Photo credits: George Herald
In 2019, the number of fake news and misinformation about Ukraine in the web-based editions of the so-called "L / DPR" has almost doubled compared to the previous IMI monitoring. If this rate in 2017 was 11% of materials, then in 2019 it became 21% of the materials.
Such are the figures of the monitoring held by the "Institute of Mass Information" NGO from April 22nd to April 26th, 2019 in the web-based editions in the occupied territories of the Donbas *
In particular, most of the reports of the "M / DPR" on the hostilities were contradicting to the summary reports from the Joint Forces Operations Headquarters. Besides that there were observed several fake news on the law on language, the President Volodymyr Zelensky and the local church of Ukraine.
At the same time, the level of hate language related to Ukraine in the media in so-called "L / DPR" decreased from 11% of the total number of news about Ukraine (figures of IMI monitoring in 2017) to 5%, according to the monitoring figures we got this year.
First of all, the hate language concerned Ukrainian military men, whom they called in the media of "L / DPR" is called "punitive expeditioners", "Nazi", "sadists".
The media of the so-called "L/DPR" paid the most of attention to the authorities of Ukraine. 20% of the total number of stories covered this topic in particular, 19.5% of the stories covered the activities of the self-proclaimed "L/DPR" governments. The least of attention was paid to the Russian authorities: 9% of stories.
The most of positive attitude was expressed in the news on the L/DPR local authorities. 89% of the stories about the local leaders were complementary and had a positive valence. No materials on its activity with negative valence were revealed, and 11% of the stories were written in a neutral tone.
Russian authorities were covered for the most part positively, 85% of stories covering Russian government had positive value, and only 2% of the materials have been written in a negative tone, respectively, 13% of the materials have been neutral.
But a half of stories related to the Ukrainian authorities (49%) had been written in a negative tone. Another 45% of the materials were neutral, and only 6% of the materials had a positive tone. Volodymyr Zelensky's election campaign was covered in a positive way.
More about the study can be read here.
The monitoring was held from April 22nd to April 26th, 2019, during this period our experts analyzed all the news in 7 web-based media non-controlled by Ukraine Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The survey was made fulfilled with the support of the USA, through the USAID "Media Program in Ukraine" project implemented by the international organization Internews. The content of the materials is exclusively under the responsibility of the NGO "Institute of Mass Information" and does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the US government and Internews.
