Сonsumption of Film Criticism on the Russian Internet

The current paper is dedicated to the phenomenon of cultural agenda setting in the Russian cinema market. The aim of the work is to study a movie critics’ influence on cinemagoers and factors on which this influence depends. On the basis of survey in a sample of 347 respondents and open-source statistics the regression analysis was conducted. The analysis proved that both media visibility and an amount of reviews on film have an impact on viewer’s choice, while average critics’ rating has no influence. Subsequent correlation analysis demonstrated that the strength of critics’ impact on consumers’ opinion on movie is dependent from the level of viewers’ interest on the cinematography. In addition, the author identified distinctive characteristics of the criticism audience. It was found that this audience takes relatively more interest in auteur cinema and such genres as drama, thriller, melodrama and biography, and the main motivation for reading criticism for them is an interest in cinema art.