Non-users of Internet in the information society

Abstract

Several surveys of Russian attitudes towards the Internet are examined. An official surveyor shows that the Internet audience is constantly growing in Russia. But surveys of ‘ordinary people’ demonstrate a symptom of Internet ‘hate’: many prefer to escape totally from social media and the Internet space. This audience needs to be investigated in order to answer the question: “are ‘non-users’ just ordinary ‘socio-phobic individuals’ or is their attitude a real trend in society and a new social behavior”. This article is a preliminary investigation that does not provide answers to this question, but aims to open a discussion. The population of provincial Russia is a very special object of exploration with respect to their attitudes toward Internet because of three important factors: 1) recent penetration of the Internet in social practice; 2) strong tradition of collective life, making social media relatively unimportant; 3) special informational needs excluding the Internet as a satisfying means of information.

Keywords

• Internet-using
• Non-users
• Media-behavior
• Russia
• Provincialism
• Surveys