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INVESTIGATING THE MAIN SOURCES OF POLITICAL
ACQUISITION IN THE STUDENT ENVIRONMENT OF THE
REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN
Valentin V. Laptev
Kazan Federal University, (Russia).
E-mail: vavla@rambler.ru ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2255-8569
Diana R. Fatykhova
Kazan Federal University, (Russia).
E-mail: d.fatikhova@gmail.com ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5336-4914
Dmitriy G. Myuller
Kazan Federal University, (Russia).
E-mail: muller-dg@yandex.ru ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8268-8571
Recepción:
30/01/2020
Aceptación:
02/03/2020
Publicación:
30/03/2020
Citación sugerida:
Laptev, V. V., Fatykhova, D. R., y Myuller, D. G. (2020). Investigating the main sources of political acquisition in the
student environment of the Republic of Tatarstan. 3C TIC. Cuadernos de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC, 9(1), 75-85. http://
doi.org/10.17993/3ctic.2020.91.75-85
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ABSTRACT
This article is an analysis of data obtained during a sociological survey conducted by the authors in
the spring of 2017 among the students of the Kazan Federal University. The purpose of the study
was to expose the students’ preferences concerning the sources of obtaining political information. The
topicality of the study is determined by a number of circumstances, such as: the need to engage young
people in social and political relations, which is one of the most important aspects of the process of
general socialization of young people in a democratic society; the problem of increasing the eectiveness
of the process of political communication, which is of paramount importance in the run-up to the
presidential elections of 2018 in Russia.
In the created situation, it is the use of the scientic, in this case sociological, toolkit that is a necessary
prerequisite for the formation of eective channels of political communication with student youth
and, in general, increasing the political activity of this part of society. The attention of researchers was
focused on the main trends in changing the channels for obtaining political information among the
students, namely, the transformation of the Internet into the main channel of political communication
and the reasons that led to this process. The results of the research show that now the Internet has
become the main source of information in the student environment of the Republic of Tatarstan, but
the interest in foreign and domestic political information is more situational in the student environment
and is associated with specic political events.
KEYWORDS
Sources of political information, Student body, Internet, Mass media, Kazan Federal University.
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1. INTRODUCTION
In the context of a signicant transformation of the information environment of modern society, the
analysis of sources and methods of obtaining political information becomes a central problem of
organizing an eective process of political communication and, ultimately, the development of the
political system on the whole. Under the existing conditions, the sociological monitoring of the preferred
ways and channels for obtaining information about the political life of society is intended to provide
answers to the burning problems of the development of a modern democratic society, to design the
ways of increasing the political activity of citizens, which, in turn, is a necessary condition for its stable
existence.
A special place in the study of this range of problems should, in our opinion, be assigned to the student
youth, which plays an important role in the long-term development of socio-political processes in the
country. Note that the attitude of the student youth towards political communication and politics in
general is acute for modern society and the state, since it is the specic position of the student youth
which the future socio-political development of society depends on, and, in turn, the political views
and selfawareness of young people determine the fate and future of the state on the whole (Morozova,
Müller, & Fatykhova, 2015; Müller, Laptev, & Fatykhova, 2016: Mardani & Fallah, 2018).
At the same time, the modern “model” of interaction between the youth and the political system of
society is far from ideal. Young people as a whole show a rather low political activity, which, on the one
hand, is typical for the majority of developed democratic Western countries, and, on the other hand,
represents a signicant threat to the process of legitimizing the existing political system in the medium
and long term (Etnel, 2010; Daon, 2009). The extremely low priority of politics in the rating of
life values, the legal illiteracy of the younger generation, ineective youth policy, in combination with
condence in their own inability to change anything in the current situation, are just some of the reasons
explaining this state of aairs in the country (Milorava, 2017).
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We can add one more important circumstance to this list, in our opinion, it is the crisis of the socalled
“traditional” channels of political communication, which primarily aected the most “progressive” part
of the society - student youth - in terms of sources of information. In the past decade, almost absolute
leaders in “traditional” media space, primarily television, are the representatives of the party of power,
while the Internet can provide a platform for posting information regardless of budget and political
orientation (Sychenkova & Vakhrusheva, 2014). In the situation when Russian voters are increasingly
moving away from “monotonous” political information, the content of which they cannot inuence, the
Internet space is becoming an increasingly attractive source of diverse social and political content, in the
formation of which they take the most active part.
According to the results of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (RPORC) conducted in
April 2017, the Internet as a source of information is coming close to TV. More than two-thirds of all
respondents (69%) almost always use central television as a source of news and knowledge (reduction
from 78% in 2012). However, the high popularity is supported mainly by the representatives of the older
generation: for example, the federal channels are often watched by 87% in the group older the age of
60 and almost half by 48% in the group aged 18-24. Valery Fyodorov, General Director of the Russian
Public Opinion Research Center (RPORC), notes the trends of development of the Internet as an
increasingly mass source of information for all layers and groups of Russian society and a lack of interest
in television by the youngest part of the audience (Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 2017).
In turn, the Russian authorities, realizing the rapidly expanding opportunities for using the Internet,
including for political struggle, are striving more and more to inuence the Runet, which has become
a new arena of information warfare. At the same time, attention is drawn to the fact that the Russian
authorities are increasingly using a system of prohibitive and punitive measures against users, bloggers
and owners of the Internet resources. So, in 2016 the representatives of the International Human Rights
Group “Agora” registered 53004 facts of administrative pressure, 35019 restrictions on access to sites
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and 298 criminal prosecutions of network users. In addition, 97 proposals of politicians and ocials on
the Internet regulation were registered (AGORA, 2017).
Certainly, the logic of the Russian authorities who take the Internet in as the theater of military operations
is understandable and understandable, but the question arises whether these actions can attract the
students to politics who have already voted for the diversity of content and want to communicate on the
terms chosen by them themselves (Jaramillo, 2018).
In connection with the above circumstances, there is no doubt that it is important to identify the features
and sources of obtaining political information among the students. This problem is covered in this article,
based on the study of the issue on the example of the students of the Kazan Federal (Volga) University.
2. METHODS
A mass survey by questionnaire was chosen as the method of collecting primary sociological information
in the course of the study. The authors developed the questionnaire, which was used during the survey.
In the course of questioning, a quota sample was formed, representational in the age-sex respect. The
students of the Kazan Federal University who were enrolled in full-time studies were chosen as a general
population. The survey was held on the premises of the campus (the Village of Universiade) and in the
University’s academic buildings. In May of 2017, in all, 450 students of the Kazan Federal University
were interviewed.
The purpose of the study was to identify the students’ preferences regarding the sources of political
information acquisition.
To achieve this goal, the following problems were consistently solved during the investigation:
1. To reveal the degree of students’ trust in “traditional” mass media (press, radio, television);
2. To investigate the degree of popularity of the Internet as a source of political information;
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3. To study the degree of interest of the students in the discussion of the issues related to the political
agenda.
4. To identify the most popular topical online publications in the student environment.
The following hypotheses were used as working ones:
1. At the present stage, the Internet is the most popular source of political information in the student
environment, which is directly related to its qualitative characteristics.
2. Essential characteristics of the Internet that meet the needs of the student youth in the eld
of political communication are free information exchange and the possibility of independent
production of information content.
In the course of investigation, before processing the source information, the whole array was previously
checked for quality of toolkit lling, correction of errors and rejection of poorly lled in questionnaires.
As a result, 435 of 450 questionnaires were submitted for processing.
Preparation of data for processing included encryption, encoding and transfer of data toa.xls le (Excel
spreadsheet). Encryption was made in numerical notation, the point of the scale in each specic question
corresponded to the code of the answers in the question in the introductory program. Data processing
and analysis were carried out in the form of layout drawings, tables and groupings, using the code
marks of the characteristics. The SPSS Statistics program was used for data processing, one used the
standard methods of information processing: simple distributions, percentages, averages, mode and
variance of deviations, coecients of association of qualitative characteristics, rank and pair coecients
of correlation.
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3. RESULTS
According to the results of the survey, half of the total number of the respondents (50%) called the
Internet as the main source of information, while only 21% of respondents preferred to use television.
Radio (15%) and press (14%) occupy the third and fourth place, respectively. However, the question
“Do you agree that in the modern world the popularity of traditional media is falling?” was answered
armatively by more than half of the respondents (63%). The similar results are generally correlated
with the previously voiced results obtained by the RPORC.
It should be noted that the respondents ranked news rst (35%)in popularity, while entertainment
information (29%) occupied the second place. At the same time, young people recognize that interest
in news events is most often associated with specic events in the country (36%). Another 26% of the
respondents watch the news frequently and regularly. These facts cause cautious optimism, indicating, in
our opinion, the interest in the current public events from the student youth.
Almost a third of the respondents indicated bias of coverage of current events (30%) as the main problem of
“traditional” mass media. Another 18% of the respondents said there was no interest and responsiveness
when representing materials. At the same time, young people mentioned interesting information (31%),
objectivity of presentation of materials (21%), as well as popularity of the publication (20%) as the main
motives that inuenced the choice of this or that Internet news resource. The respondents’ answers
to the question of condence in the Internet publications were as follows: 18% of the respondents
unambiguously put their trust in the information received from the network; 35% rather trust it; 11%
do not trust and 30% do not trust.
Turning to the block of questions directly related to the information of a political nature, it should be
noted that 42% of the respondents are subscribed to thematic communities covering the discussion of the
political issues. 21% of the respondents visit news “publics” with internal and foreign policy information
every day, and another 31% do it at least 1-2 times a week. Less than a third of the respondents (27%)
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visit rarely, and 15% - do not visit political publics in general. At the same time, attention is drawn to
the fact that when answering the question “Do you participate in the discussion of political news on the
Internet?” a signicant part of the respondents answered negatively (39%); sometimes - 25%; in the
events interesting for me - 22%; yes - 14%. These results point to the students’ changeable interest in
the current political life and suggest that the motivation for active participation of the students in the
political agenda has a situational character.
Among “the leaders” who can inuence the political consciousness of the citizens, the respondents put
the blogs of the leaders of opinions(30%) and social networks (28%) to the rst place. It is interesting
that the third place was taken by massively multiuser online games (21%), while the virtual thematic
communities occupied only the fourth place (15%).A signicant part of the respondents (48%) highly
appreciates the possibilities of social networks as a factor of political mobilization, while those who
disagree with this statement are twice less - 24%.
In addition to the traditional inuence of authoritative opinion on the formation of political views of
young people, these data are an indication, in our opinion, of the main priorities of the respondents in
the eld of information exchange. Obviously, as a motivator, in this case, political communication, for
student youth is both a free exchange of information, and the ability to independently produce their own
information content (Nikitina, 2016; Ingelhart & Welzel, 2009). It is these opportunities that the social
networks provide.
4. SUMMARY
An important result of the study was the conrmation of data on the decrease in the interest of students
in the “traditional” (television, radio and press) media, as the sources of news information. To date,
50% of the respondents regard the Internet as the preferred source of news. At the same time, the main
disadvantage of “traditional” media, as the respondents indicate, is its bias, while the main advantages
of the Internet are an interesting and objective information.
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The interest in political information among the respondents has situational character and is connected
mainly with major socio-political events. At the same time, it should be noted that a signicant proportion
of the respondents are interested in both news information in general and political information.
5. CONCLUSION
The respondents called the blogs of the leaders of an opinion and social networks to be the main sources
of inuence on the political consciousness of Russians, which in this case indicates the characteristics
of information and communication needs of the respondents whose main motivators in the process
of political communication are the free exchange of information and the possibility of independent
production of it. In this connection, it should be noted that legislative initiatives aimed at toughening
up the process of regulating the Internet are more likely to lead to the increase in political apathy and
alienation of this socio-demographic group in the sphere of politics.
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