New aspects of security: citizens’ attitudes on the issue of information regulation in Russia

The effectiveness of government policies to ensure cyber- and information security directly depends on how successfully such measures are followed by citizens at the national level. The author considers the influence of cognitive-rational, value-affective, and socio-demographic factors on respondents' support for government policy in the field of information regulation through selected cases of regulating social networks and introducing a mandatory face recognition system in public transport. In the course of the study, a factorial survey (N=395) was conducted using vignettes to examine the effects of framing on respondents' perception of the measures proposed. The analysis of the experimental results in this study shows that news framing to persuade the population to support the proposed measures does not lead in the short term to an increase in support for the measures. However, certain factors influencing public perception, such as civic identity, trust in the political system, and assessment of cyber threats danger, show less variability over time. The results of the study allow us to confirm the hypothesis of a direct connection between civic identity and support for restrictive measures, as well as partially confirm the assumption that the political trust of citizens and the specifics of perception of cyber threats positively influence support for the introduction of measures. In addition, the heterogeneity of support for government measures at various levels of political trust of respondents was revealed, therefore we can identify the further potential of research on public perception of such measures taking into account trust in the political system and individual political actors (government, special services, army, etc.) in Russia.

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