Dr Olga Dovbysh is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, coordinator of Russian Media Lab Network and a visiting researcher at Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. She works at the intersection of media studies, economic sociology and political economy, and studies media markets in Russia. In her current research, she examines hyperlocal media in Russia, their social meanings, technological challenges and economic constraints.

She will talk about the media ecosystem in Russia with a focus on hyperlocal media – ‘city public pages’ (‘gorodskie pabliki’) on social network sites. These new entrants have recently become important actors of local media ecosystem of the Russian province. Contrary to Sweden, there are few hyperlocal media which exist as websites; most hyperlocal media operate on social media platforms. Social network sites (VKontakte, first of all) form an ecosystem where people read news, watch entertaining content and communicate. Therefore, even if some hyperlocal media have a website, all discussions are held on SNS anyway. SNS also shape and somewhat control how these groups perform and develop.

These media initiatives report on local affairs and publish local gossips, provide space for citizen discussions, entertain. Some groups are based on user-generated content, others create their own content or act as aggregators. Taking into account not only popularity among local citizens but also interest from local authorities toward such media projects, people, standing behind them, are becoming powerful actors in the networked local community, the new gatekeepers of local mediated discourse.

Using materials of interviews with media practitioners and observations in newsrooms, collected by author during fieldwork in six Russian cities in 2017-2018, the research explores how hyperlocal media alter local media ecosystem, re-assess functions and practices of local journalism and shape public engagement.