Most of unmarked campaigning in online media flattered Medvedchuk's party - IMI research

  During the parliamentary election campaign, the “Opposition platform - For Life" found out to the front-runner as the main customer of unmarked political campaigning. It accounted for 46% of the total number of materials with signs of order. These are the results of the three waves of monitoring into online media conducted by the Institute of Mass Information in June and July 2019, with a total sample of over 40,000 materials in 13 online media. The most of materials to the benefit of this political force were published at the end of June - early July, and most actively promoted by websites of 112 Channel and NewsOne, which are associated with the member of the political council of this party, Viktor Medvedchuk. However, materials in favor of "Opposition Platform - For Life" were identified on the websites Znay.ua, Gordon and RBC-Ukraine. Batkivshchyna party and its leader Yulia Tymoshenko took the second position in terms of the number of materials with signs of being paid-for: 8% of the total number of such materials. This political force has been promoting oneself the mostly since the mi-July. The Batkivshchyna party supported such online media as RBC-Ukraine, Obozrevatel and the 24-channel site. In favor of the incumbent president Zelensky and his party "Servant of the People", our expert revealed 5.5% of the materials with signs of being paid-for, most of them in June, and most of all he and his party were supported by Znay.ua. In favor of ex-president Petro Poroshenko and his party "European Solidarity", 5% of the materials were recorded with signs of being ordered, and the same was in the favor of the Opposition Bloc. 4% of the materials with signs of being ordered promoted the activities of the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko. About 3.5% of materials were revealed in favour of the Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko and for parliamentary candidates in majoritarian districts. During the monitoring, besides paid-for materials, the experts of IMI also identified 92 materials with signs of counet-propaganda, which was almost 11% of the total number of materials with signs of being ordered. Most "black PR" was identified during the last wave of monitoring (July 08-12, 2019) - 44 materials. According to the results of the monitoring of the election campaign, almost one-third of such materials (29%) were targeting the former president Petro Poroshenko, the actual President, Volodymyr Zelensky, 20% of materials with signs of counter-propaganda against him were identified, 15% of counter-propaganda were targetting the Opposition bloc, and another 9, 5%  targeted "Opposition Platform - For Life". Most of such materials were published by website of Znay.ua. The material is written based on the results of 3 waves of monitoring (1st wave - 03-07 June 2019, 2nd wave 24-28 June 2019, 3rd wave 08-12 July 2019), held in such media: "Obozrevatel", "Znay. ua ", Channel 24, Gordon, Ukrayinska Pravda, Novoye Vremya, UNIAN," Segodnya ", TSN, 112.ua, NewsOne, RBC.ua," Liga". The sample covered all the news in a row that were published on the sites during the specified period (more than 40 thousand news).The research was conducted 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.