National Identity of Mass Media: Retrospective Study of the Russian Language Mass Media Prevalence in Eastern Europe

The research focuses on the issues, concerning the national identity of mass media in the era of globalization. It was the attempt to examine the linguistic situation in the multi-ethnic society, which consists of clearly defined groups of national minorities. Revealing the problems and consequences of language groups’ shift through mass media became the main objective of the research. The retrospective data on the Russian language mass media prevalence in the Eastern European countries (for example, of Estonia) were used as an analytical background. In Estonia, almost half of the Russian-speaking population cannot follow mass media due to limited knowledge of the language. These particularities for 1998-2013 were described in this article. The obtained results led to the conclusion that the major part of the Russian-speaking population of Estonia mainly follows the Russian television channels and, therefore, is more integrated in the Russian information realm than in Estonian. The multidirectional dynamics of mass media activity on prevalence was revealed. The contradictions between the Russian and Estonian mass media, Estonia and the EU on multilingual social mass media role were highlighted in the article