Comment on YouTube Not Accessible Across Russia.
phlegmy@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks agoRead the conclusion of the study.
The list experiment very clearly proved that there’s a lot of preference falsification happening, which was all they were testing for.
The survey results are unlikely to be an accurate representation of the public’s support of the war, there are many factors which could raise or lower the true level of support. Getting an accurate percentage wasn’t the purpose of the study.
And I don’t think Russians are innocent. Propaganda and local news may have a strong influence, but the genuine levels of support for their government’s actions is still seemingly much higher than it has any right to be.
But I don’t think its fair to say the vast majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists without accurate figures to back it up.
Those sort of blanket statements lead to racism, hate crimes, etc, against many innocent people.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It’s just ~10%, no?
What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?
We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?
Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of “strong majority”? Is 65% not a strong majority?
Don’t the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?
Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the “innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists” narrative.
Why did you leave out these numbers? I don’t understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?
But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn’t show what you want to see. Be honest! It’s not about the research or the numbers for you.
So why bring up “accurate figures”?
White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn’t include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.
And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.
phlegmy@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
I didn’t mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn’t a perfect method.
There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.
As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it’s likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.
But they also say that there’s “empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016).”
Like I said earlier, I’m not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
All I know is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially when there’s many external factors at play.
I’m willing to be proven wrong, and I don’t appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn’t.
I’ll admit that I’m biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren’t terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I’m more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don’t properly account for the external social influences at play.
I’ve never stated that there isn’t a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I’m arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.
The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.
I’m not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
I’m not convinced that ‘white washing’ the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there’s no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?
Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there’s a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
The people over there need to know that they aren’t alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Can you stop trying to imply that I didn’t read the study? What are you trying to achieve with such petty passive aggressive jabs?
Of course it’s not a perfect method, but it aligns with other studies (quantitative direct polling and other list experiments, as well as qualitative). It also aligns with long term historical studies around positive attitudes of the russian population towards imperialism (increase in approval of government following invasions, annexations and genocides) over the past ~30 years.
How am I trying to strawman you? Critiquing your reliance on annecdotal experience (that funnily enough mirror my own - although I don’t claim my anecdotal experience means anything) is a straw man?
Show evidence for your framing around “let’s not jump to conclusions”!
What external factors? What external social influences? Be clear and direct in your claims and back them up with something more than “I feel so”!
Show how these factors are important! Going back to my original post, fully uncensored YouTube has been a click away for every russian with smartphone until recently, is this not the case? Can the same not be said about telegram?
What am I trying to accomplish with my argument?
To show reality and not let well meaning, but completely unverified platitudes (that contradict all research and even history) get in the way explaining the nature of russian imperialism.
You’re not convinced that white washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians is relevant because you don’t have to deal with the cruelty and degeneracy of the russians.
Why should we not make russians who support genocidal imperialism (both conceptually and as implemented by their leaders) responsible? Are they children? Of course they should pay for their actions.
And what if the reality is that a strong majority of russians are not interested in implementing any kind of change in their society?
Or that the russia as a society has dug itself into such a hole (supporting putin for 25 years and supporting genocidal imperialism for ~35 years) that there is no easy way out other than violence; something the absolute majority of allegedly “opposition minded” russians are not willing or able to engage in.
By the way, that’s totally understandable; but in that case they shouldn’t talk about magical fantasies of a democratic russia of the future appearing out of no where.
Let’s say for the sake of argument I agree with your take that genocidal imperialism of russia since it’s founding is not representative of current russian society.
How and when do you expect any changes to happen?
How - I am not asking for in-depth details, just a general outline that goes beyond “somehow in the future”.
When - 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?
Addendum question - while we wait for these changes, what would you like people in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya and Belarus to do? Please be specific.
Llewellyn@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
How would you sort those who support war from those who don’t?
phlegmy@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Sorry, I was under the impression that you hadn’t read the study because of our vastly different takeaways.
And strawman was probably the incorrect term in that context.
By external factors and social influences, I mean the social consensus that going against the government is unsafe.
That presidential candidates who have any chance of beating Putin are banned from the ballots, jailed, or coincidentally die before they’re able to build a large enough following.
That it’s safer to just play along than to put a target on your back.
If you were unable to piece together what I meant in the context of this conversation, I’m not convinced this discussion will lead anywhere productive.
Given that the study makes no claim that the statistics accurately represent the true beliefs of the Russian population, I’m suggesting that taking those numbers and concluding otherwise so you can justify calling the overhwelming majority of Russians ‘genocidal imperialists’ is irresponsible at best.
I’ve also never stated that Russians who genuinely support genocide should not be held accountable for their actions. Maybe this is a better example of a strawman argument?
Checking the latest released polls from levada, you can see that the majority of polled participants indicated support for what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
Yet, further down, it shows more participants indicated support for diplomatic resolution over military action.
I see this as a reasonable indicator that the majority of Russians are not genocidal.
And taking preference falsification and levada’s polling methods into account, the numbers could be even more in favour of both diplomatic resolution and disapproval of the war as a whole.
Maybe the overwhelming majority don’t want change in their society, or maybe they don’t have a choice (I’m talking about rigged elections, in case you were struggling to figure out the context again).
I have no idea when any societal changes within Russia will happen, I don’t happen to own a time machine.
I can only guess and assume that there won’t be any substantial publicly-expressed change in ideology while Putin is still in charge.
I’ll let people in those countries make up their own minds about what they should do, and I would hope the rest of the world will continue to support them with whatever that may be.
I’m not sure why you’re asking me these things, they aren’t really relevant to any of the points I’ve been trying to make.
I appreciate you sticking around for this argument, but I think I’m done.