Ukrainian online media have been posting less political jeansa – IMI study

Ukraine's popular online media been posting less political jeansa. In late November – early December 2023, politicians posted nearly half as many materials as in September 2023 – 15.7% of all detected materials with signs of being commissioned.

This is evidenced by the Institute of Mass Information's quarterly monitoring covering Ukraine's key online media*.

The amount of commissioned materials in online media overall also dropped. During the study, 117 cases of jeansa were detected, while in September 2023 there were 163. 84.3% of the materials were commissioned by businesses.

The list of top people paying for jeansa has not changed. Of the commercial ones, the leader is Rinat Akhmetov together with his funds and companies, whose presence has grown. Vitaliy Klitschko ranks first among politicians. Meanwhile, Petro Poroshenko, who in the previous monitoring period lost the first place to the Kyiv Mayor, now ranks third. The chair of the "Servant of the People" party, Olena Shulyak, ranks second.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the share of dubiously balanced materials favouring President Volodymyr Zelensky. Most of such materials were on the "Ukrinform" website – many times more compared to any other media outlet under study.

The market distribution between commercial and political commissions has also shifted. 84.3% of all materials identified by experts were posted for the benefit of commercial enterprises. The share of political jeansa is 15.7%.

Ukrainian online media have not changed their approach to commissioned materials favouring politicians and, as before, do not label them in any way.

On the other hand, there have also been positive trends: the number of labeled materials with advertising commissioned by commercial structures has increased. However, these were labeled in ways that are not very obvious to most of the audience.

The Obozrevatel website still ranks first in terms of the amount of jeansa.

Overall, no jeasa was recorded in the news by the online media outlets "Babel", "Suspilne", "Hromadske", ZN.ua, "Ukrinform", "Ukrainian Pravda", "Liga.net", "Esperso", Zakhid.net and NV. However, some of these websites were found to host materials with incorrectly labeled advertising.

*The monitoring took place on November 29 – December 1, 2023, and covered 22 popular online media websites: "Babel", Suspilne, Hromadske, ZN.UA, "Ukrainian Pravda", "Espreso", Ukrinform, Liga.net, NV, LB.ua, RBC-Ukraine, Censor.Net, Interfax-Ukraine, TSN, Korespondent.net, Zakhid.net, Focus, UNIAN, Channel 24, Gordon, Telegraf, Obozrevatel. The sample includes all consecutive news that appeared on the websites during the specified period.