Features of the young audience’s attitude to the media coverage of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of the attitude of the student youth of Smolensk to the media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objectives of the study were: to identify the most popular sources of information about the pandemic, to determine the level of confidence in them;to assess the impact of media information about the coronavirus on the population, the degree of objectivity of media coverage of the pandemic;to establish the specificity of the emotional component of the media's perception of information about the COVID-19 pandemic, the attitude to the public roles of the journalist realized when reporting the pandemic. The study used a two-stage sampling. At the first stage, specific intermediate units - 5 institutions of higher education - were selected through a simple random, no-second selection procedure. In the second phase, a quota sample was selected. The sample size was 400. The quota sample included university affiliation and form of study (full-time, part-time (evening) and correspondence). Quota topics were related. The method of collecting empirical data was a personal interview. The field phase of the study took place in December 2020. The resulting data set was processed by MS Excel. The study found that the most sought-after sources of information about the coronavirus pandemic in the student population are Internet resources, reflecting the specificity of the development of the media sphere, in the structure of which new media (Internet portals, social networks) rank the second most popular news source after television. The study also found that traditional media, such as television, are as trustworthy as they are. The study determined that student youth have some skepticism and distrust of official media information about the coronavirus. The study shows that the choice of sources of information and the level of confidence in information about the pandemic among young people reflect the general trend in the perception of such information by Russians, which is due to the lack of precise information about its origin at the beginning of the pandemic, the course of the disease, the means of ensuring safety, as well as the contradictory information circulating in the mass media about the infection. The analysis found that in assessing the role of journalists in reporting the pandemic, student youth lacked information about the disease. Students' perception of publications in the media about the coronavirus is accompanied by negative emotions (fear, anxiety, uncertainty, frustration), which may be due to both the content of the publications and the way the news material is presented. In the structure of the most memorable news about the coronavirus for students there are topics capable of generating negative emotional states - the number of cases, the origin of the disease, its symptoms, methods of prevention and treatment, coronavirus mortality, the development of a vaccine.