Research on the Attitude of Youth Audiences Towards Bloggers and Content on Social Media

Introduction. The trends observed in the Internet environment today give reason to consider social media as one of the most important communicative spaces of socialization, formation of personal and social identity of young people. The high interest in bloggers and the media content replicated by them actualizes the task of studying the psychological and socio-cultural factors that cause young people to assign the status of significant others to the subjects of the blogosphere, who subsequently act as personified agents of socialization and objects of identification for them.

Scientific purpose. To identify individual-psychological features of students with different attitudes towards bloggers.

Materials and Methods. In the process of research we used the method of questionnaire survey, method of psychological diagnostics (16-factor personality questionnaire of R. Kettell, questionnaire of attentiveness and awareness of K. Brown and R. Rayyan in adaptation of A. M. Golubev, method of semantic differential of Ch. M. Golubev, Ch. Osgood's method of semantic differential, A. T. Jersild's questionnaire "Mental states of personality", methods of mathematical statistics (descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U-criterion, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient).

Results. The empirical study revealed positive and negative relationships between students' personality traits, their attitudes towards bloggers and perceptions of the influence of bloggers and their content on mood, attitudes towards others and behavior. Differences were also found in the individual-psychological characteristics and mental states of young people, depending on their perceived influence of bloggers. Thus, those who are influenced by bloggers have more pronounced conflicting perceptions of themselves, lack of meaning in life, and lack of freedom of choice. This group has higher rates of anxiety and conformity. 

Discussion. The results obtained can be applied to the development of media literacy in students, as well as in psychotherapeutic practice to solve the problem of media addiction.

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