The Orthodox Media Perception of the Saint Petersburg Students: a Lost Generation or a Lost Sheep

Abstract

The paper addresses the issue of attitudes to religion and, in particular, to Russian Orthodoxy, of the Russian youth with the focus on the effects of secular and religious mass media. Both religion and media are integral parts of social interaction, with mediatization taking shape challenging Orthodox media. The research used qualitative survey methodology to grasp students’ attitudes. It showed that the informative activities of Russian Orthodox media have an insignificant effect. The main sources from which the youth gets specific information about the church are federal and regional media. But it would be too preliminary to conclude that student youth is a lost generation for the Russian Orthodox Church, as only a tiny fraction of young people call themselves Orthodox. This implies that not only the mediatization, but rather atheism or not-observance plays a major role in student indifference. A content analysis of top local media outlets of Saint Petersburg on the issue of the church activities coverage shows that providing news and information is one-sided and weak in secular media. The distorted image of the Russian Orthodox Church in secular media pushes the youth away from confessional media. Thus, the youth remains doubtful when the latter is concerned, and are trapped in secular media bias.