This year, almost three quarters of citizens of BiH hold this view. Only 7.8% of citizens of BiH believe that the OHR and the international community violate journalists’ rights and media freedoms. Despite a downward trend compared with the previous year, this view persists among some residents of the RS, 20,8% of whom share it. In the FBiH, politicians and political parties are perceived as the main violators of journalists’ and media rights and freedoms. In BiH, 79,4% of respondents believe that the work of jour ­nalists is politically motivated. Compared with 2025, there was a decrease of around 9% among respondents from Republika Srpska in the share of those who believe that the work of some journalists is politically motivated. As a reminder, in 2025 this share was as high as 96,4%. This year, 5,2% of respondents in BiH consider attacks (verbal and physical) on journalists to be justified, includ­ing 4,2% of respondents from the Federation of BiH and 7.6% from the RS. When it comes to improving journalistic work and the quality of reporting, the majority of respondents consider almost all the proposed measures important, although dif­ferences between the entities are again evident. Respondents in the FBiH believe that the criteria for enter­ing the journalism profession should be stricter, that the credential system for educating journalists should be improved, and that better material conditions should be provided to the profession. Respondents in the RS believe that, first and foremost, journalists’ working conditions should be improved, followed by better implementation of laws protecting journalists’ rights, and succeeded only then by improvements to their educational process. This survey also sought to examine the media through which citizens of BiH obtain information. The results are comparable to those from last year, although some ambi­guity may arise from the fact that the Internet, as in previous years, was treated as a separate medium, rather than as a platform through which so-called traditional media distribute their content, including the websites and portals of television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines. At the same time, the survey lists social net­works separately, although they also exist exclusively online. According to the survey, 37,3% of citizens of BiH obtain information via the Internet. If social networks, at 30,5%, are added to this figure, it appears that so-called tradi­tional media platforms have lost the battle for primacy in informing citizens. According to this classification, televi­sion shows the greatest resilience and stability among these traditional media platforms, serving as the first source of information for 26,7% of citizens of BiH. Respondents in both entities agree on this issue: the Inter­net is the first choice for information in both entities, followed by social networks, while television ranks third. Respondents assess the quality of information they receive through different media in a similar way. The Internet also dominates in this regard across BiH, with 48,3% consider ­ing it the highest quality source, while television ranks second, at 35,9%. Interestingly, in the FBiH, television and the Internet are equally valued in this respect, while in the RS the Internet holds the leading position. Social networks are not recognized as a dominant source of reliable infor­mation. Trust in the work of the institutions At the beginning of this analysis, we provided a brief over­view of the institutions that citizens trust, or do not trust. At the BiH level, citizens express the highest degree of trust in the media, followed by religious communities and government institutions. These are followed by the interna­tional community and non-government organizations, while political parties and politicians are at the bottom of the scale. In Republika Srpska, trust in the international community and non-governmental organizations is extremely low, at 1,8%, while in the Federation of BiH politicians, at 2,6%, and political parties, at 6%, enjoy the lowest levels of trust. The international community is still rated relatively highly among residents of the FBiH, although the level of trust is slightly lower than in 2025. At the same time, trust in non-governmental organizations has increased. When it comes to government institutions, approximately half of respondents in the FBiH trust them. In the RS, this figure stood at only 16,8% last year, while this year it increased to 46,5%. Unlike last year, when religious communities enjoyed almost equal support in both entities, this year the ratio has changed: in Republika Srpska, as many as 66,7% of respondents trust religious communities, compared with 45% in the Federation of BiH. Despite the relatively high position of government institu­tions on the trust scale in 2026, it is noticeable that citizens’ trust in institutions in BiH has declined over the past nine years: that is, in the period from 2017 to 2026. At the same time, politicians recorded their lowest level of trust in 2025, at 7,3%. It should be recalled that politicians and political parties enjoyed the highest level of public trust of citizens in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, with politicians at 34% and political parties at 39%. On the other hand, the non-governmental sector rose from 17,3% last year, the lowest level of trust recorded since 2017, to 34,5%, primarily due to an increase in Republika Srpska. The international community, with an overall trust level of 32,9%, remained at last year’s level, equivalent to the level recorded in 2017, but it is unlikely to again reach the record level from the pandemic period, when it was trusted by 63% of respondents in BiH. Government institutions have been in a period of continuous mild recovery since 2021, with trust reaching 45,8% in 2025 and 54,2% in 2026. As a reminder, in 2017 they stood at only 24%. The media still Survey of media freedoms in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2026 5