Odesa media is most frequent to write about decentralization and transport reform

During 5 months (August - December 2019) project experts of “Countering disinformation: regional dimension” and Odesa regional NGO “Committee of Voters of Ukraine” were monitoring 15 regional publishing houses in Odesa and Odesa region: 5 paper and 10 online. The problem is that paper media in the region experience distribution issues and their monitoring results are still to be processed.

Learn about the methodology here.

We are presenting the monitoring results of online regional publishing houses. The following publishing houses were monitored: Trassa E-95, 04849.com.ua, Izmail.City, Ovidiopol News, Reni-Odessa, Puls Odesciny, Odessa Life, Bilyaivka.City, Bessarabia Inform, Rozdilna.info. Publishing houses were chosen according to their regional coverage.

More than 8,400 public materials were analyzed. In general, regional media has a high level of republishing and predominantly covers short local news without any additional value.

Among all the themes of local media, most popular are local news, criminal news, accidents, etc. Meanwhile, the monitoring showed a great amount of materials that consist of information on or just mention reforms – 476 materials or 5,7%.

Among most popular reforms in the local media, there are decentralization (119) and transport reform (56). Also, publications often inform about e-reform (45), healthcare (45), and land (41) reforms.

Among all the regional online publishers, Bilyaivka.City spoke about reforms most actively (13% of all the materials). Publishers with the highest percentage are also: Reni-Odessa (13%) and Puls Odeschiny (12%). Their websites, however, are dominated by short news. The highest quality of information (size of articles with extended explanations and graphics) is represented by such publishing houses as 04849.com.ua and Bessarabia Inform.

The most popular genres of reform materials are notes and articles. Only one thematic interview was detected among the entire news feed - an interview with acting chief medical officer of CNE “Izmail City Center of Primary Mediko-Sanitary Help”. She told about novelties that were accomplished due to the implementation of the reform this year (at Izmail.City publishing house).

It is interesting that time division shows the diversity of publishing the information about reforms during different periods. The most frequently, the reform was spoken about in September (6,9%), which is linked to accelerated creation of UTCs and protests against land reform, and it was much more rarely mentioned in December (4,4%).

Media paid more attention to the implementation of reform on a nationwide level than on the local one ­–286 materials (60%) about nationwide level against 190 - local.

Discussing the emotional background of materials, most mentions regarding reforms were neutral (218). However, many materials are of a positive nature (206). Land reform was mostly reported about in a negative way.

Most materials, though, are simply informational. Media either inform people about reforms or explain them (74%).

Remarkable 41% of materials about reforms are, in fact, the rewrites of press releases, mailings of government agencies, etc. Such way of delivering information was used by Reni-Odessa (88%), Puls Odesciny (80%), Rozdilna.info (100%). It is most likely to be linked to low frequency of publishers: 8 (Reni-Odessa), 7 (Rozdilna.info) and 25 (Pulse Odesciny) publications regarding reforms in 5 months. In comparison, Bessarabia Inform, published 26 materials regarding reforms just in one moth.

References to the international experience of reform implementation are extremely rare (only 2% of materials at Odessa Life, Bessarabia Inform and Bilyaivka.City).

The implementation of this project became possible due to support of American nation through the USAID “U-Media” project, carried out by international organization Internews.