The audience of Internet users, social networks, messengers and VPN services

Four out of five Russians access the Internet daily (in 2001, only 2%). Most of these are young respondents, but the number of older users is growing. Two thirds of the respondents regularly use social networks, and this proportion has tripled since 2011. The most popular social networks are VK and YouTube, and their audience continues to grow (for example, VK’s audience has tripled in 13 years). 80% of the respondents use messengers, and this number has doubled in 8 years. Whatsapp and Telegram are the most popular, and their audience is growing. A quarter of Russians use VNP services at least from time to time, over the past two years their share has hardly changed.

The role of television and the Internet as the main sources of news and the TOP most popular Russian journalists

Television remains the main source of information by audience reach and trust among Russians. At the same time, the combined audience of various news sources on the Internet exceeded the audience of TV news. Younger, educated and affluent respondents are more likely to get their news from the Internet. Older people, as well as less affluent and less educated respondents, are more likely to watch news on television. The audience of telegram channels has stabilized at the level of a quarter of the country’s population after a sharp increase in 2022. The audience of video blogs is slowly increasing, but the majority of respondents do not watch them. The most popular journalists, leading socio-political programs were V. Solovyov, O. Skabeeva, E. Popov, M. Simonyan and D. Kisilev. Independent bloggers and journalists are losing their audience.

Mass perception of “foreign agents”: November 2023

Two thirds of Russians know about the law “on foreign agents”. In three years, awareness of this law has increased one and a half times, although most of the respondents still do not have a clear idea about it. At the same time, against the background of the current military conflict over the past two years, the conviction has noticeably strengthened that the law “on foreign agents” is aimed at limiting the negative Western influence on our country. A third of the respondents say that adding a person, media or organization to the register of “foreign agents” will negatively affect the attitude towards them.

Institutional Trust: September 2023

Since the previous survey last year, trust in most public institutions has grown slightly. However, the changes in most positions are insignificant. The greatest increase in institutional trust was observed last year as a result of the general consolidation of public opinion against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The president, the army, the state security agencies, the government and the church enjoy the greatest confidence, as they did last year. Big business, trade unions and political parties are the least trusted, but trust in these institutions is reaching its maximum values today since the beginning of measurements.