Components of a media image of popular bloggers in international social network

Abstract

Background: This article identifies and studies components of media images of Anastasia Ivleeva and Yury Dud, the two video bloggers popular among the Russian youth Internet audience at present. Millions of subscribers follow their YouTube channels, and viewers actively comment their videos. Objective: The goal of the study was to test the hypothesis that the video bloggers can influence their target audience (predominantly, the youth) and set the example. Materials and Methods: Under the study, thirty videos by each blogger made in 2019 to 1 July 2021 were reviewed to consider such criteria as their speech problematic, behavior in the frame, drive to the target audience, clothing style specificity, peculiarities of communicating with the framed interviewees, vocabulary and narration style distinctiveness as well as creative style quality. Results and Conclusions: It was detected that both bloggers wanted to fetch the audience and become close friends. They sought to achieve it by wearing casual clothes and using the strong language. Bloggers attempted to evoke a feeling of consuming the real and objective world landscape with their audience; at that, the bold and honest video bloggers did not conceal any social problems (unlike many leading TV shows by the Federal television channels); on the contrary, they spoke openly, provided diversified data and enabled their subscribers to make conclusions on their own.