Black PR in web-based editions: Poroshenko, Opposition block and Smeshko – IMI survey

Photo credits: multimarketing.ru The percent of black PR in the web-based editions during the parliamentary campaign was pretty much the same, as during the presidential election. On the eve of the presidential election, IMI experts recorded 23 of such publications during five days of monitoring, and before the parliamentary elections they recorded 25 publications of the kind during the same period of time. These are the figures of the survey of political jeansa held by the Institute of Mass Information NGOs during the period from June 24 to 28, 2019 in 13 sought-after  web-based editions. * More than a half (52%) of materials with signs of counter-propaganda were targeting the former head of state and leader of the "European Solidarity" Petro Poroshenko. At the second position was the counter-propaganda aiming the Opposition bloc (16%), and at the third position was  campaigning against Ihor Smeshko (12%). The most of stories of counter-propaganda nature were published at the website "Znay.ua" : 68% of all recorded materials during the period of this survey. The other protagonists of such materials were the Opposition Bloc, since 16% of such materials were targeting this party, and Ihor Smeshko : 12% of materials targeting him. The stories with signs of smearing campaign against the incumbent president Volodymyr Zelensky were of 8% from the total number of materials. 68% of all black-PR stories revealed by the IMI experts were found out on the website “Znay.ua”. Besides that,, the counter-propaganda materials were also identified on the 24th channel (20% of the total number of materials with signs of countr-propanagda) and "Obozrevatel" (8%), some occasional materials of this kind were identified on the websites of UNIAN and RBC-Ukraine. The complete text of conclusion is available here. The material is based on the analysis conducted during the period from June 24 to 28, 2019 in the following media: "Obozrevatel", "Znay.ua", Channel 24, "Gordon", "Ukrayinska Pravda", "Noveoye Vremya", UNIAN, "Segodnya", TSN, 112.ua, NewsOne, RBC.ua, "Liga.net". The sample covers all the news in a row that appeared on the sites for the specified period (more than 30 thousand of  news).The survey was carried out within the framework of the project with the support of the US Embassy's Media Development Fund in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the official position of the US government.