Yandex Conducted a Study of Russian Internet Mass Media

Yandex.News data show that approximately 27,000 news stories appear in the Russian Internet on weekdays and some 6,000 on holidays. The number of publications in the Russian-language online media is growing as fast as the Russian Internet daily audience. According to Yandex.News, the share of news that the publishers copy from other media has stayed at 20% of the total amount of information messages for several years in a row.

On average, only one third of the audience of the most popular Russian-language mass media “remember” the exact location of their usual sources of news (i. e. type the address in the browser’s bar or go to the site from their bookmarks). Other sources of user traffic for a typical Internet medium are banner exchange networks, website directories, news aggregators, and search systems.

The readers of Russian-language Internet media are mostly interested in news on incidents, sports, and culture. Notably, reader demand for political news is much lower than the supply of stories on the subject (of the ten major news subjects from the viewpoint of mass media in the third quarter of 2006, only three were not related to politics).

Two statements most widely quoted by the Russian-language online media in the third quarter of 2006 were made by relatively little-known and non-public government officials — Mikhail Tyurkin, Deputy Head of Federal Migration Service of Russia, and Alexander Neradko, Head of Federal Air Navigation Agency (both comments refer to the Russian-Georgian conflict).

Russian-language mass media often write about Ukrainian politicians. In the rating of newsmakers most frequently mentioned by Russian online newswires over the same period, Victor Yanukovich, Victor Yushchenko, and Yulia Timoshenko took the second, third, and fourth place.
The largest amounts of news in the Russian Internet are delivered by online media in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. As for the most informationally active cities, Moscow takes the lead, followed by Ekaterinburg and Saint Petersburg.

Yandex.News service was launched six years ago; today, Yandex.News database stores more than 15 million information messages from over 1,500 sources. Around half a million people read news at the project every day.

Contacts:
Elena Kolmanovskaya, Chief Editor
Dina Litvinova, Head of Yandex PR
Phone: +7 495 739-70-00
Fax: +7 495 739-70-70
E-mail: [email protected]