Media, institutions, and the Russians’ trust

Abstract

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.