as Media Audience: Theoretical Approaches in Russian Media Studies

Abstract

The article analyzes and systematizes theoretical approaches to youth segment of Russian media audience in the academic studies in the period 1960s to present. The authors estimate the dynamics of the scientific thought, and describe its national peculiarities. They also propose a periodization of studies of youth media audience. The study is based on the media-centric and interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of media audience, which involves mathematical modelling as method of studying media consumption processes. The results of the analysis include the following. Before 1991, media audience was viewed as the object of Soviet propaganda, and the approaches to understanding young audience added to providing social stability and attempts to turn them to the dominant values and regulations. The studies were carried out, basically, in the field of sociology. After 1991, media audience became not only the subject of media studies but also the object of marketing research, which partially replaced (or even displaced) the theoretical researches. The current period is characterized by poly-paradigm approaches to media studies, which has resulted in multiple conceptions of youth audience (millennials, generation Z, generation Alfa, etc.). The key feature of the latter is its digital nature, and the main approach to studying youth audience as trendsetter is via its media behavior in the digital environment.