World of Media (Dec 2022)
Russian media generation of the “digital borderline”: Theoretical reflection and empirical verification
Abstract
This study verifies the authors’ sociocultural concept of media generations. This concept helps to identify media generations in accordance with significant socio-political and cultural events taking place along with the technological development of the media industry, according to K. Mannheim; and behavioral patterns, according to X. Becker. This study uses a sample of 30 respondents interviewed during a series of in-depth interviews. The results showed that the most significant characteristic of this Russian generation is so-called ambivalent Soviet and Russian identity. The socio-economic transformations of the 1990s and the ubiquitous spread of the Internet and information technologies, which led to the ‘digital lifestyle’, played a big role during the formative period of the generational group. Being adherents of the analogue television in childhood and adolescence, representatives of the media generation, with some effort, have mastered digital technologies and are actively using many of the achievements of digitalization, including social networks. Although media practices of urban and rural informants differ in some ways, they still show significant conceptual similarities that allow us to classify the respondents as belonging to the same generation of media communicators - the “digital borderline” generation.
