MOSCOW, 1 July 2024. Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents the findings of a survey about Russian information preferences.

According to VCIOM’s June survey, an overwhelming majority of Russians try to keep updated on global developments, national and regional news (87% and 86% respectively). National and world history rounds up the top three topics; it is interesting for eight in ten respondents (81%). But in terms of consumption regularity it is secondary to the situation in the world/country and region (47% and 43%, respectively; 29% are interested in history). As to the core of the target audience – regular information consumers, professional information related to work, studies is ranked third (40% of respondents; most likely young respondents and active working age persons - 75% of the 18-24-year-olds; 57% of the 25-34-year-olds; 53% of the 35-44-year-olds; persons with higher and incomplete higher education (55%); persons with good financial income (52%); and those who live in the settlements with 500 thousand inhabitants and more (51-55%)).

Topics such as nature, animals (75%) and treatment, health, healthy lifestyle (76%) are almost equally popular among Russians; the shares of the regular consumers of such information are 30% and 29% respectively. Mental health is less important than physical health for Russians – 60% choose “psychology, self-development”, including 37% of those who consume these contents occasionally and 23%, regularly. Two-thirds of Russians are interested, to a varying degree, in the topic of family and child upbringing (64%), including 29% on a regular basis.

Certain Russians are interested in various aspects of housekeeping; more than half of respondents are into cooking, recipes (61%), home interiors (58%) and garden and gardening (52%). The share of those who consume these contents on a regular basis is from 16 to 23%.

There are particular categories of content that attract respondents: humor, stand ups, comedy shows (68%), culture and art (63%), traveling and life in other countries (60%), science and technology, IT (57%), economy, business, finance (54%), crimes/crime investigation/detective stories (53%). Despite high interest in this kind of information, the share of those who consume it does not exceed 20%.  

Whereas a majority of respondents are interested in information concerning body conditioning (76%), professional sport is of interest for less than a half of respondents (45%). Content devoted to handicrafts is popular among a third of respondents (31%); a further 22% point out computer games and cyber sport. Fewer respondents mention beauty (36%), fashion (30%) and show business (28%), excluding women (57%, 43% and 34% respectively). 

Young respondents appear to be more curious than others. Out of all the topics (23 items) they show interest in the following ones: humor, stand-up comedy (32% of regular information consumers among the 18-35-year-olds vs. 16% of the remainder), culture and art (25% vs. 16%), science and technology (28% vs. 16%), computer games and cyber sport (17% vs. 4%), treatment and healthy lifestyle (37% vs. 25%), fashion, shopping (14% vs. 5%), beauty, beauty sphere (15% vs. 7%), travelling (22% vs. 13%), and finally psychology and self-development (34% vs. 19%).  

All-Russian VCIOM-Sputnik telephone survey was conducted 12 June, 2024. A total of 1,600 respondents aged 18 and older took part in the survey. Survey method: telephone interviews, stratified random sample based on a complete list of mobile phone numbers in use in Russia. The data were weighted for socio-demographic characteristics. The margin of error at a 95% confidence level does not exceed 2.5%. In addition to sampling error, minor changes to the wording of questions and different circumstances arising during the fieldwork can introduce bias into the survey.

Key effectiveness indicators, survey of 12 June, 2024:  cooperation rate (CR)* = 0.7891; minimum response rate (MRR)** = 0.0118; response rate (RR)*** = 0.0481. Calculations are based on corporate standard https://profi.wciom.ru/principy_standarty/korporativnyj-standart-po-izmereniyu-rezultativnosti-oprosov-sputnik-vciom/

* CR: the number of complete interviews divided by the sum of: а) complete interviews and b) non-interviews with eligible respondents.

** MRR: the number of complete interviews divided by the sum of: а) complete interviews, b) interrupted interviews after successful screening and c) all the respondents where it is unknown whether they meet the selected criteria or not.

 ** RR is calculated in the same way as MRR, with the only difference that the number of respondents with unknown eligibility decreases proportional to the percentage of eligible cases in the total number of respondents with identified eligibility or non-eligibility.