Russian Art in Social Media: Strategies, Audience and New Technologies

On October 8 and 9, 2025, an international conference on the creative economy was held in St. Petersburg, dedicated to the export of Russian art and its presentation in world social networks. The discussion focused on opportunities, challenges and new tools to promote classical art in the context of modern geopolitics.

According to Brand Analytics, more than 6.5 million publications related to Russian art were identified in social networks. Experts, including the leading PR manager Tatyana Golovanova, analyzed the structure of these publications: 123 thousand of them relate to exports (64,000 authors). The total audience engagement was 26 million reactions.

During the conference, participants identified two main types of content: “promotion” – Russia’s efforts to showcase its art to the world, and “perception” – the reactions and discussions that arise in response. The main audience is 32% from the United States, with a 60% positive and 40% negative split, indicating active discussion and the influence of political factors.

Mikhail Fatkin, Director of S+ Consulting, focused on the role of academic art as a reputational institution and stressed the need to evaluate it in marketing categories: audience width, quality of content and geography of its distribution. He also suggested developing promotion strategies for different groups of countries – friendly, neutral and hostile.

In the context of attracting young people to academic art, experts proposed the use of new technologies, including neural networks. For example, the Moscow State Kremlin Orchestra for the first time performed music generated using neural networks, which attracted the attention of a young audience. Alexander Dulin, Artistic Director of Imperial Orchestra, stressed the importance of using video and audio content, including streaming services, as well as working with professional IT specialists to create quality content, such as using a neural network to create a clip in the style of “Dune”.

To support Russian composers, the director of the Moscow Academic Musical Theatre K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Andrei Borisov, highlighted the need to create a favorable environment for the development of talents, comparing the process of creating a diamond. He also suggested using the festival movement as an effective promotional tool.

As an example of successful promotion of a creative product, TV and film producer, member of the Academy of Russian Television Nikolai Tabashnikov cited the experience of China, emphasizing the importance of goal-setting and ideological narrative. American conductor Christian Knapp noted that works by Russian composers such as Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov are an integral part of classical music concert programs around the world, due to their ability to directly influence the feelings and emotions of listeners. Pianist Eman Al Hashimi, the first female composer in the UAE, stressed that the values reflected in Russian classics are universal and important for people of all cultures.