Paywall as a Business Model of Russian Online Media: Audience Motivation and Behaviour

Student: Ogurcova Evgeniia

Supervisor: Olga Dovbysh

Educational Programme: Journalism (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2017

The following research observes the paywall media model in online media, its implementation into Russian media market and audience’s willingness to pay for online journalistic content. To investigate users’ attitude to paid web-sites the author conducted in depth interview with the subscribers of the Russian online magazine Republic that works on the basis of the paywall model. The results showed that implementation of paywall in Russia is complicated because of law average income and paying abilities of internet-audience and widely spread media piracy. It was also found out that users’ willingness to pay depends on deferent factors such as prices, promotions, and advertisement of subscription, personal and professional interests, loyalty to the media, the intent to support it and exclusivity and diversity of content.

Full text (added May 2, 2017)

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