Ukrainian media consumers increasingly avoid war-related news on purpose due to anxiety and news overload, a study by the Media Development Foundation (MDF) Research Lab found.

The most common avoidance steps include scrolling through the news feed (on average, 47.1% of respondents who previously indicated that they tend to avoid news about the war) and turning off notifications in news apps (28.8% respectively) or completely stopping consuming news in news feeds and social media channels (22.9%) or completely stopping consuming news media resources (19.1%).

The most common reasons for avoiding news reported by the respondents were as follows:

  • anxiety caused by news (36.9%);
  • news overload (34.6%);
  • excessive sensitivity to war-related news (28.5%).

Anxiety and sensitivity were most often reported by respondents in the North-Eastern and Southern regions, while news overload was most frequently reported in the Western region. respondents most often reported experiencing anxiety, emotional exhaustion, fear, a sense of devastation, and hopelessness.

At the same time, respondents who practice news avoidance showed a high level of patriotism:

  • 65.4% agreed that they felt proud when reading about the Ukrainian resistance;
  • 63.5% said they felt hopeful when reading about the success of the Ukrainian military.

Half of respondents believed that the amount of war-related materials was excessive and depressed them.

The majority of respondents who had previously indicated that they avoid news about the war stated that this practice helped improve their emotional and psychological state.

20.5% of respondents in the South answered “Yes, it helps to improve my emotional and psychological state.” Some reported that avoiding news had no appreciable effect on them: the highest percentage of those (14.9%) were in the Central region.

Instead of news about the war, the largest share of respondents preferred entertainment content, music content, or humorous content.T o stay informed, respondents who avoid news about the war to varying degrees said they primarily rely on communication with friends, family members, colleagues, and military personnel. This tendency is observed across all age groups, most commonly among people aged 25–34.

The study used mixed methodology: online survey of a thousand respondents, media monitoring, content analysis of over 18000 materials, analysis of the reader attention dynamics through Google Analytics, and interviews with experts.