The war's main consequences for journalists are the increase in stress and access issues – IMI survey

Stress increase and information access issues have become the main professional consequences for media workers in the half a year of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

These are the results of an anonymous targeted survey conducted by the Institute of Mass Information in August 2022, which included 217 journalists from all regions of Ukraine*.

The top-10 professional consequences for media workers are as follows:

• stress increase (reported by 56% of the journalists interviewed by IMI);
• issues with information access (51% of the respondents);
• narrowing of the range of topics one can write about (48%);
• growing dangers of working as a journalist (34%);
• workforce downsizing due to the war (people going to the UAF / TDF / leaving) (28%);
• media outlets closing down or downsizing (27%);
• being suspended from work without salary (22%);
• the drop in influence of the traditional media (20%);
• working from home, media outlets relocating to a different region (13%);
• being fired (10%).

*The research was carried out through an anonymous online survey based on an interactive structured questionnaire. Links to the questionnaire were sent out to potential respondents – journalists and editors. A total of 230 responses were received, of which 13 respondents do not work in the media/journalism field, so the analysis included 217 responses from media workers. 29% of the respondents are from the central regions of Ukraine, 21% are from the south, 19% are from the west, 12% are from the north, 11% are from the east and 8% are from Kyiv city. 64% are women, 35% are men, 1% other genders. The survey was conducted in August 2022.