Background. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes to all spheres of life. These changes have triggered an immediate response from the media, including social media, which repeatedly posts not only up-to-date information about this most relevant issue, but also users’ reactions to it, including Internet memes. Objective. The research presented in this article focused on comparing the psychological and ethnocultural sensitivities in the perception of COVID-19memes by young people in Russia and China. Design. The selected sample contained 108 respondents (n = 108), comprised of 50 Chinese and 58 Russian university students. The study consisted of two procedures: a survey and a student’s t-test on the perception of specific Internet memes. Results. The main results were that memes which evoke a positive response from the respondents and cheer them up were scored the highest. Such qualities as relevance, kindness, cheerfulness, creativity, meaningfulness, and thought-provoking ability were rated high. Each group of respondents gave a higher score to “our own” memes and a lower score to the other group’s memes. It is generally typical of the Chinese to have a more positive perception of reality. We ascertained a tendency towards polarization of opinions and focus on individualization among the Russian respondents, whereas the Chinese respondents strove for orderliness and consensus. Conclusion. As a whole, COVID-19 memes in such ethnoculturally different audiences as the Russians and Chinese serve a compensatory function for young people, helping them overcome the hardships of the pandemic through the memes’ relevance and creative character.

The article discusses the problems of formation of a model of informational impulse-wave interaction of society and mass media within a system of social creativity, which were suggested by A.P. Sukhodolov and co-authors, as well as characterizes systematic properties of media publicity as a factor of social creativity on the current civilization stage. Media publi­city is analyzed as an informational phenomenon closely related to social art, to creativity of social practice, to interaction within society providing unity of thought and action, to intellectual interaction within a society, to enrichment of the intellect of audience groups based on continuously updated media reality in the informational potential of mass media.

The article presents the results of a comparative content-analytical sociological study of city newspapers of thirteen million-strong cities in comparison to editions of six small and four medium-sized towns of Russia. The research, conducted by Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2013-2017, shows that thematic models of these city newspapers issued in different localities along with common features also have essential distinctions. In megalopolis newspapers, in general, the thematic field is very wide, though editorial offices do not pay equal attention to different subjects. Two thematic disproportions were found in the content of newspapers of million-strong cities. The media picture that prevails in their content is generally concentrated on the sphere of leisure and consumption, hardly mentioning productive, professional life of citizens. The second disproportion is connected with the fact that the main attention is paid to social problems of everyday life, the habitat, infrastructure of big cities, but not the person, persons inner world, values, morals, psychology, and relationship with other people. Media of million-strong cities rather work in line with a commercial paradigm. The research has shown that the smaller the town is, the closer newspapers are to requirements and problems which concern inhabitants, they try to light the most important spheres of their life and more evenly distribute the attention to different aspects of activity of the readers, including history, traditions, national crafts. Newspapers of the medium-sized and small towns reflect objective needs of citizens; help to solve specific problems, to keep traditions and basic values.

The article describes systemic factors of optimization of Russian media landscape in the context of the societys growing intellectual level. This process provides for the best possible intellectual interaction between economic, political, scientific, educational, artistic and other social layers. The authors deal with the criteria of media publicity as combination of informational relations between the participants of this process. Using systemic and synergetic approaches the authors also study an optimal model of informational support of freedom of social creative activities based on interaction of such media realities as public reason, writers and audience communities, editorial boards and other media organizations, and others. In this relation, they analyze how the commentariat is motivated to be on the mission of increasing the societys intellectual level. The authors conclude that the purpose of intellectual interaction in the media landscape is repeat renewal of the societys intellectual potential via social creative activities. This provides the basis for intellectual maturity of each individual, which adds not only to development of intellectual culture of a person and that of various communities, but also to improvement of the current goal setting and achieving system.