The paper analyzes the development of Russian social media and its application in news production and explores how the Russian news industry and academic circle perceive the role of social media in journalism. In recent years, Russian social media are gaining momentum and have exerted substantial influence on news production: on one hand, social media have become the source of massive news; on the other hand, user generatedcontent is being increasingly adopted by traditional media. In addition, the popularization of social media also reconstructsthe process of information gathering and processing. At present, in Russian news industry and academic circle, it has become a consensus that social media and traditional media are inclined to converge,while the two don’t compete with each other. In the new communication environment, professional journalist and news media still have irreplaceable effect.