Making sense of media: a non-media-centric and open-ended approach to the study of media-related experiences and perceptions

The project takes a novel approach to the study of media-related experiences and perceptions. It argues that to fully grasp the complexities of the ways people experience, think, and feel about the media, we have to situate the study of media-related experiences and sentiments within a wider sociocultural and political context. In other words, to understand how people experience, think, and feel about the media, we have to understand how people make sense of their own life, society, and politics. The comparative cross-country study design will provide better understanding about the particularities in the ways audiences in Latvia and Estonia experience and make sense of the media. Although sentiments of media scepticism are popular in both Latvia and Estonia, audiences in Latvia are more sceptical in their attitudes toward the media. What is more, along the usual focus on ethnolinguistic divisions, the project pays equal attention to the significant socioeconomic rifts in media-society relations in Latvia and Estonia, illuminated by the recent Covid-19 crisis but thus far neglected in the scholarship on media audiences in the Baltics.