This week marked the start of the citizen interviews. Together with my assistant, I spoke to 40 people across Riga to better understand where they get their news and how they consume media. It seems the weather was on our side: with sunny skies and temperatures around 23 degrees, many people were outside enjoying the parks and didn’t mind taking some time to talk to us.
Alongside the citizen interviews, I also spoke with experts about Latvia’s media system and media audiences. These conversations led me to reflect on similarities and differences with my fieldwork in Estonia last year.
First of all, in both Estonia and Latvia, decisions about media since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine appear to be strongly influenced by security concerns. Both countries have banned and blocked pro-Kremlin media, but their approaches beyond that differ. Estonia has invested more heavily in providing alternative media options for its Russophone population. Latvia, meanwhile, has focused more on reducing the availability of Russian-language content. The reasoning behind this approach is that policymakers want to avoid separate information spaces and instead encourage Russophone audiences to consume Latvian media.
Secondly, compared to Estonia, trust in the media appears to be lower in Latvia. Among Latvia’s Russophone population, trust tends to be lower still. Experts mentioned that many people are skeptical about media independence and perceive news outlets as being influenced by state interests or political actors.
This also relates to another difference between the two countries: journalism is often described as weaker in Latvia than in Estonia. One consequence seems to be higher reliance on social media for news consumption in Latvia. Many people (including older interviewees) mentioned getting news through platforms like YouTube or TikTok. And, it turns out, many might have gotten the same content: several interviewees brought up a bear that had wandered into the city of Jēkabpils earlier this week.
On Monday, I’ll travel to Daugavpils, Latvia’s second-largest city near the Belarusian border and home to a predominantly Russophone population. I’m looking forward to seeing how conversations there compare to those in Riga.