Local Digital Media in the Struggle for the Attention of the Audience in a Changing Media Landscape of Belarus

The article discusses the work of Belarusian local media in the digital environment. The material for the study was the websites of regional mass media of the Republic of Belarus, as well as their accounts in social networks and instant messengers. It has been established that the regional media have accumulated sufficient experience in the development of the Internet space. The main strategies for organizing the work of editorial offices on the Internet are identified. The key indicators that measure the reach and engagement of the digital media audience are considered. The performance indicators of the editorial offices of regional newspapers on the Internet were measured in a comparative aspect. The growth of the influence of social networks, recommendation services, search engines on the regional media landscape are shown. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the study of the growing dominance of global platform companies in the journalism. The author argues that traditional media are forced to resort to multi-platform, as a result of which the dominance of the Big Three social networks market (Instagram, Telegram and TikTok) leads to a blurring of the line between news and entertainment. The results of the survey of chief editors are given. The main models and tools for digital transformation of the Belarusian media space are systematized. The final conclusion of the article is that the main metric of the work of journalists in the digital environment is the involvement of the audience.