Less than 1% of Ukrainian regional news contains hate speech
December 7 – The Institute of Mass Information (IMI), assessed regional media coverage of war-related developments. From November 7-11, 2022, they assessed 6,940 news pieces from 50 regional media in ten regions of Ukraine.
IMI found that:
- Half of all the news published by regional media is related to the war. Of this number, 34% covers military action, 22% is on the destruction of civilian infrastructure and war’s societal impact, and 9% is news from the occupied territories.
- Kherson and Donetsk media cover the occupied territories most actively. Regional media pay little attention to the issue of displaced people, just 4% of all the news covers the topic.
- Kherson, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Volyn, and Lviv regional journalists cover the war most actively, devoting anywhere from 44-95% of their news feed to related topics. Odesa and Kropyvnytskyi are low on the list with just 28% and 23% of war-related news pieces, respectively.
- Just 0.3% of all regional news contains hate speech. However, IMI experts acknowledge that they follow the Committee of Journalistic Ethics recommendations by not treating the words “orc,” “rashist,” and uncapitalized Russia as hate speech.
More on the Institute of Mass Information in English.
Photo: IMI