медиапотребление

Over the past decade, digital media have become more than just a means of communication; they have evolved into a dominant institution of mass communications, exerting a targeted influence on the opinions, views, and values of our society. Moreover, digital communication channels are poised to become a key mechanism for achieving, maintaining, strengthening, and exercising political power.

Over the four years of its implementation, special military operation has become a crucial factor influencing not only political, economic, technological, and purely military processes, but also the daily lives of citizens of Russia and Ukraine. Despite the fact that the conflct has lasted longer than, for example, the Great Patriotic War, not all of its aspects have received sufficient scholarly attention. One such issue is the attitude of Russian youth toward the special operation.

Despite the considerable attention paid to the attitude of young people towards special military operation (hereinafter referred to as SMO), the role of mass media in shaping the attitudes of this age group is not analyzed very often. Meanwhile, this is precisely what largely determines how young people perceive what is happening. In this regard, the aim of the study, the results of which are presented in this article, was to identify the dynamics of young people’s attitudes towards SMO in the context of their inherent media practices.

The object of this research were representatives of so-called “digital” generation of Russian youth (people born in the fi rst decade of the 21st century), and the subject was media practices common among them. Despite the fact that within Russian scholarship, quite a lot of attention is traditionally paid to the problems of media consumption by young people, various aspects of political dimension of the formats of interaction with the media widely spread among young people are rarely in the focus of attention of scholars.

The article presents results of a study of young people’s attitude towards the Special Military Operation (hereinafter – the SMO). Data from monthly measurements carried out from March 2022 to January 2024 by Levada Center (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), as well as the results of two online surveys (n = 2872) and a series of focus group interviews of young people (n = 74) conducted in November 2022 and November 2023 by employees of the Department of Political Science of Saratov State University are analyzed.

The article considers the problems of mass media interaction with audience through the analysis of feedback mechanisms of television with teleconsumers presented in the Internet. The author analyses the relevance of television and Internet as information resources for Russian media consumers, characterizes the Internet-sources of opinion of the television audience, analyses the official pages of popular TV channels and spectator forums. 

The article is devoted to the analysis of the author’s research: focus groups with parents of children gadget users with access to the Internet (n = 6), the questionnaire survey among adolescents (n = 303) and parents (n = 326) about media consumption, and information security legislation. The new trends and risks in the development of modern child-parent relationships: gadget and Internet addiction, conflicts, decreasing parental control and authority, alternative interaction forms, dangerous content and the consequences of its consumption were identified.