Media Representation of Religiousness in Modern Russian Society

Abstract

The study is devoted to a relevant topic – the analysis of the media representation of religiousness in modern Russian society based on media materials. In the scientific literature, there are various assessments of religious media discourse: some authors argue that the media reflect and others that the media distort the real situation. The study presents the idea that the ambiguity of assessments of the level of religiousness and its features is only partially explained by ideological differences between the discourses. To a large extent, such ambiguity is formed as a consequence of the instability of religious identification. Media materials note the superficial nature of religious consciousness, which is evidenced by the low level of churching, predominantly ceremonial nature of religious practice, and shallow knowledge of the essence of dogma. However, according to the authors of the study, an insufficiently high level of religious culture should not be assessed as a profanation of faith. The analysis of the texts published in Russian printed and online media shows that the image of religiousness in the secular segment of the information field differs from the media of different political orientations.