On October 22, 2020, an online presentation of the interim results of two monitoring studies of coverage of the local election campaign 2020 in Ukraine for the period from September 26 till October 9, 2020, in online media and Facebook was held.
The first monitoring* is carried out by a coalition of civil society organisations, including the “Commission on Journalism Ethics”, “Human Rights Platform”, “Ukrainian Institute of Media and Communication”, “StopFake” (Ukraine) and “Women in Media” Association NGO with the support of the project “EU and Council of Europe working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine”. The second monitoring** is carried out by the NGO Detector Media.
During the presentation, which took place three days before the elections, the participants presented the topics and tone of the news; assessed the quality of media materials and their compliance with electoral legislation; analysed gender aspects, etc., to help Ukrainians weed out manipulations and fakes and make an informed choice when voting.
As a reminder, the first interim report for the period of September 5-25 was presented on October 8, 2020. The results can be found at https://bit.ly/2T6vHd1
During the second monitoring period, the number of news about the elections slightly increased compared to the first one. The topic of elections moved from the 7th to the 5th place (this is 5.33% or 659 pieces of news). The number of news reports about the elections increased as the campaign developed. However, the structure of the news hardly changed. Educational materials about the electoral procedure itself or materials with a critical analysis of the programmes of electoral process subjects were very rare. Instead, there was no shortage of materials with signs of “hit piece” (“jeansa”).
Diana Dutsyk, Council of Europe consultant, Executive Director of the “Ukrainian Institute for Media and Communication”, explained, “During the second monitoring period, the amount of news about the elections slightly increased. But not enough. Also, in general, the coverage of the electoral process in local online media is not so high-quality that citizens could make an informed choice. Most of the media have their favourites, while most of the subjects of the electoral process remain outside their attention. The “hit piece” also remains a problem. Both large parliamentary parties and local ones produce “hit pieces”. Very few sites are tagging ads and labelling them correctly. Some of them use incomprehensible marking (in the form of an asterisk or some other marking), which the reader may not pay attention to. Therefore, in general, local online media can be given an “unsatisfactory” mark with a plus or “satisfactory” with a minus for the coverage of this campaign.”
In Ukraine, as of September 2020, there was no special regulation of the activities of online publications, platforms for public access to video and information (social networks), including during elections. And yet, despite these traditional legislative shortcomings in terms of regulating online media and social networks during the electoral process, such systemic violations of the Electoral Code were recorded in the reporting period, namely:
- hidden campaigning, as well as posting or distribution of campaigning materials, not indicated in accordance with the requirements of the Electoral Code;
- dissemination of the results of opinion polls related to elections, without specifying the customer and/or other mandatory data.
Oleksandr Burmahin, Executive Director of the CSO “Human Rights Platform”, stressed, “The new stage of monitoring showed that in the previous types of violations of the Electoral Code in the form of unmarked campaigning (hit piece) and incomplete information when publishing opinion polls, several more were added. In particular, online media do not comply with the requirements of objectivity, impartiality, balance, reliability, completeness and accuracy of information when covering the electoral process and they do not provide balanced coverage of the comments of candidates, parties (organisations of parties) – subjects of the electoral process – on events related to elections.”
As for Facebook, the rhetoric of the majority of large parties at the local level continues to be more about all-Ukrainian issues, and not about local politics. One can also clearly see the difference in party strategy at the local level. The messages are mostly of the populist format. This refers to parties at both the national and local levels. Olha Yurkova, the consultant to the Council of Europe, co-founder of the “StopFake” Project, spoke about this.
The expert also noted, “Most of the parties and their leaders tried to discredit their opponents and used offensive language and sometimes hate speech against certain categories of the population. Some political players actively spread messages on Facebook that echoed Russian disinformation. The narratives that were disseminated were national in scope, even when it came to specific regions. In particular, about the fact that Ukraine is a “Nazi state”, “failed state”, under “external control”, and with a “failed medical reform”.”
As for the presence of possible external information influences in local online media, the main trends of the first monitoring period remain relevant. Olha Yurkova added that this, in particular, concerns the absence of references to Russian aggression in certain online media of Donbas when covering the hostilities. But, instead, there are publications of versions of events from the pseudo-republics “DPR” and “LPR”, echoing the Kremlin’s narrative about the absence of Russian troops in Donbas. Another trend is to provide a platform for promoting their thoughts to speakers who broadcast propaganda narratives, in particular to speakers of the “Opposition Platform – For Life” political party. The team also saw an alarming trend in positive coverage of the “normal” life in the occupied territories, in particular, detailed information about the receipt of Russian passports by residents, which supports the Kremlin narrative of legitimising the occupation of a part of the Donbas.
“It is important that the monitoring evaluates the use of Facebook pages by candidates, signs of the use of bots and the external informational influence of Russian propaganda. The Council of Europe is developing important recommendations for presenting challenges to “information disorder” and conducting research in this area. In early 2019, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a declaration on the manipulative capabilities of algorithmic processes and urged member states to pay special attention to algorithmic systems that use personal and non-personal data to sort and micro-target people, identify their vulnerabilities and exploit precise knowledge that leads to the reconfiguration of social spaces to achieve specific goals and interests. In April this year, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation to member states on the impact of algorithmic systems on human rights, containing recommendations on a number of aspects of the design, development and application of algorithmic systems: data management, modelling and analysis, transparency, accountability, effective protection mechanisms, measures, research, innovation and raising public awareness,” Galyna Smirnova, Senior Project Officer of the project “EU and Council of Europe working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine” said.
In addition, the monitoring data for the period from September 26 to October 9, 2020, as well as the previous monitoring period (September 5-25, 2020) showed that the “Gender Equality in Politics” topic is among the top three most discussed topics in regional online media together with the topics “National Minorities” and “the Crimea”.
However, Yelyzaveta Kuzmenko, Council of Europe consultant, monitoring coordinator, chair of the “Women in Media Association” NGO, noted, “During this monitoring period, the number of references to women has increased by 4% compared to the previous one. At the same time, coverage of male subjects of monitoring remained at the same level – 56%. However, these are very minor changes, and women continue to be a minority in the Ukrainian regional media during the elections.”
She also noted that the amount of space provided to the monitoring subjects in online media showed a lack of gender parity. In particular, women received 215 million pixels, or 12.61% of the space, while men received 1491 million pixels or 87.39%.
The full report of the first monitoring is available here.
Regarding the monitoring of (pro-)Russian disinformation narratives in all-Ukrainian and regional media, which has been carried out by the “Detector Media” NGO for five weeks now, Otar Dovzhenko, head of the monitoring and analytics centre of the “Detector Media” NGO, commented, “In recent weeks, the number of messages that support narrative “Ukraine will be saved by friendship with Russia” has significantly increased.” The reason for this was Viktor Medvedchuk’s trip to Russia. A campaign has been launched in the pro-Russian media in support of the immediate purchase of a Russian vaccine against coronavirus. However, the common narrative is “Ukraine is a failed state”. The pro-Russian media make a lot of efforts to promote the thesis “the authorities are pursuing the opposition” and to delegitimise the future election results. Outright fakes also happen, such as “establishment of a British military base in Mykolaiv” or “destruction of pensioners in order not to pay pensions”. In regional media, pro-Russian narratives occur mainly in materials that are hidden campaigning for the “Opposition Platform – For Life”, and in publications of individual media propaganda cells (“Timer” in Odesa, Kherson.life in Kherson, “Kharkiv News Agency”, etc.). The intensity of the distribution of propaganda materials grows during the campaign trips of the leaders of the pro-Russian parties in certain regions.”
Background information:
*Monitoring is conducted by a coalition of civil society organisations, including the “Commission on Journalism Ethics”, “Human Rights Platform”, “Ukrainian Institute of Media and Communication”, “StopFake” (Ukraine) and “Women in Media Association” NGO with the support of the project “EU and Council of Europe working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine” during September 5 – October 25, which covered the content of Facebook and local social and political online media with a wide audience in 12 regions of Ukraine, including Zakarpattia, Rivne, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Volyn, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Kyiv and the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts controlled by Ukraine.
The project “EU and Council of Europe working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine” funded by the EU and the Council of Europe, aims to strengthen the role of media, their freedom and security. Follow the project’s news on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CoEUPSIS/
**The NGO Detector Media monitors (pro-)Russian disinformation narratives in the national media and in the regional media space in eight regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv. In each region, online publications, news from television channels, telegram channels and Facebook pages that disseminate political news are analysed. 16 experts of the monitoring centre of the “Detector Media” NGO and the Guildhall news agency participate in the study.
Contact information: +380632617405, [email protected]
