The regularities of the audience behavior of the Internet in Russia

Kalikina DariaFaculty of MEDIA COMMUNICATIONSDEPARTMENT OF MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND MEDIA BUSINESSThe theme of graduation paper is «The regularities of audience behavior of the Internet in Russia». The Internet is a large field of information and entertainment. Since 1990th audience of the WEB has changed completely. The theme can be applied in future in work of Mass Media. The Internet audience of different strata od society can be characterized in two aspects : behavior and social and demographic characteristics. The object of graduation paper is the audience of the Internet and the subject of it is the behavior patterns of Russian Web users. The purpose of research paper is to outline and depict the regularities of audience behavior for 15 years. Research tasks:•To give definitions of key terms “Internet”, “Audience” “Web audience”.•To outline briefly the history of Internet in Russia.•To provide a general description of the Internet audience.To characterize audience according to two parameters: activity during the day and the social and demographic characteristics: education, age, gender, interests and etc.•To trace the changes in the Russian Web audience for 15 years, from 1998 to 2013.•To show the significant differences of behavior of audience with the help of two cases.The following methods of research are used:•Theoretical analysis of literature related to the development of the Internet audience in Russia• Secondary data analysis of studies conducted by the Fund of Public Opinion" (FOM), the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), Taylor Nelson Sofres(TNS), the Levada Center•Comparative analysis of Russian Internet audience in 1998 and in 2013•Method of in-depth interviewsThe hypothesis of the study: the behavior patterns and the composition of the Internet-audience in Russia have not been changing for 15 years from 1998 to 2013.The structure of work is following: introduction, three chapters, conclusions and bibliography. In the first chapter the briefly story of birth of Internet is represented, in the second chapter the author examines the audience of the Russian Internet in 1998-1999, in 2000-2010, 2011-2013. Differences and similarities of behavior in the audience during day, week, month, year are shown. Author reveals the peculiarities of audience behavior in third chapter. Ten in-depth interviews are also situated in the third chapter. The last page is devoted to conclusions:•Hypothesis fits the experimental data•In 1998 the objectives were linked to job, hobbies and computer technologies. The users of Internet in Russia in 2013 surf for education, news and communication•Most of users are active in Internet at night hours in 2013 in comparison with users in 1998, who were active in labour time. •The percentage of Internet users will be growing in case of old people