Emerging digital media culture in Russia: modeling the media consumption of Generation Z

ABSTRACT Digital media is now the dominant influence of peoples’ everyday lives and social behavior in the global culture of twenty-first century society. Contemporary media usage is associated with the need for affection and involvement in social and cultural communities and approval and integration into the emerging digital culture. Thus, it is possible to observe signs of such important processes as socialization and self-actualization in media practices of the youth audience in digital media culture. These needs are strongly related to cultural and social processes and have been normally achieved in an individual’s cultural and social environments. This becomes crucial for the understanding of new digital media culture (DMC). The paper provides a theoretical discussion of this emerging DMC in Russia, conceptualizes Generation Z’s needs and motives and everyday media practices. In order to do this, the study conducted interviews with Russians aged 10–19 years old from Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Rostov-on-Don. The authors use mathematical methods to construct a model of Generation Z’s media consumption.