Audience of the Ukrainian Segment of the World Wide Web (early 2017)

The purpose of the study was to determine development trends of online media and their audience in Ukraine and ascertain of their mediametric characteristics. Special attention was paid to the social media and especially to the creation and distribution of user-generated content on web pages. For this purpose, a range of qualitative and quantitative methods was used, in particular, the method of statistical analysis of data with taking into account the statistical error of measurement and uniformity of distribution of respondents in the middle of representational sample. The methods of comparison and content analysis were also used. The main method of gathering information was a survey of 1576 respondents who answered 16 proposed questions, most of the respondents were aged 18-30. The survey investigated the following questions: purpose and frequency of social media usage, the sources, which are often applied by the audience to receive news, level of trust to information in World Wide Web, platforms, which were used to find information, etc. Questions, which help to determine how readers consume information, how they read material, importance of illustrative, interactivity, multimedia elements, etc. were investigated. As a result of the study we asserted the state of Ukrainian audience of online media in early 2017 and trends of its development. We submitted the detailed measurements of sampled online media readers, obtained through the online survey and by applying cloud technology for statistical studies, particularly Polldaddy. Special attention was devoted to the development of social media and their audience, the peculiarities of their development with the specific Ukrainian segment of the World Wide Web. Based on these data, we studied the preferences of websites users, investigated the perception of journalistic products in Networks and the distribution of user-generated content on web pages. We analysed of the usage and perception of various illustrative content and its distribution characteristics with help of modern information technology. Studies of other scholars who investigated these issues were also considered, and their results were reflected in the conclusions. The trends and patterns of the network, including social media and their audience, were determined