CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS One of the main conclusions of this research is the contin­ued lack of trust in politicians and political parties BiH. Respondents from both entities now primarily obtain infor­mation via the Internet, whereas in the previous year citizens of the FBiH preferred television. A convergence of views has also occurred in relation to questions measuring the influence of various factors on the position of journal­ists and the media, as well as in responses concerning how this position could be improved. Certain similarities can also be observed in issues related to the media’s treatment of female politicians and politicians’ treatment of female journalists. Some differences in attitudes that were previously very pro­nounced have narrowed. Thus, in 2025, citizens of the RS viewed the OHR and the international community as deci­sive factors influencing the work of the media and journalists to a much greater extent than is the case this year, although they still differ from the population of the rest of BiH in this regard. On other issues, the perceptions of respondents from the FBiH and the RS remain considerably divergent and point to different socio-political and media conditions. The latter are particularly important given that citizens form their image of reality primarily through the media. This should be especially kept in mind when considering questions in which respondents from one entity are asked to comment on the situation, developments, and phenomena in the other. Precisely for this reason, but also because the media para­digm is changing very rapidly due to technological innovations, the following changes should be considered: 1. Certain items in the survey should be renamed and specified more clearly, including the treatment of the Internet as a medium, the treatment of portals and websites of traditional media, and terms such as“overall political climate”,“journalists’ working conditions” and similar concepts. 2. Qualitative research with focus groups should be conducted in parallel with this quantitative survey in order to obtain answers to certain questions that cannot be adequately addressed through a telephone survey of this type. This particularly applies to primary sources of information, the quality of information sources, reading habits, the influence of headlines and clickbait, and more precise information on the types of media used, as well as individual social networks used and their correlation with demographic characteristics. 3. Separate roundtables should be organized with representatives of different stakeholder groups, including the media, politicians, and NGOs, in order to discuss comparative results from previous years, attempt to arrive at valid explanations for the trends observed in recent years, and develop guidelines on how and where to proceed. Survey of media freedoms in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2026 11