Popular science material by S. S. Dembitskyi, Doctor of Sociological Sciences: “One society, five voices”

The website of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine has published a popular science material by S. S. Dembitskyi, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, "One society, five voices"

Ukrainian society is neither apathetic nor mobilised. It speaks actively. Two thirds of respondents hold a distinct position, but their voices differ. What looks from the outside like “public opinion” is structurally made up of five different ways of being a citizen, each with its own theme, its own tone, its own attitude towards itself and towards “us”. These ways do not fit onto continuums; they lie in different planes.

There are those who explain how the system is arranged. There are those who are angry with it for personal reasons. There are those who believe in a shared victory. There are those whom material or personal exhaustion has left alone with a difficult life. And there is a vast middle zone — a background one, with no clear frame, no voice of its own and no strong position. These five segments are not “opinions”. They are societal positions: with different resources, a different desire to influence the situation, and a different reaction to messages.

They hold together not through agreement on matters of principle or through functional ties. It is the war that sets the coordinates in which they are compared. It is the war that provides the shared (though not necessarily the main) theme. It is with the war that collective hope is bound up, and it is the war that for the time being mutes many internal contradictions. The unity we saw in the study is in many ways situational. It holds as long as its frame exists.

Each voice consists of the people who carry it, the number of such people in society, its key theme, the character of its message, and the role it plays in the overall composition. The voices are presented not by their size but by their weight for public opinion: from the most “politically active” to those most distant from public discourse.

For more detail see the full material.