MEDIA SOCIALIZATION OF RUSSIAN YOUTH THROUGH NATIONAL DIGITAL PLATFORMS: FROM CONSENSUS AND “NEW PATRIOTISM” TO THE NOSTALGIA EFFECT

Abstract

The paper examines the issue of media socialization as a process of assimilation by representatives of the media audience of socio-cultural norms and values dominated in society. The authors try to consider media socialization as a complex and heterogeneous process that can be decomposed into three elements depending on the predominance of a media usage model. Firstly, the media act as an agent of secondary socialization, which corresponds to the basic normative understanding of media functioning in society. With this understanding, the media cannot form the basic values of a young audience, since they are not able to compete with “signifi cant others”: parents, peers, schoolteachers, who are traditionally assigned the role of the most infl uential agents of primary socialization. Secondly, the media can act as an agent of self-socialization, that is, participate in the process of independent choice of media channels and media resources to develop the diversifi ed interests of the audience. Thirdly, the media can act as an agent of primary socialization and displace the infl uence of “signifi cant others”. The article presents the result of the empirical research in which the process of agenda setting of youth communities in the VK social media platform were studied (“Rhymes and Punches”, “Leonardo Dayvinchik”, “Oatmeal, sir”). The study drew conclusions about the complex structure of a process of digital media socialization. It was found that the content corresponds to traditional Russian spiritual values, while the form corresponds to the global ones. The result of the study was the recognition of the simultaneity of the implementation for all types of media socialization in general, the impossibility to strictly distinguish one element from another, and at the same time, a pronounced predominance of any type of media socialization through diverse digital content. The study was funded by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. --).