Povjerenje mladih u medije u Hrvatskoj u usporedbi s mladima u Europi temeljem Europske studije vrijednosti

Abstract

According to the process of globalisation, the development of technologies leads to the development of media that play an important role in shaping human life and society in general. The media are often credited with the power to shape an individual's everyday life, and especially the everyday life of young people, as a social group that grows and develops in the digital age. However, in sociological theory, there is no consensus on the effects that the media produce, as well as methodological consensus in the conceptualization and operationalization of confidence in the media. Therefore, we used a mixed approach: survey and interview method to obtain the best possible data on the research problem. We made an analysis of data from the 2017 European Values Study survey. The European Values Study is an international scientific project, in which the Catholic University of Croatia is involved. The sample were young people from 18 to 35 years of age from 34 European countries (n=16772), including Croatia (n=455). In the qualitative part of the research, we interviewed 10 participants of the same age group from Zagreb and Zlatar. The results show that young people in Croatia have more confidence in social networks, and lack of confidence in the press than their peers from European countries, and there is no connection between confidence in the press and social networks with the size of the city/town from which the respondents come. Due to the easy accessibility, actuality, multimedia and the possibility of archiving content, the Internet is the medium most used by participants of qualitative research. They consume mostly entertaining content and listen and watch more than they read. Participants enter different meanings in media types and media content related to confidence (brevity, author's signature, references, verifiability of information, etc.) and lack of confidence (sensationalism, fake news, disinformation, one-sided reporting, etc.), so our research confirms partly the theory of audience rationality. However, participants do not publicly participate in discussions and comments, and they share news and comments on content only with close people. They don't show enunciative productivity and textual productivity due to their aversion to virtual violence. Since the media is mostly for entertainment, they use it even when they don’t trust them.