ELEMENTS OF MEDIA CRITICISM IN THE COMMENTS OF A OURNALISTIC YOUTUBE PROJECT (USING THE EXAMPLE OF THE CHANNEL “CONTEXT”)

An important segment of “civil”, non-professional media criticism is user comments containing an assessment of the work of a media project. They do not belong to full-fledged media criticism, but at the same time they perform a number of important tasks: they provide interactivity, allow journalists to get to know the audience, form the habit of critical thinking, etc. Using the example of the YouTube channel “Context”, a study is conducted on the thematic diversity of “media critical comments”, which account for more than a quarter of the total number of messages studied (N=1000). Brief comments with a positive assessment are the most common, but positive comments with detailed arguments are quite rare. Negative comments are meaningfully diverse: criticism of the selection of experts, criticism of the selection of heroes, the spread of fakes, accusations of “gutter press behavior”, ethical violations, accusations of political bias, accusations of “hidden advertising”, factual errors, directorial errors, etc. At the same time, there is a significant proportion of detailed reasoned comments about low quality content or bias. With the help of comments, the audience forms a community of like-minded people around the media project. Unlike professional criticism, authors often receive not only error indications from comments, but also motivating positive feedback.