Continuous consumption of information over the past three months has already become a new habit for many Ukrainians. Social media addresses this need by promptly providing information from a variety of sources in a single news feed.

The Ukrainian authorities are also trying to adapt the information field to wartime conditions through the United News telethon, as well as through expanding the number of official channels of communication, by creating official accounts of authorities in Telegram, YouTube, and in other social networks.

We asked them about how Ukrainians consume information. To find out how the information habits of citizens changed during the war, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted a survey commissioned by Civil Network OPORA.

The study ran from May, 19, to May, 24, 2022. It included 2009 adult citizens of Ukraine who at the time of the survey lived in the territory of Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian government.

You can read more about the survey findings here.

Summary 

The onset of a full-scale invasion caused a dramatic increase in the use of social media as a source of news, as well as a growing role for traditional sources of information.

Social networks are used by 76.6% of Ukrainians, 66.7% – watch television, 61.2% – refer to the Internet, in addition to social media. This indicates a growing need for more prompt sources of information but leads to the fact that the consumption of disinformation is also increasing.

After the escalation of hostilities, Ukrainians began to trust television and radio more. In addition, there is also a noticeable increase in trust for social networks: it is 6% higher than other sources of information online, and among all other sources of news, social networks are in 2nd place in terms of trust.

Since the beginning of the large-scale aggression, Telegram has become the leading source of information for Ukrainians, YouTube follows the suit, and Facebook has shifted to third position from the first rank which it used to unchangeably occupy for a number of years in a row.

How do Ukrainians Learn the News?

The most popular source of information over the past two months turned out to be in social media. They have been used as a news source by 76.6% of Ukrainian people.

Television, with 66.7% of the votes, came second.

The third place was taken by the Internet (except for social networks) – 61.2% of users.

Currently, about 28.4% of Ukrainian citizens listen to the radio, and only 15.7% of respondents read the printed media.

The tendency to change the main sources of information can be traced through the annual USAID-Interviews survey about the attitude of the population to media consumption.

In general, the tendency to use social networks as a source of news has persisted for several years, but the war has significantly intensified it.

Thus, in November, 2021, only about 63% of respondents contacted social networks, and with the beginning of active hostilities, they have been joined by over 13% of Ukrainian citizens who began to read the news on social networks.

The share of television has also increased: in November, about 46% of respondents learned the news from the TV, and in May, more than 20% added to them.

News websites received about 13% of new visitors, radio – 15%, and print media is now read by the additional 8% of Ukrainians.

A fairly revealing trend that has increased over the past few years is the decrease in news consumption from most sources of information (except for social networks and Internet media, which maintained at approximately the same levels in 2020–2021).

Instead, radio, television, and print media gradually lost their audience (for example, in 2018, about 77% of respondents watched news on television, and in 2021 – the audience was about 46%).

Large-scale hostilities have brought a significant share of consumers of information to its traditional sources, as well as added users to social networks and Internet media.

In general, in view of our study, there is a noticeable need for society to receive as prompt information as possible. Telegram, Facebook and various online media (for example, Ukrainska Pravda or NV) are updated much faster than news on national TV (even with the round-the-clock telethon "United News") or in other sources of information. 

Trust for Information Sources

Most Ukrainians trust television (60.5%), social networks (almost 54% of respondents) and the Internet, without taking into account social networks, (almost 49%). There is some slightly less confidence in radio (34%) and print media (23%). About 5% of respondents do not trust any of the information sources.

It is indicative that since November, 2021, not only the respondents have grown attention to different types of media but also their trust in them has increased. Thus, in November, only 40% of respondents trusted television, and since the full-scale invasion, this number has increased by more than 20%.

Trust in the radio has also multiplied – by 10%. But trust in online media and print media increased slightly (by 2% and 1%, respectively). 

We cannot accurately compare data on online resources over several years. The only regular and complete study of media consumption in Ukraine is the annual survey conducted by USAID and Internews. It presents the Internet as an all-encompassing category in questions about trusting sources of information, which includes social networks, as well as other online sources of information (for example, media websites, personal blogs on other platforms, podcasts, etc.).

However, the trust levels of Ukrainians in social networks and other online sources differs somewhat – social networks are trusted 6% more than other online sources, which limits our ability to track the trends.

Rating of the Most Popular Social Networks Among Ukrainians

After the escalation of the war of russia with Ukraine on February, 24, 2022, the top 3 social networks, where Ukrainians receive information, somewhat changed.

We cannot analyze the trends in the popularity of specific social networks because in our case, the question was only answered by those who chose "social networks" as a source of news consumption, whereas in the USAID and Internews survey the percentage ratio of popularity of different social networks as a source of news was determined from the entire sample of respondents.

Thus, YouTube remains the most stable in the life of Ukrainians – year in, year out, since 2019, it has been in second place in Ukraine as a source of news. In 2019–2021, the rating of social networks remained almost unchanged, except for 2019, when Viber was the third most popular messenger.

However, after the start of the full-scale invasion, Facebook gave up its position to Telegram, for the first time, and moved to third place. Thus, among 76.6% of citizens who use social networks as a source of information, 66% choose Telegram, 61% – YouTube, and another 58% – Facebook.

As mentioned above, in a dynamic information landscape during a full-scale war, Telegram outperforms other applications.

Its key advantages under such conditions might be the timeliness of the newsfeed, simple interface, active transition of the government information to this channel, including security information (for example, air raid alerts), the multifunctional chatbots, speed of communication, the actual absence of content moderation by the network, etc. However, these advantages have a downside, too.

Indeed, Telegram is one of the least transparent networks to monitor. There is no information available about channel administrators other than those they themselves publicly indicate, and there is no way to track paid or any other inorganic promotion of content.

In recent years, much attention has been drawn to the problem of anonymity of Telegram due to the so-called "leaks", that is, its use to publish high-profile information without revealing the sources.

In general, there is a tendency that the popularity of this messenger grows sharply under unstable conditions. Thus, Telegram became the main app for protesters in Belarus in 2020, in Hong Kong in 2019, in Iran in 2018, etc.

Telegram team declares the protection and security of private data as its priority, which is especially attractive to users in crisis conditions. However, such steadfast safety is rather a marketing move of the company.

On the other hand, Telegram offers by far the most opportunities for coordinating collective action – large user chats and channels, which also contributes to the surge in the popularity of the app.

YouTube, which ranks second among Ukrainians, is also a rather opaque network for monitoring.

Google, which owns YouTube, does not provide the options to track political advertising in Ukraine, which creates ideal conditions for manipulating public opinion.

However, the company did not stay away from the war in Ukraine – it stopped monetization and downgraded the search queries for channels that spread disinformation and approve of russian military actions in Ukraine; they blocked channels of state russian media, and also stopped broadcasting advertising on the company's services in russia. 

Facebook, which during the war found itself in third place in terms of popularity =+among Ukrainians, became the most active network in the context of special policies in response to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.

Thus, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has opened additional opportunities to protect personal data of Ukrainians, increased content monitoring, increased the team of speakers of Ukrainian and Russian languages, banned the dissemination of political advertising from russia, etc.

Read more about Meta's response to the war in Ukraine in our article.

Viber (48%), Instagram (29%), TikTok (19.5%), and Twitter (8.9%) became less popular news sources for Ukrainians during the war.

For these social networks, it is quite difficult to track the dynamics of news consumption: even in USAID-Internews surveys, these social networks began to be mentioned only after 2019. However, even in such a short time, it is noticeable that all of them had quite low positions in news consumption ratings.

After the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine, each of them has slightly increased its audience but remained outside the top 3.

At the same time, Viber is used to consume news by 48% of Ukrainian users – and this is a rather large share for this social network. The Viber audience is mainly middle-aged and older women (about 55% among the 40-69-year-old cohort) living in the cities of the eastern regions of Ukraine.

Given that Viber generally has weak protection against the spread of disinformation (and is similar to Telegram), significant consumption of news on this social network can only hurt. In particular, there is virtually no content regulation policy in Viber at the moment.

In addition, after the start of active hostilities in Ukraine, Viber did not take any measures (unlike Meta) that would contribute to the protection of Ukrainian users.

Instagram is used as a source of news by 29% of respondents. The audience of this social network is mainly young people and women (33% of respondents). Instagram disinformation policies are similar to other Meta services, including Facebook.

With TikTok and Twitter, news gets the least number of users. At the same time, TikTok appeared in surveys only in 2021 and since then has been a social network with mostly entertaining content.

Traditionally, since 2015, Twitter has remained a relatively small social network, which Ukrainian users do not like very much.

Both TikTok and Twitter have not imposed additional restrictions on content regulation since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine. 

Understanding how Ukrainians consume information is important for effective public communication with society in dynamic times. One of the most powerful trends of the Ukrainian Internet space in recent years has become the use of social networks not only for communication and entertainmen, but also for news updates.

That is why civil society and the academic community pay so much attention to the problem of social networks, such as the issues of media literacy and information hygiene to protect against disinformation and other ways of manipulating public opinion, as well as the problems of general digital literacy in the context of the security of personal data and other private information. 

Olha Snopok, Anastasiia Romaniuk for Ukrayinska Pravda