Media, institutions, and the Russians’ trust

Media is one of the most important social institutions that mediates the attitude of citizens to other institutions of society. Thus, one of the key features of the contemporary society is the trust of citizens in basic social institutions. The article considers the issue of public trust in the Russian media and focuses on the question to what extent the trust of Russian citizens in the mass media depends on the trust in other state and public institutions. The authors’ conclusions are based on the comparative empirical studies in the metropolitan region conducted in 2016-2018. The data show that people do not really trust in media: about a half of respondents do not trust this institution. This is a common trend for the post-Soviet period in general. The authors used binary logistic regression, and found out that distrust in media is significantly correlated with distrust in other institutions such as the president, State Duma, law enforcement agencies, political parties, church, banks and businesses. Moreover, according to the statistical model, the lack of trust in media is determined by social-economic problems, general dissatisfaction with political system, and negative attitudes to media content and its role in the society. When studying trust in media one should take into account the ongoing transformations of media landscape: today the most trusted media are Internet and television (practically the same level of trust). There is also a clear age differentiation: trust in media generally grows with age, although the situation is opposite considering trust in the Internet. The development of media technologies and online services and networks makes it increasingly difficult to assess the level of public trust in media and other institutions

POLITICAL VALUES OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIETY (results of the comparative research)

The article presents the results of the comparative study of political-ideological views of the Russian population on the values of freedom, democracy, social justice, the role of the state, etc. The research covers almost a quarter of a century - the surveys based on the same questionnaire were conducted among Muscovites in 1992 and 2016. The results of the comparative study show that the structure of the views on basic political values has not changed significantly. However, there are still different, often opposite social-political representations in the Russian society, which is clearly manifested when opposing freedom and inequality, democracy and socialism, social justice and individualism. Moreover, the shares of respondents expressing opposite views are approximately equal. At the same time, the attitudes structure revealed at the end of the last century has changed if compared to the data of 2016 survey, especially considering the role of individual activities in determining life trajectories. There is growing support for the importance of individualism as opposed to social justice and for the expectations of various types of state social guarantees. The results of the multidimensional statistical classification prove that there are several groups with different political-ideological orientations - from supporters of liberal democratic ideas to those who prefer socialist values. However, most groups still support the paternalistic ideas of the Soviet period such as the importance of social guarantees and social role of the state