ИСТИНА

One of the stages of the study “Transformation of Content Strategies of Modern Radio Broadcasting and Television in the Digital Environment”, conducted by the Department of Television and Radio Broadcasting, Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University, since 2018, was an analysis of media consumption of video content by representatives of the digital generation. It was conducted in September 2022. The diary panel research was conducted by the Department in a random week from 21 to 28 September 2018, then from 5 to 11 October 2020 - a week with no particular emergencies, except for a pandemic. In 2022, was chosen the week of 13 to 19 September. At this stage, the objectives were to find out how much video viewing habits had changed in the context of coming out of self-isolation and distance learning. At each stage an attempt was made to identify time segments of video viewing, duration of contact with video material, popular video content platforms, preferred topics, attitudes towards advertising, as well as technological, psychological and motivational features of video consumption. The age group of Muscovites (or those living in Moscow) aged 20-24, representatives of the so-called digital generation, was selected as respondents at all stages of the study. In 2018, 20 diaries of media consumption were analysed, in 2020 - 16, in 2022 - 18 diaries. In 2018, young people preferred to watch video content on YouTube and social media. Traditional media sites, including TV channels, proved to be the most unconsumed in terms of video, although they possessed a lot of content, sometimes exclusive. At the same time, TV programmes on YouTube and social networks were quite in demand. In 2018, one could imagine the average portrait of a 'digital person' who spends hours in the evenings 'binging' on friends' Stories, TV series or programmes, without seeing or noticing the ads. Despite the increased need to spend time online in the face of the pandemic (the control group during the study period had almost full online study in Zoom, which took 19 and a half hours per week), members of the digital generation in 2020 did not start watching less video on the web, but rather increased the amount of video consumption. Viewing has become more uncontrollable and has formed certain habits and addictions. Despite TikTok's increased popularity in 2020, it has failed to surpass YouTube and other social media. While in 2018 not a single respondent was willing to pay for video content, in 2020 more than a third were using paid content from online cinemas. In 2022, the volume of video consumption on the web remains fairly high. YouTube is still in the lead, even increasing media consumption by a significant margin and significantly overtaking all other social media. This is also due to the banning of many of them in Russia. Despite the possibility of circumventing blockages through VPNs, respondents are no longer as eager to use banned social networks as they were in previous years of the survey. The increased use of pirate websites for video content (films and TV series) is also noteworthy. These figures have even surpassed the results of 2018.