The number of people who consider the information war to be an invention of Western governments to restrict freedom of speech and unwanted media has increased from 15 to 24%. Photo credit: Freepik.
Prague, March 15 (CTK) – The share of Czechs who think the Czech Republic is involved in an information war with Russia has decreased from 52 to 37% since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to a poll conducted by the Ipsos agency and the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) provided to CTK.
The number of people who consider the information war to be an invention of Western governments to restrict freedom of speech and unwanted media has increased from 15 to 24%.
The number of Czechs who have no opinion on the issue has also increased, from 19 to 30%.
The Russian army invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The Ipsos agency conducted its first poll in April, followed by several others, with the most recent this March.
Michal Kormanak from Ipsos noted that the decreasing number of people believing that the Czech Republic is part of Russia’s information war could be related to public fatigue of the armed conflict, but also by propaganda aiming to create information chaos.
Last July, 45% of Czechs were sure that the Czech Republic was involved in an information war with Russia, while 19% considered it a pretence to restrict freedom of speech. One-quarter of respondents did not have any opinion.
The Ipsos agency also said it had marked the biggest change in opinion among people over 70. While in July, 49% of them saw the Czech Republic as part of the information war, this March it was only 24%.
People with higher education are more likely to think that the Czech Republic is part of the information war (55%). Moreover, views are also affected by political preferences, as almost 45% of supporters of the Czech extra-parliamentary opposition parties think that the information war is just an excuse to restrict freedom of speech, compared to 31% of these voters who thought so last year, the authors said. They added that a similar trend was seen among the supporters of the parliamentary opposition (29 to 37%).
By comparison, two-thirds of voters of government parties are persuaded that the Czech Republic is in an information war with Russia.
The situation in Slovakia is more stable and the numbers have not changed much, according to the poll. 36% percent of Slovaks see their country as part of the information war with Russia. The number of people who believe it is a pretense to restrict freedom of speech has slightly decreased from 29 to 26%t over the past year. The number of Slovaks with no opinion on it has increased from 15 to 27%.
