Internet Research in Modern Society

On February 3, 2012 the temporary research and educational group ‘Internet Research’ (headed by E. Koltsova) organized an open seminar ‘Internet Research in Modern Society’.  The seminar hosted prominent guests such as Sam Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for New Media and Society with his colleagues Sergey Chernov and Mikhail Gronas, and also Sarah Oates, Professor at the Faculty of Political Communication of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

On February 3, 2012 the temporary research and educational group ‘Internet Research’ (headed by E. Koltsova) organized an open seminar ‘Internet Research in Modern Society’.  The seminar hosted prominent guests such as Sam Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for New Media and Society with his colleagues Sergey Chernov and Mikhail Gronas, and also Sarah Oates, Professor at the Faculty of Political Communication of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

The seminar started with a presentation by Sam Greene at the Center for New Media and Society at the New Economic School, in which he explained the tasks, and goals of the centre. He highlighted the importance of creating an efficient research centre with a Russian core. Sam Greene also mentioned the main research directions such as the influence of new media on politics, information transfer across digital media, detecting opinion leaders, sustainable models of new media development, and content differences between the Internet and traditional media. At the end of the report Sam Greene invited all the participants and guests to join this project, to widen the possibilities in developing ideas and research work.

In the second part of the seminar Sarah Oates gave a talk; ‘One Country, Two Audiences: Television and the Internet in Russia’, which was about the research which compared the influence of Russian television and the Russian internet on their audiences. Professor Oates talked about the main preferences of Russian audiences of different ages towards the media, and the main characteristics and indicators of the internet audience. She also highlighted the connection between the intensity if internet browsing and political views, and how the qualitative characteristics of the internet audience are changing as it grows.

The results showed that Russian internet users are more skeptical towards the existing political regime, and the of increase in use of the internet is growing fast among different age groups. Thus, Sarah Oates said the big question for her as a researcher is, should the rapid growth of the internet audience be ringing alarm bells for the existing political regime in Russia? You can read the main parts of the report here.

The lecture provoked a lot of interest in the audience, and a lively discussion ensued with  O. Koltsova, D. Aleksandrov, S. Chernov, A. Kincharova, and others. At the end of the lecture Sarah Oates thanked all the participants and said that the seminar had provided her with lots of information which would  improve and develop her project.

The Center for New Media and Society and the temporary research and educational group ‘Internet Research’are partners. Just before the seminar guests met with participants of the group including O. Koltsova, K. Maslinsky, A. Kincharova, S. Koltsov, and discussed terms to further the partnership. They also agreed to work together on joint projects in future.