Less trust, more ambivalence in Georgian media, says CRRC survey

A survey by the Caucasus Research Resource Centre (CRRC) into attitudes towards Georgia’s media shows public trust is declining however growing numbers of people have an ambivalent attitude.

This meant more people in Georgia did not trust or distrust the media but had no real opinion, said the CRRC.

The CRRC is a network of training and research centres operating in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan that aimed to improve and progress social science research and public policy analysis in the South Caucasus.

Through a survey the agency found increasing ambivalence meant people had difficulty stating their opinion about the media and had no clear answers whether they trusted the media or not.

Between 2008 and 2015, reported trust in the media declined by 28 percentage points in Georgia. The biggest drops are between 2008 and 2009 and between 2011 and 2012,” said the agency.

Image by Caucasus Research Resource Centres.

These two periods (2008-2009 and 2011-2012) were when United National Movement (UNM) was in office.

Interestingly, over the same period the reported level of distrust in the media has remained rather steady. Ambivalence however is rising. The share of the population responding that they ‘neither trust nor distrust’ the media climbed from 28 percent in 2008 to 54 percent in 2015,” said the CRRC.

In recent years the Georgian public’s perception of how well TV journalists informed the population about current affairs had declined, while ambivalence towards them had risen. 

CRRC said the share of the population  who say  they ‘neither trust nor distrust’ the media climbed from 28 percent in 2008 to 54 percent in 2015. Photo by N.Alavidze/Agenda.ge.

Since 2009 the percentage of public who believed TV journalists served the interests of the general public decreased by 13 percentage points, while ambivalence increased by 15 percentage points,” CRRC said. 

In all cases, positive assessments have decreased, while ambivalence has increased. If the trends marked here are indeed general shifts in attitudes towards the media … this has the potential to point to long-term changes that are less attached to specific political events or media scandals and may indicate avenues for further research on public opinion in Georgia about the media,” said the agency.

The CRRC was established in 2003 by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF) with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

See the full survey here.