Top media figures discussed future in Astana

ASTANA. November 24. KAZINFORM Over 250 chief editors and top reporters, bloggers and politicians from 15 countries flocked earlier this week to the Kazakhstan capital of Astana to discuss the future of global media as its traditional concepts face a challenge from new technology.

"Today the media environment is getting blurred, and roles that actors used to play in it are no longer constant," said Svetlana Mironyuk, the chief editor of RIA Novosti. "The audience is taking the leading role, it votes by hits in the internet... as people themselves openly define to which communities they belong."

The Forum of European and Asian Media , sponsored by the RIA Novosti, gathered November 21-22 for the sixth time since it kicked off in Moscow in 2006.

The president of the International Federation of Journalists , Jim Bumelha, highly praised the initiative, calling it "an important platform" for the discussion of the future media, which he sees in "hybrid technologies" tying traditional news organizations and digital media.

According to RIA Novosti, this also shifts the notion of journalism, he said, explaining that deadlines are being replaced by round-the-clock news coverage and that newspapers have abandon plain text for a combination of the written word, video, audio and digital data.

The social consequences of the rise of the social networks, state regulation of the media, and the impact of economic instability on the media industry were among the key topics discussed at the forum.

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