The specifics of orthodox Mediasphere in Russia in the 1990–2000s on the example of printed periodicals

Abstract

The Russian Orthodox Church’s media have come a long way of evolution in the past twenty years. In the early 1990s there were few official Orthodox media, such as “The Journal of Moscow Patriarchate”, “The Church Herald” and the editions of Russian Orthodox Church’s Synodal Department, which were published on paper of poor quality, in black and white and were actually the bulletins for the clergy and laity. Gradually first newspapers and magazines for a wide audience, such as “Radonezh”, “The Russian House”, “Thomas”, appeared and paid attention not only to ecclesiastical questions, but to acute social problems as well. Not only believers, but doubters were their target audience. The quality of most print publications throughout the 1990s remained poor, primarily because of the lack of permanent funding as newspapers and magazines existed due to sales and readers’ donations. At the same time the situation was influenced by human factor because editors and authors had no media experience. Despite of those problems, the Orthodox media system continued to evolve and a new qualitative leap occurred in the mid-2000s. There appeared a range of specialized periodicals aimed at a specific target audience: women, children, teenagers, parents, etc. Existing editions began to work actively on the quality of the produced product. By the end of the decade, many newspapers and magazines were printed on high quality paper in full color and with illustrations. Some of them found sponsors; the editors began to engage not only priests as the authors, but also secular journalists, psychologists, historians and other experts, improving the content and quality of published materials. As a result, it is now possible to speak of the development of the Orthodox print media market, which is able to offer a diverse range of high quality publications for any reader. As the media is an effective communication channel between the Church, the state and society, one can predict further evolution of the Orthodox media resources: an increase in funding, the development of technical basis, the growth of personnel professionalism, new substantive and stylistic approaches.