The specificity of response of youth audience to the reflection of social problems in video blogs: the case of the video “HIV in Russia” on YouTube channel “Vdud”

Abstract

This article discusses the peculiarities of the response of youth audience to coverage of relevant social problems in popular video blogs. The characteristic trend in the development of video blogs of recent years is the content that addresses socially significant problems, rather than carries entertaining connotation. The emergence of such trend raises the question of how the audience that is accustomed to view video blogs as the source of entertainment responds to such serious content. The author seeks the answer to this question by referring to the analysis of a specific case of reflecting the socially significant problem in a video blog – release of the film “HIV in Russia” on YouTube channel “Vdud”. The main results consists in revealing the specific features of the response of youth audience to the reflection of important social problems in video blogs. The analysis demonstrates that the reflection of such topics in video blogs may cause numerous curiosity among youth, which encourages young people to watch the corresponding video. Moreover, watching such video may form not only the basic representation of social problems, but also a desire of young people to learn more about such problems. The analysis also indicates that the effects of watching such content can be local and short-term: interest in new information vanishes quickly, rather than leads to serious changes in assessments and behavioral patterns of young people.