Abstract
The study presented in the paper aims to analyze the Russian print media market before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the prospects of local media transformation in the challenging environment. In the pre-pandemic decade, there was a growing body of literature on media convergence in emerging markets confirming that this concept is growing in importance as a strategic path of conventional media transformation. Still, the research on the Russian conventional media transformation is scarce, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic risks on Russian print media and their business models have not been investigated so far. To fill the gap, we combined desk research, processing of published industry statistics, and data obtained by means of expert interviews. The results confirm that in the first decades of the 21st century Russian print media paid less attention to the opportunities of media convergence than Western ones. At the same time, those Russian conventional media that set ambitious goals for their future considered the adoption of the media convergence approach as crucial, even before the pandemic. The findings show the lack of systemic measures to improve the overall situation on the national media market that faces difficult times, and the need to take into account pandemic risks in the print media management activities.
Highlights
In 2020–2021, the COVID-19 pandemic influenced all parts of human life
The current economic situation is highly challenging for print media which faced the need for major changes in the decades before the pandemic, due to digitalization and globalization (Picard 2014)
The current economic situation is highly challenging for print media all over the world
Summary
In 2020–2021, the COVID-19 pandemic influenced all parts of human life. It has had an unprecedented impact on the lifestyle, consumer behavior and quality of life (Laato et al 2020; Sheth 2020; Berezka et al 2021; Sheresheva et al 2021), and on business activity in all sectors of the global economy (Amankwah-Amoah et al 2020; Bartik et al 2020; Cavanagh et al 2020; Donthu and Gustafsson 2020; Polukhina et al 2021; Sheresheva 2020).The international community “is in the “acute” stage of reconsidering its problems and risks, capabilities and coordination in the face of COVID-19 and the Global Recession of 2020” (Bobylev and Grigoryev 2020, p. 4).The current economic situation is highly challenging for print media which faced the need for major changes in the decades before the pandemic, due to digitalization and globalization (Picard 2014). In 2020–2021, the COVID-19 pandemic influenced all parts of human life. Emergency anti-pandemic measures that resulted in reduced incomes of people, as well as financial problems of investors and advertisers, have come as an unexpected and harsh blow to print media submerged in the process of search for new business decisions and new business models. As a result, they have suffered a substantial volume of additional economic losses in 2020–2021
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