The research project took place between 1 May 2007 and 31 September 2008. The project was conducted by the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State University and the Communication Research Centre, Department of Communication in the University of Helsinki. The project’s academic directors were Professor Elena Vartanova and Professor Hannu Nieminen. The Helsingin Sanomat Foundation provided the main funding.

Final result of the project is a collection of research reports:

Elena Vartanova, Hannu Nieminen & Minna-Mari Salminen (Eds.)
Perspectives to the Media in Russia: “Western” Interests and Russian Developments
Publisher: Kikimora Publications (May 2009)

The origin of the project is in the discussions that Elena Vartanova and Hannu Nieminen had in summer 2006 in Helsinki. It was then realised that there is no comprehensive account in English of the present state and future prospects of Russian media. Helsingin Sanomat Foundation offered generously financial support for the project, and this made it possible to recruit MA Minna-Mari Salminen as a Finnish researcher for the project, as well as to collect a group of experts in Moscow University to contribute to the project.

The main issues that the project has aimed to answer were formulated in the original research plan as follows:

1. What is the contemporary structure of Russian media industry, media market with a particular focus on traditional media segments (newspapers and magazines, analogue television and radio), as well as on new media (internet, digital broadcasting and mobile telephony)? What are the major patterns of ownership structures?

2. What is the role of the growing advertising market in creating of new formats, content strategies and programming concepts for the Russian media? How new modes of financing are transforming Russian media at the national and regional/local levels? What effects on media systems have been made by the growth of advertising industry and how advertising shapes the present structures of national and regional/local markets? How convergence has changed the configuration of national and regional media markets? What are the most affordable business-models in the Russian media at national and regional/local levels?

3. How market-based Russian media industry is affected by the requirements of national and regional audience? What are the present trends in media use by Russians with the particular emphasis on who uses, what, where, for which purpose and how with an emphasis on residential, economic, gender, educational, and life style factors? How increased media competition has influenced the patterns of media uses in Russia?

4. How changing structure of Russian media and patterns of audience behaviour have affected the state’s media policy and what are currently the main trends in state regulation?

Further information:

Research director
Professor Hannu Nieminen
hannu.nieminen(at)helsinki.fi