How Zeitgeist and Media Fragmentation are Linked with Value Change and Value Consensus?

Finland shifted from agricultural and industrial society to informational in 1981-2015 together with remarkable societal changes. We shall study the impact of this on human basic values with the Schwartz’s approach by extending our SVS time series (1991-2015) backward to 1981 with attitude estimates, and supplementing it with the PVQ time series of the ESS. We improved the comparability of the time series and matched them up with the basic dimensions of Schwartz’s theory with our factor analytical approach. Because the ten values are not exactly comparable the two dimensions show the direction and magnitude of value change, and the ten values the content of it. Study 1 suggests that value change is small, but toward openness to change and self-transcendence, and that the vicissitudes of values can be linked with the recent history of the country. Also, we found two comprehensive zeitgeist effects, both linked with economic growth, and the disappearance of zeitgeist effects in the new Millennium. According to Study 2 value consensus increases until 2005 but stagnates thereafter, the process is linked with the disappearance to zeitgeist effects and the fragmentation of media use. Media fragmentation predicts the variance of value consensus best in the groups in which the largest value changes occur. Responses to zeitgeist differ depending on the group, the severity of societal turbulences, and the time-lag between the measures. Values are sensitive to societal events which must be taken into account in all values studies, not only in the analyses of value change.