Sociologists are concerned: social networks are undermining people’s trust in opinion polls
Social media fragments society and divides people with different points of view.
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Director of the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) Valery Fedorov stated this at a press conference in Moscow.
“We note that trust in opinion polls is falling. I have a subjective point of view that I cannot back up with numbers. I'll state it as a hypothesis. In my opinion, this is due to the development of social networks, which allow a person to communicate only with those who are close and in tune with him, experience similar emotions, and remove from his environment those who go against him. Social networks provide such a technical opportunity,” Fedorov said.
According to the sociologist, in addition to the decline in trust in surveys, immersion in social networks leads to an increase in such a trend as the fragmentation of society.
“A person becomes more and more withdrawn. Society is becoming fragmented. We interview everyone and go beyond these boundaries that everyone voluntarily creates for themselves. People are perplexed: “Among my friends, there is no one who would vote for United Russia.” Yes, there are no such people on your social network, but there are quite a lot of them on others. Our “likes” increasingly cut us off from people with a different point of view, we immerse ourselves in a distilled artificial world and move away from those who hold different views. This is a negative trend,” Fedorov is sure.
Sociologists are concerned: social media is undermining people's trust in opinion polls.