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Copyright © 2023 by Cherkas Global University
Published in the USA
Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie)
Issued since 2005.
ISSN 1994-4160
E-ISSN 1994-4195
2023. 19(4): 539-548
DOI: I0.i3i87/me.2023.4.539 https://me.cherkasgu.press
Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie)
Expert Media Content in the Media and Educational Practices
Tatyana Kaminskaya a, Oksana Erokhina a > *
a Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Russian Federation
Abstract
Expert media content in conditions of instability is becoming more in demand. An important factor stimulating the active interaction of journalists and experts was a significant decrease in the level of public confidence in the media on the background of information overload. The relevance of this article is due to the widespread practice of the media to attract experts, and its research task is to describe the options for obtaining and using expert media content and based on the criterion of its use to propose a typology of modern media projects.
Expert media content is socially significant content in demand by target audience of a media resource, having an educational orientation, received by the media from specialists. The need for socio-political media to receive expert comments in the shortest possible time while maintaining high quality content actualizes the use of specialized digital platforms. Mass media are characterized by the difference in the place of expert content related to their specifics. Information-centric media use expert commentary as an addition to journalistic content to reflect the current socio-political agenda. The expert-centric ones build the entire media project on expert content -these are educational projects, resources of useful tips, media of professional communities.
Keywords: media content, expert, digital platforms, journalist, education.
1. Introduction
The problem of this study lies in the plane of differentiation of modern media content and showing the place of expert media content in it. This problem is relevant because, according to the observations of the authors of the article, the modern media sphere is constantly becoming more complicated: on the one hand, the audience is involved in the creation of media content, on the other hand, the media tools of professional journalists using various robotic resources are expanding. The word expert is extremely frequent in Russian-speaking both socio-political mass communication and in lifestyle media and, as a rule, is associated with their educational and explanatory function. The problem of attracting experts to the media is determined by the mission of journalism to intellectualize society, which has been studied in the scientific literature (Vladimirova et al., 2020). At the same time, experts also have an educational mission: it is noted that "expert knowledge is not only knowledge and skills, but also the social role of those who possess them" (Hetmanski, 2018: 11). The origin of the word is connected with the French word "expertus" - "experienced" (Shvedova, 2011). There is no interpretation of the words "media expert" or "expert for media", as well as "expert media content" in modern dictionaries. Meanwhile, the practice of attracting experts to the media as commentators and authors is expanding and needs scientific understanding and inclusion in a broad media discourse.
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: tlcam1@mail.ru (T.L. Kaminskaya), o.v.erokhina@gmail.com (O.V. Erokhina)
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2. Materials and methods
At the first stage, the authors of the article conducted a content analysis of various media projects with an audience of more than 500 thousand subscribers. First of all, these are sociopolitical federal media that widely use expert content. In our case, search queries for content analysis were carried out on the websites of publications by the keyword expert, and the resulting media texts were analyzed for the genre of publications, the use of expert statements as an information guide and the subject of publications. Thematic, specialized popular media projects officially registered as mass media, almost entirely consisting of expert content (such as Arzamas, Mel, Lifehacker) were also analyzed. The selected specialized media projects are different in terms of target audience, thematic focus and editorial policy. However, what they have in common is a constant increase in the audience over the past five years, positioning itself precisely as a media, as well as the focus of editorial policy on audience participation in content creation.
At the second stage, 7 expert interviews were conducted with journalists and media editors, as well as with the manager of the Pressfeed expert platform to identify existing journalistic practices in the search for experts and identify the most widespread and effective of them. The respondents were selected based on the principles of their work experience in officially registered mass media for at least 5 years, the presence of a higher journalistic education/scientific degree, as well as their professional involvement in the current news agenda; at the same time, respondents work in the media at various levels (federal, regional). Thus, the interviewees were: A. Gavycheva, editor-in-chief of the Regional Comments portal; O. Larina, editor of the regional news feed Business Petersburg; D. Konzerko-Stolyarov, editor-in-chief of the Most TV channel (Boksitogorsky district of Leningrad region); A. Mikheeva, correspondent of Power (Moscow); A. Chausov, freelancer since 2016, author of numerous texts in the socio-political magazines Vzglyad, PolitRussia, Sensations.No (the first fact-checking media in Russia, registered as a media in 2020), candidate of historical sciences; M. Nikolayev, correspondent of Novaya Novgorodskaya Gazeta (Veliky Novgorod), E. Grebe, correspondent of the radio broadcasting service of VGTRK GTRKSlavia (Veliky Novgorod), as well as S. Syrov, head of the Pressfeed support department.
In parallel with these methods, the authors of the article, as experts, gave comments to the leading media resources of the country both through personal contacts with journalists and on digital platforms. The latter circumstance made it possible to carry out research self-reflection on the relevance and quality of their own expert media content.
Additional verification of the conclusions was provided by the Pressfeed journalism query service platform, which kindly provided statistics on experts registered on it and a set of case studies-responses from federal media journalists about the use of the platform.
3. Discussion
The analysis of scientific publications on the topic of the article showed that media content is considered mainly within the framework of journalistic authorship, leaving out expert comments and, in general, the role of experts in media communication (Tatlock, 2018). Separately, there are studies of expert knowledge in "scientific journalism" functioning in the space of dialogue between media, educational and research institutions (Tassia et al., 2022). J. Besley, S. Garlick and others have developed a behavioral model used to assess how the attitudes and attitudes of individual scientists affect their communicative activity in the media (Besley et al., 2021). In this case, the close interaction of journalists with representatives of individual industries and the scientific community is also considered as a source of new quality of information content, more authoritative and professional. The approach of M. McCombs (Bell, Mccombs, 1996; Mccombs et al., 2004), according to which the media play a decisive role in determining the news agenda, "highlighting" socially significant topics. In this case, the role of experts is considered indirectly as part of the process of creating a certain "picture of the world" among the audience of various media, while emphasizing the influence of events that are attributed high importance on the attitude of society to the specific mentioned persons. The versatile use of information sources, on the contrary, increases objectivity and forms the basis for education in a democratic society (Knowles et al., 2023).
The scientific literature discusses the criteria of professionalism in the media. J. Choi, S. Yang (Choi, Yang, 2021) presents a model of "capturing" the news market, focuses on the peculiarities of the functioning of the media in the digital age. Indirectly touching upon the problem of expert knowledge, the authors note a tendency to decrease the objectivity of the presentation of information in digital media, which is associated with the involvement of interested players in the
person of both state and non-state structures. In this case, experts are considered primarily as players acting in the interests of one or another party, and not as sources of independent objective opinion (within the framework of the concept of "market capture", it can hardly exist on a scale significant for society). E. Merkley notes that journalists do not approach the choice of expert opinions objectively enough, often focus on sensational information occasions through the analysis of information, there is also a tendency to choose one-sided expert opinions more often, but not to form a multilateral explanation (Merkley, 2020; Rindermann et al., 2020). Continuing this idea, some authors come to the conclusion that the expansion of the circle of people who can act as experts in the media, especially on political issues, leads to a decrease in citizens' confidence in democratic institutions and poses a threat to their effective work (Crease, 2023).
The works of J. Jerit and co-authors devoted to the study of the peculiarities of perception of expert media information, which are characteristic of people with different levels of education, deserve attention (Jerit et al., 2009; Jerit, 2006). J. Jerit notes that in order to increase the general level of awareness about key events and processes, primarily political, it is important to provide citizens with information in the most accessible for understanding of the form, taking into account the opportunities of citizens with a low level of education (the role of television is evaluated positively in this sense). That is, the role of experts explaining the meaning of events increases as the volume of incoming information increases (Jaeger, 2021). The relevance of studying differences in the perception of experts of different genders by the audience is increasing. Some studies show that women experts are less trustworthy than men, and their opinion is less authoritative, especially in the field of politics (Ozer, 2023).
The fundamental differences of the expert source in the activities of the media were considered by E. Albek, in whose work an analysis of the interaction between journalists and experts is carried out (Alb^k, 2011). He emphasizes that in modern conditions of multiple sources of information and the transition to "research" journalism, it is experts who form the basis for media materials. According to Albek, an expert view helps to get a deeper analysis in a short time and avoid excessive simplification of the presentation, as well as to confirm the conclusions that the journalist could come to independently. In this context, it is worth noting studies that study the large-scale phenomenon of fake news as a strategy for managing public opinion, in the implementation of which experts play a significant role (Buschman, 2023).
The discussion about the components of the concept of "expertise" is continued by researchers J. Wai and K. Perina, who raised the question of the criteria of expert knowledge in the field of media (Wai et al., 2011). In the discussion on the criteria of professional journalism, it is also worth noting the work of S. Miller-Carpenter and D. Kanver, in which a set of variables for evaluating expert knowledge was proposed: specialized education, previous professional experience in journalism, awards, specialization, technical skills of the profession and the social role of the author, which is assessed by content analysis of open source materials in social media (Carpenter, Kanver, 2017). The role of journalists as "conductors" of knowledge is interpreted in the work of M. Nisbet and F. Declan (Declan, Nisbet, 2015). Separately, it is worth noting the works devoted to the possibilities of using artificial intelligence technologies in the field of media. In the article Y. Galili talks about the future of "automated journalism", created on the basis of automated content generation as one of the achievements of technological progress that cannot be stopped (Galily, 2018). According to T. Laor and J. Galily, digital reality has contributed to the spread of online media promoting personal opinions and ideologies (Galily, Laor, 2020). In this regard, "impersonal" artificial intelligence can be considered as a new technological path to professional quality media.
Russian-language scientific publications on the topic relate, as a rule, to certain aspects of expert communication in the media, genres or channels. Thus, considering the expert influence in news reports, I.S. Dushakova notes that during the analysis of text news reports, the main problem is connected with the exact definition of who can be considered an expert, and further suggests distinguishing an expert who creates content from a journalist and participant in events by a communicative situation that attracts an expert with an external in relation to the events covered, the position (Dushakova, 2016). O.I. Lyakhovenko considers political telegram channels as expert communication, emphasizing that despite the obvious manipulativeness, political telegram channels form a special expert system, a kind of "distributed think tank" that analyzes in real time domestic political and international agenda (Lyakhovenko, 2022).
The importance of the authorship of an expert from the field of science in the conditions of sanctions pressure is emphasized by I.N. Telnova, noting that one of the proven and effective ways is to popularize the results of research and expert opinion of a scientist on specialized electronic platforms and the publication of expert opinion in the media (Telnova, 2022). She also rightly points out that the demand for expert opinion is growing in a situation of uncertainty.
Summing up the review of scientific literature, we note that the issue of current practices of using expert knowledge in media activities and the differentiation of media based on these practices of use needs further development in relation to the study of the Russian experience.
4. Results
Expert media content is used by all media resources that occupy high positions in national ratings and have more than half a million subscribers. Socio-political media, as a rule, introduce an expert comment on an event/situation into the journalistic text, or designate it as an informational occasion, reflecting the role of the expert in the title: The expert commented on the situation in the capital's real estate market.
In the electronic versions of the federal media (Kommersant, Izvestia), which for several years in a row have been included in the TOP 10 ratings according to Medialogy service, expert content is very common. We are talking about expert commentary, which is most often introduced with the words: notes, considers, explained, according to experts, and mainly concerns forecasts regarding the development of the situation, markets. So, in the electronic version of the newspaper Kommersant, although it does not meet with a title with this word, we received more than 1,000 publications per year with the word expert in media texts (the research period from June 27, 2021 to June 27, 2022 was randomly selected), mainly in the news and article headings. The same situation applies to the genre affiliation of texts using the expert opinion in Izvestia.
In Izvestia, out of 1,680 texts with the word "expert" for the selected period in 383 publications, the word expert stands in the strong position of the text (title and lead), and the expert's opinion in this case acts as an information guide. A randomly taken date - June 27 -demonstrates using expert commentary: 60 publications in Kommersant, 59 publications in Izvestia.ru (41 of them are in the News category, 17 are articles and 1 publication is in the Opinions category). Izvestia.ru actively uses the fact of expert assessment of the situation/event by an expert as an information guide, including the word in the headline complex in a quarter of publications with the word expert: The expert assessed the possibility of the EU adopting new sanctions against Russia; The military expert spoke about the decline in morale in the VFU; The expert revealed ways to protect home Wi-Fi from neighbors; The expert told about the development of Avito in the event of a merger with VK; The expert called it unprofitable for the western countries to disconnect Russia from the Internet; The expert spoke about the impact of Japanese sanctions on the ruble exchange rate; The expert named the cause of the explosion of an electronic cigarette in the mouth of a teenager in Khimki; The expert commented on the G7 plans to impose sanctions against the enterprises of the defense industry of the Russian Federation.
Sometimes the word expert is replaced in Izvestia.ru contextual synonym analyst, for June 27, two such publications with an indication in the title: Analyst Demidov called the information about the creation of a trap for the West groundless; The analyst said there was no threat to the Russian Federation from the G7 sanctions on gold imports. As for the quantitative distribution of publications using expert content on the subject, politics leads in both media, followed by economics (mainly real estate and construction), followed by sports and culture topics.
A different way of using expert content is carried out in educational and specialized media. Let's consider options for this kind of media projects.
Arzamas project, which emerged in 2015, is dedicated to the history of culture and consists almost entirely of expert content, which is reflected in the motto of the publication: History, literature, art in lectures, cheat sheets, games and expert answers: new knowledge every day. The basis of the project's website today, indeed, consists of materials and courses on history, literature, art, anthropology, philosophy, culture and man, and the designated authors, whose number has grown every year, today there are more than 200 on the site. Most of the authors have academic degrees and university teaching experience, and, according to the editorial board, they are motivated precisely by the opportunity to create educational content outside of university formalities and in a form attractive to a wide audience. The range of topics of the Arzamas project is very large. For example, it opened with the following four courses: "English Renaissance
Theater", "Historical Forgeries and Originals", "Truth and Fiction about Gypsies" and "The Greek Project of Catherine the Great". In a program interview with the project team, it is stated that this is "one hundred percent journalism", and the enlightenment of the resource has a different principle from the university one - not the consistency and consistency of knowledge, but the collection of knowledge like a patchwork quilt, however, which ultimately leads the reader to the idea of universal connectivity of events and phenomena of the world. With regard to experts, the authors indicated an intention to rehabilitate humanitarian knowledge and show that there are people who understand it (Vorotynseva, 2020).
The name of the project refers to history and literature: on the one hand, it is the name of the historically well-preserved Russian city of Arzamas, on the other hand, the name of a closed society and a literary circle of the 19th century, which united supporters of the new "Karamzin" trend in literature. In 2020, the project's website had approximately 1 million 400 thousand unique visitors every month, and a million people subscribed to Arzamas' social networks (no later data is provided). The project has both publicly available free materials and a paid subscription, which gives full access to all lectures, recordings and courses. At the beginning of the journey, the Arzamas team consisted of seven people, and the main emphasis was on video, and by 2022, the editorial staff grew to 27 people.
The Russian-language project Lifehacker does not pretend to increase the level of education of the audience and was created as a media service of useful tips in 2008 by entrepreneurs from Ulyanovsk by analogy with the English-language project lifehacker.com initially, only for the target audience of programmers, and in 2014 the project changed its concept and began to focus on a wider target audience. Today, about 20 texts are published daily on the resource, the main source of income is advertising and special projects, but the authors of the project say that the main focus in management is not on design and attracting advertising, but on creating high-quality content (Rumak, 2021). The demand for the resource is impressive: until 2016, the audience doubled annually, and today exceeds 10 million people; Lifehacker is one of the few profitable media projects in the Russian media sphere - this is how it defines its mission: publications on how to make life easier and interprets the concept of an expert extremely broadly: An expert is a professional in any fields: nutritionist, lawyer, plumber, trainer and so on. A real expert can confirm his competence: he has a specialized education, work experience, the experience you need in any issue (for example, he has traveled 20 countries), is known in the public field. Thus, almost anyone with unique experience or possessing unique knowledge in any field can become an expert and author of this resource (here the interpretation of the word is consistent with its etymology - "experienced").
Another interesting example of using expert media content is a specialized site with daily updated content Executive.ru - presents itself as a crowdsourcing project that has no analogues in Runet, a community of managers united by the idea of professional growth. Community members exchange knowledge in order to improve their skills and, as a result, their own capitalization in the labor market. In just five years, the project has gathered more than 400 people to the League of Experts (they are the authors) on the site, and more than half a million subscribers. The project carefully studies its audience, publishes data about it and attracts experts to create content in various ways (through personal contacts, registration on the site with expert text). This resource invites people to become experts only with a specialized education in management and successful experience in organizational and managerial work.
The Internet publication Mel, which appeared in 2015, is also specialized in the subject of media, which in 2020 was included in the list of domestic socially significant resources on the Internet (Raspopova, 2020), received several professional awards and gained tens of thousands of subscribers and several hundred authors. In an interview with the Journalist magazine (Alevizaki et al., 2020), the editor-in-chief of the Mel resource (Mel.fm) tells, in particular, about the publications of experts (for example, just parents with their interesting and revealing stories of upbringing and education). The specialization of this media is expressed both in its thematic focus and in the clear identification of its audience, which, on the one hand, is huge (school students and their teachers with their parents), and, on the other hand, is a community seriously interested in the problems of upbringing and education. As a result of editorial efforts, a kind of expert community of regular authors is being created around the media. This is consistent with the researchers' conclusion that a journalist today is becoming a media worker who performs impressive functionality for the preparation of content, its placement, promotion, etc.
The authorities are also making efforts to create digital platforms for expert communication. One of the latest examples of this kind is the Expert Club news site Expertclub.online, which reflects the agenda of actions of federal and regional governments in the news. Created in 2021 as a project of the Presidential Administration, the project has received curators in each regional government, who attract regional experts to it. At the moment, more than a thousand experts from all regions of the country (mainly political scientists and managers, including the authors of the article) are registered on it, but news views do not exceed several dozen, and only about 10 % of publications receive the same type of individual expert comments.
The Regional Comments site which has appeared online since 2012, has designated the mission of the widest possible expert interpretation of everything that happens in the regions of Russia, and, indeed, has a large number of experts from the regions (more than 200). The editor of the site, A. Gavycheva, in an interview indicated three ways of selecting experts: the proposal of his candidacy by himself, the method of recommendation by another expert and the search by the editor of the site for an expert among media persons. Humanitarian experts are preferred here (the authors of the article from among them, invited by the site): it should be a historian, a political scientist, a practicing political strategist and the like. In addition, a position loyal to the authorities is desirable.
The interviewed journalists first of all pointed out the need for each media to have its own pool of experts and the difficulty of finding them, especially in regional media and at the stage of entering the profession:
- it will be difficult for a novice journalist in this case: not because of lack of skills, level of knowledge or professionalism in general, but because of the lack of connections at first;
- at the beginning of my journalistic career, the editorial board of the TV channel instructed me to ask a question to the head of the health committee of the Leningrad region at one of the official events. But other journalists had a lot of questions, so they didn't give me the floor again. I told this to a colleague from another publication, a more experienced journalist. He helped to agree on a whole, so to speak, exclusive, comment for us after the event;
The journalists were unanimous in the opinion that with experience, difficulties in finding experts disappear:
- over the years of his activity, a journalist literally "acquires" experts in one field or another, with whom he "friends", for example, on social networks, sometimes even for some third-party reason;
- you just need to use not only the possibilities of social networks, but also phones, and personal connections, and all at once;
- I have the following specifics: I initially do not set the task to take a comment from A. Pugacheva, I take the bar more real;
At the same time, journalists working with economic media information noted that in terms of creating expert media content, the situation has become more complicated in recent years:
- With the beginning of the pandemic and then the military special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, since then there have been more comments (especially on the economic topic) from experts who ask the media not to name their personal data, especially when it comes to the real situation in industries and economic forecasts that sharply differ from those voiced at the state level;
- Since the beginning of the military operation, a huge amount of static and data has been hidden from public access, which does not allow internal economic agents, including experts, to analyze and draw conclusions about what is happening in all spheres of the country's life. It is very difficult to find speakers who could without company data (reporting, information about facts, management structure, etc.), foreign trade and financial statistics (statistics of the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Customs Service, data on exports, imports, and so on) to give an objective and informative expert comment;
- Many leading financial economists and analysts left the country after February 24 and cannot always give a sober assessment of the economic situation in Russia. This also applies to experts from foreign companies, for example, the big three Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, who had high-quality expertise. Agencies have withdrawn the ratings of the sovereign rating of Russia, stopped rating Russian companies and banks, experts left Russia.
The unwillingness of an expert to identify his authorship also poses a problem for journalists, since the audience's trust in an anonymous comment is less:
- There are experts, especially from relevant departments, to whom the authorities have put a "block" for commenting. And here it is possible that an expert gives a comment, but at the same time insists that his name should not be indicated. Or he refuses to comment.
Among the problematic points in the search for experts, there were differences in the political position of the media and experts, a journalist and an expert:
- There are, of course, popular experts who are difficult to reach, there are also those who, for reasons of principle, do not comment on certain journalists (or the media) - for example, liberal-minded people do not communicate with the state Media, and foreign media agents will not turn to experts-"turbo patriots" with aggressive rhetoric.
At the same time, it was noted that each media has its own pool of experts, the situation is especially good in the federal media:
- there are entire departments in the media, or special people who are engaged in finding expert contacts and entering them into the appropriate databases;
- federal TV channels have their own pool of experts who comment on the situation (more often geopolitics) almost on a regular basis (and receiving remuneration for it);
- there is a situation when some speakers themselves seek to act as experts in the media, for example, on issues of current politics. Especially such activity increases among public politicians during the pre-election period.
Interestingly, even those journalists from the respondents who know about Pressfeed have never used it, which indicates the conservative approach of a large number of journalists and the unwillingness to move away from personal contacts to impersonal digital communication, even if it is more effective. It is noteworthy that one regional journalist, unaware of Pressfeed, proposed the idea of creating a regional digital platform of this type:
- The main reason for the problems in finding experts for comments from regional journalists, it seems to me, is the lack of some kind of neutral communication platform where university professors, scientists or employees would be presented as experts in their field and a narrow-profile topic.
5. Conclusion
Thus, in conditions of increasing uncertainty and the media audience's demand for, on the one hand, authoritative, on the other, reliable information, the role of expert media content is constantly growing. Authors research task was to describe the options for obtaining and using expert media content and based on the criterion of its use to propose a typology of modern media projects. The study was conducted using the following methods: content analysis of media with an audience of more than half a million; expert interviews of professional journalists and media editors (7 in total); self-reflection of expert activity in the media (mainly on the digital platform Pressfeed.ru) the authors of the article. The following conclusions can be summarized.
Firstly, in the modern media situation, expert commentary becomes an integral part of news and analytical publications of top media. Secondly, expert media content becomes the basis for the creation of successful media, in which the role of the journalist itself is reduced to resource management and text moderation. In the second case, any person who has knowledge on some narrow topic, or has experience in solving a life problem, becomes an expert, is referred to in the editorial policy of the resource by this word. Thus, in relation to the use of expert media content, modern media can be divided into information-centric and expert-centric.
In the first type of media, one of the biggest difficulties in the work of a journalist is to quickly obtain expert content, often on problems that suddenly arise in society or events that are taking place, and in this regard, the digital platform Pressfeed.ru seems to be the most suitable tool. For journalists working in them, digital platforms for requests to experts seem to be the most suitable. At the same time, platforms like Pressfeed.ru it is mainly used by journalists of cities with millions of people; journalists in the regions, even knowing about it, do not seek to automate their work, perhaps they need to create regional expert platforms.
Both identified types of media today have two main effective practices for obtaining expert content.
The first is digital intermediary platforms independent of specific media, on which both experts and the media are registered.
The second method - the creation of a community around the editorial office in the form of an expert community (its own pool of experts) - is more suitable for media that do not work with
current news information, aimed at a narrower target audience interested in a specific topic. These are, as a rule, specialized educational media or media for professional communities. In them, the concept of expert media content and the word expert itself is interpreted much more broadly, allowing to include among media experts all people who have some experience in a certain field of activity and are ready to share it. Here, the personality of the expert and the exclusivity of the content come to the fore.
The role of expert media content in the era of post-truth and problematization of media fake content has obviously grown and, according to the forecasts of the authors of the article, will increase even more.
By analogy with the American service HARO, owned by Cision, a world leader in technology, information, PR and marketing communications, in 2014 there was Pressfeed.ru, positions itself primarily as a PR tool for brands and opinion leaders, but today we can talk about a whole information ecosystem that includes a symbiosis of media, experts, media education and marketing trajectories of brands. According to the observations of the authors of the article, Pressfeed, created to optimize the work of journalists and PR specialists, is increasingly working on the principles of a business project, monetizing its educational and media services. However, this does not negate the possibility of free work on the service. Previously, the authors of the article referred to this service in their studies of media crowdsourcing (Kaminskaya, Erokhina, 2022). The experience of the authors of the article indicates the usefulness of the service when you need to collect a large number of opinions in a short time, find an expert on a highly specialized topic or a "new expert person", in the case of a "multi-channel" journalist who has to write every day on a new topic.
Experts registered on the service indicate the subject of their expert niche and scientific interests, set the frequency of sending journalists' requests to their mail (from several times a day to once a week). The authors of the article chose a free basic account, which excludes access to the educational resources of the service and paid services for image promotion of personality in the media sphere but allows you to write comments on the requests of journalists twice a month. As a result of writing an expert text on the AI platform, the system informs the expert by e-mail whether the comment was accepted or rejected by the journalist and in the first case sends the publication. The journalist often explains his refusal: the conversion rate of 58 % is considered average on the site, we managed to get a higher percentage of accepted comments (65 %). In just a year of work on the site, the authors of the article created 27 expert texts on the problems of education, communication, and intergenerational differences.
Taking into account the demand for experts in the media space and the need to moderate the process of creating expert content, students of media specialties (journalists, specialists in advertising communications) are offered related tasks in the classroom.
Firstly, it is the selection of experts for a simulated situation-an information guide (a large-scale fire, overcrowded hospitals during an epidemic, an increase in crime in the city).
Secondly, the task is to take an expert interview when writing research papers by students.
Thirdly, students create longreads on topics in which they themselves feel like experts with the selection and composition of other expert opinions. As for the student longreads on the Tilda platform, in 2022 their theme was related to student hobbies, places of student leisure and their small homeland.
6. Acknowledgments
The article was prepared based on the results of research carried out at the expense of budget funds for the state assignment of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.
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