Crime, road accidents, emergencies and coronavirus - top topics in regional online media: IMI research

Most of the news in the regional online media covered criminal issues, emergencies, road accidents and coronavirus, the least they did human rights, ecology and war in the Eastern Ukraine. These are the results of a research study by the NGO "Institute of Mass Information", which was conducted in 10 regions of Ukraine in November this year *.

According to the IMI study, the topics of crime and emergencies, pandemics / coronaviruses, social issues and politics are the most covered in the regional online media. In the newslines of regional online editions surveyed by IMI experts, 26% of the news dealt with crime, emergencies and road accidents, and 19% did with the coronavirus pandemic. Another 15% of news covered the social issues, 13.5% did political processes in the country and the region. Also 6% of news covered economic / business topics and international news. 3% of news items were speaking on sports and entertainment. The least they spoke of human rights (0.5%), ecology (1%) and the war in the Eastern Ukraine / environmental protection (2% of the total number of publications). 

According to the monitoring results, the criminal news and information about emergencies, in particular road accidents were most frequently speaken of in online media in Odesa and Cherkasy (33% each), Kharkiv and Kherson (32% each). The least news about crime came out in the newslines in online media in Poltava and Donetsk (15 and 14%, respectively). 

Leaders in terms of covering the coronavirus issues were online media in Donetsk (28%), Cherkasy and Poltava (23% each). The least news about the coronavirus pandemic was published in the news feeds of the Kherson (11%) and Mykolayiv (13%) websites.

Poltava and Odessa online media most often published news on social issues (22 and 21% of the total number of news, respectively), and the online media of Mykolayiv (8%) and Cherkasy (9%) covered the least on this topic.

At the same time, the online media of Kherson (22%), Lviv and Mykolayiv (17% each) had the most news about politics. The least political news was found out on the sites of Volyn (7%) and Poltava (7% of the total number of news).

At the same time, 3% of news items with attributes of being ordered were recorded in the news feeds in the regional online media, of which 61% of publications had signs of political order, 39% of commercial nature. Most of the news items with signs of order were recorded in the online media of Dnipro (10% of the total number of news in the region), the least such news items were published in the news feeds of online media in Volyn, Mykolayiv and Poltava (1% of materials in the region's news).

* The study analyzed 8629 news, including 253 publications with signs of commercial and political order, in 50 regional online media in 10 regions of Ukraine (Volyn, Dnipro, Donetsk (Mariupol, Slavyansk), Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Cherkasy) from November 2 to 6, 2020 inclusive. The monitoring included only news from the online media, no articles, journalistic investigations, analytics, blogs, author's columns, announcements, etc. had been analyzed. 

The monitoring methodology included thematic analysis of publications (politics, social issues, crime / emergencies / road accidents, economics / business, war in the Eastern Ukraine / environmental protection, pandemic / coronavirus, entertainment, sports, ecology, human rights, international news, etc.), as well as the amount of pieces with signs of political and commercial order in the regional news of online media.

Monitoring covered the following media:

VOLYN (Volyn News, VolynPost, Volyn24, Rayon.in.ua, Pid Prytsilom), DNIPRO (Vidkryty, 056, Dniprovskaya Panorama, Informator, gorod.dp.ua), DONETSK (MARIUPOL) (0629, Novyny Donbasu, Karachun (Slovyansk) , Avdeevka.city, MRPL.CITY), LVIV (Lviv portal, Zakhid.net, Vgolos, Varta1, Tvoe misto), MYKOLAYIV ( Prestupnosti.net, Moy horod, Novosti-N, Inshe.TV, 0512), ODESSA (Dumska, 048, Odeskaya Zhyzn, USI.Odessa, Odessa online), POLTAVA (Poltavshchyna, poltavske.tv, OKIA Novyny Poltavshchyny, 0532.ua, Zmist), KHARKIV (ATN, Status Quo, Horod X, KHARKIV Today, 057 .ua), KHERSON(KhersonOnline, Miy Kherson, Lyubilyy Kherson, Khersonshchyna za den, Khersontsi ), CHERKASY (Vycherpno, 18000, Procherk, Zmi.ck.ua, Provse).