Political Trust of the Russian Youth Through the Prism of Communication Strategies Choice

Abstract

The article examines the political trust of Russian youth in the context of their representatives’ choice of channels for obtaining political information. The study contributes to the research of theoretical problems of political trust formation under the spread of modern communication means. The impact of the spread of new media on political trust of Russian youth is considered. The article is based on the results of two empirical studies conducted in the fall of 2022: a mass online survey of Russian youth and an expert survey. The mass online survey was based on the online questionnaire method, while conducting an expert survey, the method of non-standardized interview was used to collect information, and the method of discourse analysis was used for processing. The results of the study revealed the differentiation of communication strategies in different socio-demographic and status groups of generations x and z. It is confirmed that the choice of new media as the main information sources about politics is in line with the trend of political trust decreasing. Russian youth are characterized by very low levels of trust in public opinion leaders; by this, it was possible to identify significant intra-generational splits. The communication strategies of the representatives of Russian youth also testify to the crisis of the two-step flow of communication model.