Media crowdsourcing and media crowdfunding in the digital environment as factors of a new community for the media

Abstract

The article studies the financial and content participation of the addressee in the implementation of media projects through special digital platforms. Successful experience of media crowdfunding is associated with such digital platforms as Planeta.ru, BoomStarter, “The Power of the Word”, and active crowdsourcing is carried out on the digital Service of journalistic queries (https://pressfeed.ru/). Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in Russia as a collective cooperation of people and civic activity are most effective today in the sphere of media. Through such civil complicity, a media community is formed. As a result, the following factors of the success of media crowdfunding and crowdsourcing were identified: 1. Addressing the focus audience of media projects; 2. Rewards for participation, including virtual participation, that meet the needs of the audience; 3. Types of motivations of the audience to cooperate with media: the desire to express a civic position, to be involved in something socially significant, to increase their expertise and make their personal story public. The article describes all these factors with their illustration by examples of media projects and the individual expert practice of one of the authors of the article. A decline in the role of the state in a digital society inevitably leads to a change in the functioning of media, as well as to a growing importance of communities that arise around media projects. Digital involvement of the audience in financing and content participation gives the effect of a media community which is necessary for independent and highly specialized media. It is noted that sometimes exotic projects with a narrow target audience demonstrate success in fundraising due to the skillful use of specific vocabulary and personal authority of the creators. Digital platforms, boosted during the pandemic, are transforming media-audience relationships.