ИСТИНА

The paper aims to analyze the ongoing changes in Russian media system, to describe its media model in terms of Hallin and Mancini’s theory. The ‘creative power” of world economic crisis, which started in 2008, undoubtedly influenced the Russian media market, dealing a blow, for example, to the advertising industry but in 2012 the advertising in newspapers grown at 10 %. However, though some print media outlets were closed in response to the crisis, the outlets grew in number. The number of new media outlets in Russian regions in 2009, the peak year of the crisis, fluctuated between 50-60% of the number of closed ones. In other words, the crisis affected the well-being of the press, cut advertisers’ budgets, and modified readers’ consumer activity but a number of new media projects emerged on the national, regional and municipal levels. Therefore, in spite of certain reductions in the market, there was no large-scale crisis in the information space in Russia. The audience for some leading newspapers also decreased but not very significantly. Magazine circulation and their total number were not affected by the crisis; an emphasis on “practical content” became an important trend. In 2009 interest in editions carrying information useful for everyday life, i.e. magazines concerned with health, healthy way of life, country houses, gardening, sewing, and knitting, grew. The fastest-growing sector of the media system in Russia is the Internet. The total Russian audience of the Net today is about 60 millions. Most of these users search for the news, a trend indicating the triumph of the Internet over the traditional media. In terms of the size of the Internet audience, the clear leader is Moscow. In the two recent decades the statist character of the Russian media has been challenged by the growing commercialism of the media industry. This happens because besides the uniqueness of countries’ traditions and culture that affect Russian media and journalism practices, more universal laws of the market began to play a role. Profit-based logic of media organizations using the matrix of the ‘Western’ (Liberal) model has put Russian media far beyond the traditional practices. Moreover, a contemporary Russian media model has emerged in the transitional post-modern fragmented society characterized by a struggle of conflicting multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, and multi-cultural interests where values of modernization and knowledge confront paternalistic mentality of Russian audiences and journalists. The level of unevenness in terms of economic wealth and access to ITCs has become another factor that produces specific external pressures to Russian media system. Finally, marginalized forces opposing the state influence in the media – investigative and opposition journalists, Internet activists, active audiences – have been active in promoting ideas of free press, free Internet, support for ethical norms in new media. With the widening support of new media in Russia this trend seems to be very typical to Western European media landscape. Russia’s media model in its complexity definitely differs from the three models of media systems described by Hallin and Mancini although it certainly implements many of features of Polarized pluralist model and some of the Liberal. Russian media model could be described as Statist Commercialized.