Ukrainian scientists comment on only one in five articles about science in online media - IMI research

Only one in five stories on scientific issue in mass media (20.3%) have comments from Ukrainian experts, scientists and researchers. At the same time, the comments from foreign scholars (79.7%) prevail on the pages of Ukrainian online media.

These are the results of a study by the NGO "Institute of Mass Information", which covered 19 Ukrainian online media *.

IMI experts noted that the average rate of science news in the Ukrainian online media was only 1.3% of the total.

At the same time, more than a third (36.1%) of all materials related to science were misinformation, contained fakes or pseudo-scientific facts. 

The most popular topics of science news in online media were: health - this topic accounted for more than half of all "scientific" news. Mostly it was information about a study of coronavirus treatment. In second place was up to the news about space (Ilon Mask and SpaceX), the third place was taken by technology news. 

The largest amount of materials about science, research, experiments or popular science news was recorded on Suspilne, public broadcaster website - 4% (of the total number of news in the feed during the monitoring period), on Obozrevatel - 3.8% and on Dzerkalo Tyzhdnya weekly - 2.8%. At the same time, the experts did not record any material about science on the Znay.ua and Interfax-Ukraine websites.

The full research on the topic of science coverage in the Ukrainian online media can be found here .

* The analysis was held in 19 national online media (ten top-rated and nine media that signed the memorandum of the Media Movement on compliance with professional standards): obozrevatel.com, segodnya.ua, 24tv.ua, tsn.ua, strana.ua, pravda. com.ua, znaj.ua, rbc.ua, unian.com, gordonua.com, nv.ua (М), liga.net (М), ukrinform.ua (М), zn.ua (М), censor. net.ua (M), tyzhden.ua (M), interfax.com.ua (M), bykvu.com (M), suspilne.media. Monitoring period was from 18 to 24 May, 2020.

** This study was made possible by the support of the American people through the USAID Media Program in Ukraine project, implemented by the international organization Internews Network. The contents are the sole responsibility of the Institute for Mass Information and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the US Government or the Internews Network.