Interactive Political Shows on Modern Television

The current worldwide crisis of democratic systems emphasizes the need to address the issue of enhancing mechanisms for motivating and engaging citizens in a more informed and active role in political life. Socio-political content in the media, including traditional media, could be one of the ways to achieve such integration. The article examines socio-political television programs from the perspective of their ability to facilitate dialogue between the government and society, as well as to engage citizen viewers in political discourse. We distinguished “contact programs” based on conversational formats or the principle of competition, and “interactive programs” themselves, involving viewers in a conversation in the studio and the indirect presence of the viewers' opinions in the program. The analysis of the socio-political content of free and publicly available TV channels in Russia is conducted in order to determine how much interactive content is typical of modern television broadcasting. The analysis shows that most socio-political programs, including those that are positioned as socio-political talk shows, can only be called contact shows. Projects that organize interaction with the television viewer during the broadcast and publish their opinion were found on only three TV channels: NTV, Zvezda, and OTR. At the same time, interactivity in these programs was also limited due to several factors, including: the lack of direct interaction between the show and the audience, the predetermined nature of the scripted content, and the limited representation of different perspectives. Apparently, interactive elements on modern Russian television are an underappreciated creative technology.