The influence of television on the political behavior of youth in modern Russia

Abstract. The text of the article presents the results of the analysis of the television impact effectiveness on the political behavior of young people in modern Russia. (on the example of Belgorod youth).

Keywords: political consciousness, television, mass media, information, information society, TV program.

Television currently is an integral part of the life of society including youth. It performs not only the function of familiarization, but also the function of broadcasting certain values, norms, attitudes and patterns of behavior. Today it is a significant element of young people’s daily life - along with their other affairs and responsibilities requiring a certain amount of time: study, work, sleep, rest, and so on.

Young people come across various kinds of information from television every day. Most often, the submitted material has one position for understanding the existing problem, which leads to a stereotyped way of thinking among young people and a flat understanding of the political situation. The young man begins to doubt the correctness of his own thinking, skepticism arises in relation to his own ideas about the world that are replaced by the idea that is broadcast on the TV screen.

Forming the beliefs and behavioral patterns of a young person, television thereby determines the political consciousness of an individual. It raises the question of the significance and influence of television on urban political consciousness of urban, which is the most vulnerable to this kind of influence.

It is very important for young people to have their own political consciousness. Political and legal future of the country depends on it.

For a detailed study of the process of television influence on the political behavior of young people in modern Russia, an analysis was carried out among Belgorod youth by means of a questionnaire.

The questionnaire consists of 18 questions that helped to determine the social influence of television on the political behavior of youth in the city of Belgorod. A total of 100 people took part in the study, including 52 women and 48 men. The age of the respondents is limited to between 17 and 30 years old. Most of them are in the 19 to 20 age group.

First of all, within the framework of this study it was revealed what meaning young people put in the concept of “Television”. For this, four concepts were presented on this topic, one of which did not have a conceptual answer, and sounded "Difficult to answer." It gained an absolute minority (1%). The majority of young people believe that Television is “One of the mass media”. This answer collected the majority of votes and received (77%) responses. The options "A set of devices for transmitting sound and images to the screen" and "This is a possible option that can brighten up the rest after a hard day's work" received the same number of votes (11%).

The next question for the respondents was "How often do you watch TV?" The majority of respondents (48%) chose the answer “I don’t watch”, (33%) young people answered “Once, twice a week”, the answer “Every other day” scored (10%), (8%) answered “Every day” and less in total he got the answer “Two, three times a day” (1%). It should be noted from the above that almost half of today's youth do not watch television in usual amount.

Answering the question “What feelings do you have when watching news and talk show programs?”, The majority of respondents (38%) chose the answer “Neutral”, (24%) feel “Negative”, (21 %) chose the answer “More likely negative than positive”, (11%) chose “Difficult to answer”, (5%) chose “More likely positive than negative” and (1%) “Positive”.

To further understand the problem, we asked the following question, “Do you think that there is an imposition of opinions in domestic television?”. The majority of respondents (62%) chose the answer “Yes”, (28%) answered “More likely than no ”,“Difficult to answer ”was chosen by (8%) of respondents, the answers“ No ”and“ More likely no than yes ” scored (1%) each.

In conclusion, it should be noted that "Television" in the usual sense is becoming less popular among modern youth as a mass media. The influence of television is becoming less and less significant, young people tend not to trust this media because of the bias of the content provided and the one-sidedness of the information received. As a result, the influence of television on the political behavior of modern Russian youth will decrease every year.

But despite this, "Television" remains in the lead among the older generation, which shares the ideas of television programs with the younger generation.