Freedom has been the highest priority in Germany for eleven years, and at the same time the individual sense of freedom is increasing again after a dent in 2021.
This is the result of the freedom index of the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy, the Media Tenor analysis institute and the John Stuart Mill Institute, which will be published this Thursday and is available exclusively to the FAZ.
Sarah Wagener
volunteer
Follow I follow
The three institutes regularly survey the importance of freedom compared to other values in the population and reporting, as well as the subjective feeling of freedom of a good 1000 respondents.
In 2022, 28 percent of statements about values in the media were about freedom, more than at any time in the past eleven years.
As recently as 2021, only 15 percent of reporting on values was about freedom, so the proportion has almost doubled.
At the same time, in 2022 slightly more people had the feeling of being free in their lives and being able to freely express their political opinions.
However, not even half of the respondents felt free to express their opinions.
Only 48 percent said they felt they could speak freely, compared to 63 percent who said so in 2017 and 78 percent in 1990. Cautious in expressing their opinion is 37 percent of respondents, compared to 44 percent in 2021 and 25 percent in 2017 .
In addition to the individual feeling of freedom, the freedom index also asks how people assess the social status of freedom.
This value has declined somewhat after a high from 2017 to 2021.
In particular, when choosing between freedom and equality, more respondents would have opted for equality in 2022 than at any time since 1998. The proportion of those who thought that everyone was the architect of their own fortune also decreased, while more respondents believed that social advancement opportunities were limited.