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THE IMAGE OF RUSSIA IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE YOUTH: A VISUAL DIMENSION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 2 (28). P. 110-129

The article examines the psychological and sociopolitical features of Russia’s young generation, which determine the characteristics, ways and means of forming the civic consciousness of the youth. The category “civic consciousness” is understood as a complex of value, cognitive, reflexive, motivational and emotional characteristics of a person that determine their stable and conscious self-identification as a citizen and are expressed in a person’s relationship with the state and society. The structural and substantive characteristics of the image of Russia in the minds of young people are given from the standpoints of the theory of political perception and developments of political psychologists in the field of studying the political consciousness of young people, various aspects of the theory of identity in terms of understanding civic identity as the basis of the political self-determination of the individual. The image of Russia, which is a complex of ideas about it as a country and a state, the modern youth has is explored in its visual dimension through young people’s drawings representing their ideas about Russia in the form of images. The study used the projective drawing technique “Russia in the form of a house”, which, like any other similar diagnostic technique, aims at identifying deep and poorly perceived features of the perception of the surrounding reality and oneself in the world. The main focus is on the semantic content of the plots presented in the drawings, their symbolic content, the emotional sign of the images. Data were generalized according to the parameters of the cognitive complexity and congruence of the images. The target group of the study consisted of young Russian citizens aged 15 to 30 within three age groups – 15 to 17, 18 to 23, and 24 to 30 years. In the course of the study, 540 drawings were collected and analyzed (180 drawings by respondents of each age group) in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Krasnodar and Primorsky krais, in Moscow, Tver, Lipetsk, Omsk oblasts, in the Republics of Crimea and North Ossetia-Alania (at least 50 drawings in each region). Based on the results of the study, the authors identify general tendencies of the perception of the country, which determine the civic identity of young people, and the distinctiveness of the image of Russia in different age groups in the structure of the younger generation. Several interrelated directions (outlines) of structuring the image of their country are also described, including different aspects of young Russians’ ideas about Russia: personal-emotional, power-state, civilizational. The authors note that great difficulties in the development of civic identity are manifested in the younger age group of the studied Russians. The analysis of the image of the country in the structure of the civic consciousness of youth based on visual data, particularly materials of projective drawings, made it possible to confirm the existence of the dependence of civic identity on how the young correlate themselves with the perceived community – Russia as a sociocultural and political entity. The conclusion is made that the use of visual methods in youth research seems to be promising, including due to the specific “clip” nature of the youth’s perception of the sociopolitical reality and the significant role of visual means in the youth’s communication in the social environment and the virtual space.

Keywords: image of Russia, civic consciousness of youth, millennial generation (Y), homeland generation (Z), civic identity, political and psychological approach, visual methods