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In journalism, along with such methods of collecting information as observation, interviewing, survey, etc., the method of questioning is used. This method came to journalism from sociology and is used to obtain information on specific issues from a wide range of people. As a result of processing the questionnaire data, publications are created with peculiar features that make it possible to combine them (publications) into an independent genre group.

The name of this genre can be derived from the name of the method of obtaining information, which is the main genre-forming factor. In other words, this genre can be called a “questionnaire” after the “interview” genre, which also received its name from the name of the corresponding method.

Questioning makes available to the journalist rather complex and diverse material. Such a character is due to at least two circumstances. Firstly , by the fact that the questionnaire, as a rule, includes quite a lot of different questions aimed at clarifying certain aspects of the phenomenon that becomes the focus of attention of the respondents. In this case, the organizer of the survey (or a journalist) may be interested in both the characteristics of the subject itself (that is, information about the essence of the subject, its quantitative and qualitative characteristics), and the attitude of the respondents to the subject that they are considering.

Secondly , as a result of the survey, the journalist receives many answers to each of several (sometimes dozens) questions. As a result, a large amount of various information is created, which requires its own ordering. It is in the course of this streamlining that a specific journalistic work, original in content and structure, arises.

Publications in the “questionnaire” genre are currently appearing on the pages of many newspapers and magazines (“Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, “Literary Gazette”, “Evening Moscow”, etc.). The popularity of this relatively difficult genre from the point of view of preparation is explained by the fact that it allows to satisfy the need of the audience for knowing how certain social situations, processes, and phenomena of certain social groups react to, since it is this knowledge that allows you to choose the correct benchmarks in your own behavior. and assessment of reality.