W. Lance Bennett is rightly pessimistic about a state with government-run mass media, on the one hand, and unchecked corruption, on the other. The massive and partially acknowledged corruption operates menacingly at all levels of society, a phenomenon mainly of the post-Soviet period. And the situation is bound to worsen as the economic crisis grows. However, it is unlikely that this decade of rampant corruption is the source of most heuristics that Russians use, for the derivation and content of shortcuts to navigate news tend to be drawn from early experiences under Soviet rule.
Bennett's response is accurate in its understanding of the work done by Russian viewers to make sense of messages, but his understanding of Russians' store of heuristics is circumscribed, perhaps because he has drawn mainly from American applications. Soviet-era-derived heuristics are very widely in use there and have some powerful results. One such heuristic, in which Russians viewers appear more sophisticated than American counterparts, is the trade-off. Americans require prodding to consider it. Russians expect trade-offs, and if there are none in a news story, viewers supply them—a dozen or more. A second heuristic born in the Soviet era is the weakness of a “positive” news story. Positive stories lack credibility both with college graduates and viewers who have not gone beyond high school.
Election stories were universally detested in the groups, Viewers want coverage to show candidates' programs for the future and accountability after the election. They see all election stories over time and from local to national offices as the same incomprehensible bare-knuckle brawling.
Bennett notes the broad spread of opinions across the groups and that is a valid observation, as is his conclusion that the prevention of a more public opinion is a goal of the regime, something more openly and viciously imposed during the Soviet years. Yet in my book, there is a striking example showing a type of public opinion with no apparent formal organization. In polls in the 1980s, voters choosing the ballot line “against all” were rural, older, and with little education. Now, they are more young, urban, and at upscale jobs. Since 1997, “against all” votes received more than all but four parties, and in almost one-third of the single-member districts came in first or second. Even Vladimir Putin's pick in St. Petersburg was forced into a runoff. This mounting protest vote ended when the state Duma, led by the party favored by the president, removed the against-all ballot line in 2006 and abolished single-member constituencies.
Russians are graduates of the Soviet school of life. That life was supposed to be uniform throughout the country. Of course it was not, but the commonalities across a vast area and large population were such that it is not surprising that their heuristics were related to those many generations of experience.
