Association between Political Compliancy and Internet-based Media Consumption among Modern Young Adults

The research is devoted to the search for an association between two social phenomena which are political conformity and media consumption. In the context of modern Internet consumption and with the shift of a large part of political life to the Internet environment, communications and social interactions of the political spectrum are also changing to meet modern trends. Young people, who are characterized by exclusive use of Internet resources, are increasingly interested in civic activism and political participation, which is the main goal of this study, which is to establish a correlation between the single-channel nature of media consumption and political compliancy, which is formed in a media environment with a low variability of opinions. The sample of this study is young people living in Moscow, the Moscow region and other major cities of Russia aged from 18 to 34 years. The study is quantitative, an online survey was conducted. To implement the research question of the study, four empirical tasks were set: to classify young people by political positioning and political involvement, to analyze the tendency of young people to conform, to analyze the most common media sources, and to find a direct connection between the central concepts of media consumption and political conformity. The results of the study were detailed solutions to all the above problems and finding a connection between the central concepts. There is indeed a connection between conformity and a certain type of media consumption: with an increase in the severity of conformity, the probability of preference for independent and oppositional media decreases. Moreover, there is a link between belonging to political positioning groups and political involvement and consumption of neutral and independent media. This study can be considered very limited in terms of the results obtained due to limited resources, but the potential applicable value is expressed in better shaping the image of modern youth, competent communication with young people through popular Internet channels, and awareness of general trends in the formulation of political campaigns in the online environment.