Media Credibility: Cases of Russia and the United States

The primary purpose of this work is to examine the differences in media credibility perception among Russian and American respondents, to compare the importance of mass media and interpersonal channels as sources for information and to check whether there is a relation between a medium credibility perception and a medium's importance as a source for news. This paper functions as a comparative analysis and consists of two parts. The first part is based on the study of already existing literature, especially, the overview of historical development and contemporary state of mass media, some theories of media ecology, and cultural dimensions. Based on this first theoretical part, I created a survey, which results are presented and interpreted in the second part of this work. The main limitation of this study is the small sample size that cannot be considered representative. However, findings of this study provide insights into important issues related to cultural environment impacts on credibility perception of mass media and interpersonal channels. The results of the comparative survey can provide a useful framework for examining the cross-cultural differences in media credibility