Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 30 – That many
Russians in the major cities now rely on the Internet rather than Russian state
television for news and information is an old story, but even in rural areas, a
new Moscow study finds, residents are turning to the Internet for news and
information and increasingly view TV only as a source of commentary and entertainment.
Given that the Kremlin has been
using television to mobilize what it views as its natural conservative base,
this shift in rural areas could presage a shift in political values among a segment
of the population many analysts believe will always be in Vladimir Putin’s
pocket, given the growing gap between what Moscow TV says and what the facts of
the situation are.
According to research findings
presented at a recent conference organized by the Moscow Higher School of
Economics, rural residents are increasingly aware that Moscow television
distorts the news and consequently are turning ever more often to the Internet
for information, viewing TV primarily as a source of entertainment (opec.ru/1701433.html).
In her presentation to the conference,
Yevgenya Petrova of the Don State Technical University reported on the results of
the 64 in-depth interviews she conducted with people in the Koksov settlement
160 kilometers from Rostov-na-Donu and 15 kilometers from the nearest town.
She said that residents generally
talked about television as a form of entertainment and relaxation rather than
as a source of news. Many said they
ignored television reports when they were not about local events or when they
had not acquired information about them from other sources, such as the
Internet, on the basis of which they could make judgments.
Repeatedly, Petrova suggested, rural
residents said that the Internet is “a significant source of information” and
that they did not expect from television new information as much as reflections
about it and interpretations of content they had known earlier.” But that disjunction is not yet having the
impact many might expect, she said.
As one respondent put it, “you know
that with us the nation is very sick ... all have high blood pressure. But the
television somehow works ... Let those who are supposed to know – the MVD, the
Investigation Committee, the procuracy, the administration know ...Not everyone
needs the truth.”
That pattern, Anna Kachkayeva, the
dean of media studies at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, added is” “characteristic
not only for rural areas. “In the cities, the number of people who are prepared
to close their eyes to the fact that information in the media may be unreliable
has been growing,” as polls show.
In the short term, such attitudes
may benefit of Putin’s regime, but in the longer one, they will contribute to a
split between rulers and ruled that will make any modernization ever more
difficult. At the very least, both new
rural interest in the Internet and these attitudes present a new challenge to
Moscow and others who seek to reach a Russian audience
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