The International Scientific Conference is a competition of student projects on the topic «New Media in a new era», which brought together participants from universities of Kazakhstan and Russia in a hybrid format for the fourth time. Students studying journalism, communications, international journalism, public relations, and design presented research based on the generalization of the results of the works of reputable scientists and their own projects that reflect the current situation in traditional and new media in the pandemic era.

The papers presented at the conference concerned the fields of political, economic, social journalism, positioning in social networks, SMM, integrated communications, the latest forms such as visualization, gaming. Many competitive works were devoted to the issues of investigative journalism, personal media, digitalization of information, feedback in multimedia platforms, augmented and virtual reality, intensive channel promotion, personal branding, infographics, special projects, information threats in the context of the security of media employees, bloggers, as well as the well-being of people in a state of «infodemia».

The students clearly indicated the most «sore points», referring to the opinions of well-known journalists, PR specialists, cited data from reports of professional international organizations, such as IFJ, IWPR, EFIJ, IPRA, ICCO, WDO, offered collaborations in the field of traditional and new media, taking into account the psychological state of residents of cities and villages, as well as automated tools that make life easier for employees in the communication sphere and lead to faster feedback between organizations and recipients.

Larisa Noda, senior lecturer of the Department of Print and Electronic Media of the Faculty of Journalism, noted that modern students are already experts in the field of technology, but without creative competencies it is hardly possible to overcome the information barriers of civilization. There is only one way here – to constantly keep yourself in good shape and improve your own skills.

Among the most striking works, the organizer and member of the jury of the conference, senior lecturer of the UNESCO, International Journalism and Media in Society Department Alexandr Rozhkov noted the research of Kirill Kuzmin, a student of Lomonosov Moscow State University and Oleg Shishkov, a student of the Academy of Media Industry, Sofia Bogomolova, Daria Kirdanova and Ekaterina Gulyaeva – students of Altai State University, Nadezhda Manina, a student of Turan University, Saniya Rakhimova, Dina Barlybayeva and Ruslan Rakhimbayev – students of al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The creative approach lies not only in the results, but also in the process itself, in which modern students are involved.