Ukraine and its media industry have been living under the state of an all-out war for almost 15 months now. After the initial shock and tumult, both publishers and news consumers have adapted to live in wartime conditions for the long haul.

Ukrainian media face all sorts of issues, from regular missile attacks and on-and-off power blackouts to the deterioration of advertising caused by the economic crisis, but they have largely survived thanks to the combination of innate resilience and international support.

How does the situation in Ukraine’s media industry look like now? Where do people consume news – and what risks come with changing consumption habits? We checked in with Otar Dovzhenko, Ukrainian media analyst and chair of the Independent Media Council.

Here’s five insights from our conversation about Ukraine’s media market and evolving news consumption patterns.

Editor’s note: for more background on the situation, read The Fix’s interview with Dovzhenko from September 2022, as well as more of our coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

The overall situation is better than feared – few major news organisations closed in the past 15 months

Last summer, Ukraine’s richest man and media tycoon Rinat Akhmetov clo sed down his media business, including Ukraine’s most popular TV channel Ukraina. At the time media analysts feared that other TV channels and major news outlets would follow.

The fears didn’t materialise. Akhmetov’s media group is perhaps the only big news organisation that closed since the start of the all-out war, Dovzhenko says.

Of course, the war has had a high toll on Ukrainian media, both in economic terms and psychologically. However, most publishers have survived – whether by attracting financial aid and grant funding, adjusting their business model, cutting expenses or, most likely, all of the above.

“The fact that Ukrainian media are hanging on to their business, are not leaving the market, but rather are able to survive and see opportunities for development is a great sign”, Dovzhenko says.

There are issues with press freedom, but overall it’s quite high for a wartime country

The annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in early May recorded a notable improvement for Ukraine. The country ranks 79th by press freedom worldwide, up from 106th a year earlier.

Dovzhenko says that “there’s a lot of freedom of speech in Ukraine for a country at war”. He observes that there’s little government involvement in news media work, “far less than there could have been under the auspices of martial law”.

That doesn’t mean there are no issues. Notably, it’s been a year since three TV channels linked to opposition politician Petro Poroshenko were disconnected from digital broadcasting. “A year later, it is still impossible to say who took this decision, why it was taken, and who implemented it”, RSF laments.

Other problems Dovzhenko points out are the tendency of some local government agencies to refuse to provide information to reporters on martial law grounds even when the data requested isn’t connected to national security, as well as the lack of transparency in the use of confiscated property formerly belonging to pro-Russian news publishers.

TV is losing relevance, partly because of the joint telemarathon

Immediately after the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s biggest TV channels combined their efforts and started broadcasting a single 24/7 joint news marathon. Soon after, the practice became a legal requirement under martial law. It remains so today, and the government hasn’t signalled any plans to give up on the practice before martial law is lifted.

While in February 2022 the marathon was a brilliant idea that helped Ukraine survive by keeping control over its information space, Dovzhenko believes it has since “run out of steam” and doesn’t fulfil the needs of many news consumers – both lacking in diversity of viewpoints and occasionally failing in the core task of quickly reporting the most important news stories. Besides, Dovzhenko says that the marathon isn’t delivering on its initial stated goal of preventing Russian disinformation – both because there are fewer visible threats and because the marathon’s creators don’t seem to be trying to address those that exist.

Polls show a considerable drop in TV viewership; according to a survey by Internews and USAID, 36% Ukrainians used TV to get news in late 2022, down by 10% from the year before. While the fall of TV popularity is a long-term global trend, Dovzhenko believes that the quality of the telemarathon contributes to the decline.

Telegram is a central place for news – and that comes with major risks

The war has accelerated the shift from TV to social media as a central place for news. The same survey by Internews and USAID recorded that 74% respondents consume news on social platforms, up by 11% year-over-year.

Telegram plays a particularly important role in this ecosystem. It became a major news platform thanks to its technical reliability, as well as the quickness and convenience of its one-to-many channels functionality.

The switch of news consumers to Telegram “is an enormous challenge for news media because [most popular news] Telegram channels are their competitors that are not burdened by journalistic standards and restrictions”, Dovzhenko says.

As The Fix’s Anastasiia Shevchenko wrote in April for an overview of Ukraine’s Telegram channels, the most popular news channel on Ukrainian Telegram is “Trukha Ukraine”, which amassed 2.7 million followers “due to its use of user-submitted photos and videos, which meant fast updates and more visual content on the war”.

However, as Shevchenko noted, Trukha, like many of its peers, “is solely a Telegram channel, with no website, clear newsroom organisation or other attributes traditional news organisations have”. Its alleged administrators have been accused of blackmail and other wrongdoings conventional news outlets would never allow.

Dovzhenko believes that publishers have a lot to learn from top Telegram news channels in terms of their approach to presenting news – understanding the mechanics of the platform, which rewards native content rather than attempts to drive traffic to a website, as well as understanding their audience and engaging in a conversation with readers.

At the same time, Dovzhenko says journalists should lean on the advantages they have, which is the capacity to provide high-quality context and explanation for the news, not just rapid news updates.

YouTube is booming

Another vibrant news platform fueled by the decline of TV is YouTube. Dovzhenko says he sees “a huge boom of content on YouTube” as the demand for content about Ukraine and in Ukrainian grows.

“For some media organisations, YouTube became the only source of content monetisation, and they are able to make good money from it”, Dovzhenko says, and so do some bloggers. Examples of successful media on the platform include Channel 24 or multiple YouTube-only projects launched by former TV journalists who left their jobs because of Akhmetov media group’s shutdown or because there’s less space for political content on TV overall today.

Dovzhenko believes there are commercial opportunities for investors in this space. “It won’t be Oprah-level billions of dollars, but I think there’s money to be made by creating a pool of channels focused on interviews, investing in them, and combining them to sell ads”.

Decline of TV and risks from Telegram – five insights about Ukraine’s media industry and news consumption

Anton Protsiuk

Interview with media analyst Otar Dovzhenko

Author

Anton Protsiuk

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