Russians are less interested in the Syrian civil war.

MOSCOW, September 28, 2016.  Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) presents the data of the survey describing whether Russians keep track of the situation in Syria; how they assess the situation in the country.

Most of Russians keep track of the developments in Syria, however in midsummer there has been a decline in interest compared to the beginning of spring: from 73-76% in March to 60% in July including to 18% of those who keep track of the situation regularly (men and elderly respondents are more interested – 23% and 35%, respectively). At the same time, the percentage of those who are not interested in any information about what happens in this country has increased to 40%.

More Russians are pessimistic about the current situation: the normalization of the situation is cited by 27% compared to 48% in March. The share of those who give negative assessments has not changed much (13% and 11%). Simultaneously, respondents find it harder to provide assessments: the percentage of those who are hard to answer has increased to 26% (from 14%). Every third (34%) considers that the situation does not change.

The Medialogia Company analyzed the publications on Syria in the Russian media; a total number of 700 thousand publications since the beginning of 2016were found; most of them were  posted in February (129 thousand). The media reported about a ceasefire in Syria.

The VCIOM opinion poll was conducted on July 16-17, 2016; 1600 persons were surveyed in 130 settlements, 46 regions and 9 federal districts of Russia. The sample is representative of the Russian population aged 18 and over and stratified by sex, age, education, type of settlement. The survey was conducted with multi-stage stratified sample based on general rule of walking and quotas at the final selection stage. The margin of error (taking into account the design effect) with 95% confidence interval does not exceed 3.5%. The survey method is community-based structured face-to-face interviews. Apart from the margin of error, minor changes in question wording and different circumstances arising during the field work should be taken into account.

Russian media analysis is carried out by the Medialogia Company using the Medialogia media database involving 32500 sources such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, news agencies and online media. The study took place from January to September 2016.   

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