Information Behavior Culture of the RuNet Audience
The purpose of this study is to analyze the formation of a media consumption culture in the information-rich multiconfessional and bilingual region of the Russian Federation – the Republic of Tatarstan. The authors of this article conducted a survey of 200 respondents aged 19-55 who are active users of the RuNet. The survey was carried out among students of the Kazan State Institute of Culture and Kazan Federal University, as well as media professionals from the Republic of Tatarstan. The anonymous survey was conducted in January-March 2019. Of all the respondents participated in this survey, 56% were aged 19-20. Eighty-three percent of the respondents were female – students, teachers and media workers of the Republic of Tatarstan. Sixty-five percent of them combined their education with work. Ninety-eight percent of the respondents received information from the Internet, 76% watched information programs on television, 27% listened to the radio and only 7.5% of the respondents still read newspapers. Sixty-eight percent of the surveyed trusted messages received from news agencies, while 78% trusted news messages received from news aggregators. Ninety percent of the respondents trusted information received from online media; 11% trusted the information received from social networks and only 4.5% of the respondents trusted the information discussed in blogs. The high percentage of trust to information obtained from the media and the low percentage of trust to information obtained from blogs indicates the current culture of media use and media literacy of the population in the situation with fake news. Of all the respondents answering the question "Do you refer to the source of information you use on the Internet?", 91.5% answered positively. Disturbingly, 92.5% of the surveyed believe that they do not have to pay for the information received from online media. The authors explain the refusal to pay for content with a small amount of exclusive and analytical materials in the information field of the Republic of Tatarstan