5. Findings and evaluation: The Role of the Internet in Implementation of Effective Political Communication: Russian Experience.

   1. Channels of getting political information

This question related to the process of making completely new medium – the Internet.

Mass media – any device, that collect together messages and takes them to a large number of people together at the same time (McQuail, 1994).

By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a day. Reader's Digest – with over 8 million subscribers, is the most popular magazine in the United States. In 2009 the global TV market represented 1,217.2 million TV households with at least one television, and total revenues of 268.9 billion EUR (declining 1.2% compared to 2008). By June 30, 2010, there were 1,966,514,816 Internet users all around the world (28.7 % of the population) (Почепцов, 2001).

Facts show us, that there are few things which impact the human mind more than mass media. The advice of teachers, parents and relatives may fall on deaf ears, but the mass media influence holds us all spellbound. It is hard to argue with the fact, that mass media has a compelling effect on the human minds. Especially on minds, which are more impressionable. But the degree of that influence, as well as who is most-impacted, when, how and why, have been the subjects of great debate among commu­nication scholars for nearly a century. The reality of today’s life changed a vector of scientific researches (mostly because new technologies have appeared), but many issues are steel essential nowadays.

There is a big problem for researchers of media influence in measuring media effects. Media consumption may affect a person's thoughts, emotions, or behaviors in ways that could be direct or indirect, immediate or delayed, fleeting or lasting. It is impossible for scientists to control all of the mediating factors, from levels of media consumption to demographics such as age, race, and socioeconomic status to harder-to-measure variables like environment, upbringing, values and previous experience.

A researcher would not be able to prove, for example, that playing a violent video game caused a person to commit a violent crime, even if an association existed between the two behaviors. Did playing the game lead to the violent behavior, or did a propensity toward violence encourage use of the game? Why didn't all individuals who played the game commit acts of violence? Traditional methods of research such as surveys, experiments, and panel studies cannot adequately solve this cause-and-effect dilemma.

To understand media effects, it is first critical to consider how media are used and for what purposes. Historically, in communication theory, there are two controversial theories exist:

• Functional theory, which believes the media audience tends to be in control and active;

• Critical/cultural, which believes the audience has less control and is therefore more passive.

Harold Laswell (Laswell, 1948) and Charles Wright (Wright, 1960) allocated five elements, describe the audience's use for the media:

1. Surveillance means that the media provides news and information.

2. Correlation means that the media presents the information to us after they select, interpret, and criticize it.

3. The cultural transmission means that the media reflects our own beliefs, values, and norms.

4. Media also entertains us in our free time and provides an escape from everyday life.

5. Mobilization refers to the media function of promoting society's interest especially in times of crisis (Laswell, 1948; Wright, 1960).

But what people do in this system? Do we have a possibility to choose, what we want from mass media? Rather than concerning itself with what the media does to people, Uses and Gratifications Theory looks at what people do with media (its functions), positing that individuals actively choose the media they use and do so with specific goals in mind (Blumler & Katz, 1974).

Functionalists emphasize the audience's cognitions and choices. Critical/cultural scholars believe “Uses and Gratifications Theory” fails to account for socio-cultural factors. First, they take issue with the assumption that open and active media choices are available to all individu­als. Secondly, they believe the functionalist approach may minimize the impact of the dominant cultural or transnational power(s) in presenting "choices" that serve to reinforce existing elites.

An additional concern is that if we accept the idea that people are neither coerced nor manipulated and have full control over their media consumption choices, policy makers may tend to be less attentive to and critical of media con­tent and power (Morley, 2006).

According to this statements, socio-cultural system needs to be under the governmental control for not been destroyed by other socio-cultural system. The way of controlling the socio-cultural system is controlling public opinion. To control public opinion government need to control mass media. And people in this system need to be passive receivers. But how in this system mass media could realize it basic function - providesing news and information? Instead of “news” it is going to be “opinions” of decision makers. What is the importance of mass media and could it change our socio-cultural preferences? The answer of this question we could find in James M. Avery work “The Influence of the News Media on Political Trust” (Avery, 2009). This work based on two theories: videomalaise and virtuous circle. Specifically, the author finds that the influ­ence of news media on political trust—positive or negative—is dependent on both the news source (i.e., newspaper or television) and individuals' existing level of political trust. Those with low levels of political trust do not become more or less trusting fol­lowing news exposure regardless of the news source.

However, those with higher lev­els of political trust become more trusting following exposure to newspapers and less trusting following exposure to television news (Avery, 2009).

If “mass media” became such an important part of people’s everyday life, it is necessary to understand a “positive” and “negative” effect of it influence.

Positive influence (functions):

• “Surveiance of the environment”. This is the collection and distribution of information within and outside a particular environment. The information flow is necessary for unity and coherence if we live in the society of collectivity;

• Correlation of parts of the society. This includes the interpretation of the information, the prescription of conduct and, the comment on social value;

• Transmission of social heritage (world outlook). By communicating information through the mass media we are transmitting social and cultural values, which aim at sustaining the society;

• Educating the masses. Education on the policies of governments and on the rights and responsibilities could be carried out through the mass media.

• Entertainment function. The mass media also entertain the public by providing emotional relaxation, intrinsic and cultural enjoyment (i.e. provision of momentary escape from problems) and killing boredom;

• Mobilization function. This function of the mass media is very important to developing communities everywhere. It seeks to bring the people together and helps to advance national development;

• “Watchdog” function. According to this function, “mass media” is fourth branch of power. Main influence of this function – responsibility for the information and dependence from the population.

Negative influence (mistakes):

• Presenting a wrong or morally horrify information. Nowadays, “mass media” is a main source of getting information. And it is possible for “mass media” to present a wrong information for the sake of one person, group of persons or even exalted aims. Another problem - morally horrify information. The lead story for most news programs is typically the most recent and extreme crime or disaster. Violence and sexual content, promoting cultural, racial or gender biases, either through stereotyping roles and behaviors or the under- or over-representation of minority characters - all of this are standards for “mass media”. And this information accessible for everyone, even for children;

• Presenting only one side information. Media do not tell us what to think, but what to think about;

• “Media addiction” effect. For some people, it is impossible to spend a day without a TV or newspaper. This effect is particularly relevant to the Internet.

• Different susceptibility of different persons;

• Building a one side “world outlook”. This tendency was a privilege of totalitarian countries, but during the last ten years attempts to impose an opinion for everyone have been observed (Avery, 2009).

As it was shown above, a “negative influence” of the “mass media” is only a consequence of a mistake in functioning “mass media” as a complicated social system. A communication will be effective, if the feedback will be correct. This means, that “public” need to control and communicate with “mass media” to achieve better outcome.

Michail Grigoriev (Григорьев, 1998) highlights several features that give "network publications" a number of advantages over traditional media:

1. A substantial depreciation of the process of creating and distributing online publications and materials;

2. The comparative simplicity of creating online publications;

3. The existence of a developed process of information search on the Internet (Григорьев, 1998; c. 296-297).

In addition, the major advantage of online media is that they are not sensitive to the temporal or spatial restrictions. At any point on the globe and at any time of the day the Internet user can get information from online publications. As a result of serious advantages "even the smallest network publisher, ideally, can get the entire international readership (King, Reddick, 1995; p. 320).

Nevertheless, online media has serious disadvantages as:

1. High speed of network media can lead to making unintended distortions in the transmitted information. A striking example of this is a false story about the death of Bob Hope, published by Associated Press web site in 1998, after which the death of the star was announced in the U.S. Congress (Seitel, 2001).

2. Level of reliability of the Internet information is much lower than in traditional media. There are several reasons for this situation. One of the most important - legal unregulation of the Internet. Using the imperfection of laws of some countries and the mismatch between the legal approaches, the creators of websites have the ability to violate the fundamental rights of communication scope on the intellectual property protection and use the information without identifying the source and the associated fees (Gringras, 1997).

3. Network resources are often created specifically for distribution compromising materials and gossips. These sites serve as a source of compromising information for subsequent retransmission and animations of traditional media (Cutlip S.M., Center A.M. Broom G.M., 1994).

Thus, the media as independent participants in the process of political communication has successfully absorbed the global computer network. In such a way, the study of public opinion in the Russian society at the core of this problem is the essence of the first research question in this study.

Generally, it is possible to say, that the research showed significant results. Answering the first question: “From where do you prefer to receive political information?”, 305 respondents (22,8%) preferred to receive it from the television, 357 respondents (26,6%) from the newspapers, 616 respondents (46%) from the Internet and finally 62 respondents (4,6%) didn’t interested in politics. No one among participants chosen “other variant” option. As it is possible to see, most of the audience chose the Internet as a source of political information. Most probably, this correlation connected with the “insensitiveness to the temporal or spatial restrictions” feature of on line communication. General correlation of this research consistent with findings of “Harvard Group”: “The online “news diet” of Russian bloggers is more independent, international, and oppositional than that of Russian Internet users overall, and far more so than that of non-Internet users, who are more reliant upon state-controlled federal TV channels”.

The Russian blogosphere is a space that appears to be largely free of government control, although we are not able to confirm or deny the existence of subtle controls over Internet speech.

There are pro-government elements such as pro-Kremlin youth groups and bloggers who represent the government’s point of view. However, they are not large in numbers and are not central nodes in any of the political or social clusters that we investigated;

This is a predominantly peer-produced space, which draws more often on Web 2.0 resources such as YouTube and Wikipedia than on more tradition news organizations, but it is also deeply enmeshed in the broader Russian media ecology. Politically oriented bloggers link preferentially to a range of independent sources of news and information, more than to government news sources, although certainly not exclusively;

Many of the most politically attuned bloggers use the platform to serve as a watchdog on elites and the government. In particular, citation of YouTube videos demonstrates frequent focus on corruption and abuse of power;

The Russian blogosphere is a space that Russians use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition. It seems, based on our research, that portions of the Russian blogosphere are used not only to dis -cuss politics and criticize the government, but also to mobilize political and social action (Etling, B. et al., 2010).

The difference between newspaper and TV amateurs of getting political information is small. Nevertheless, the sum of the two indices higher than of the Internet option. This may be explained by two factors - the availability and abundance. The network of national Russian TV is represented by 16 television stations nationwide, about 117 satellite and cable TV channels, 15 TV stations that broadcast from Russia, about 180 regional TV channels and 30 channels of small towns and villages. The total number of about 330 TV channels (Григорьева, 2009). Regarding to print media, this is the most common form of mass media in Russia. By the beginning of 2009 in the Russian Federation there were 27,425 newspapers and weekly magazines, but only 14,000 are in constant turnover (Григорьева, 2009). The aggregate audience of national daily newspapers according to the May - October 2008 amounted to 6522.2 thousand persons, and the national weekly newspaper of general and business content - 14 019.2 thousand that makes 11.3% and 24.2% of the urban population (Григорьева, 2009). As well, according to relatively small percentage of people that not interested in politics it is possible to say about high political culture of Moscow middle class and students.