Muscovites and Russians Beyond Ring Road Diverge on Media They Use and Trust, Levada Poll Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 14 – Residents of the Russian capital and residents of the rest of the country diverge significantly not only in terms of the media they rely on for news about the country and the world but also with regard to how much they trust this or that segment of the media marketplace, according to polls by the independent Levada Center.

Muscovites rely on television slightly less often than the country as a whole, 52 percent to 63 percent, and turn to Internet publications far more often than others, 50 percent to 32 percent, although they use social media the same amount (levada.ru/2022/07/15/istochniki-informatsii-moskva-i-rossiya/).

Moreover, residents of the capital are far more likely to read Telegram channel outlets than are other Russians, 30 percent to 16 percent, but only slightly more likely to rely on friends and acquaintances or to use radio than their counterparts beyond the ring road, 20 percent to 15 percent and 17 percent to ten percent respectively.

The two groups of Russians also diverge in terms of the source of news they trust. Fifty percent of all Russians say they trust television but only 31 percent of Muscovites do. And residents of the capital are somewhat more likely to trust not only Internet media of various kinds but also radio and friends and neighbors compared to Russians as a whole.

But both groups were rather distrustful of any outside source: 14 percent of Muscovites and 15 percent of Russians as a whole say they do not trust any of these sources for news about their country or about the world.