Editor’s note: despite all the challenges, the Ukrainian media market plays a crucial role in the country a year into Russia’s open invasion. Ukrainian outlet Svidomi was launched four years ago to make news appealing to young people – and continues operating amidst the full-scale war. In her column the publisher’s editor-in-chief Yuliia Bondar shares Svidomi’s lessons.

Four years ago, Anastasiia Bakulina realised that many of her friends – at that time, around 20-years-old – were not only uninterested in news but might not even have known who was in charge of the state. With this audience in mind, she launched the online publication Svidomi (Ukrainian for “aware”), which she now leads as the CEO.

The media started with an Instagram page so that young people stumbled upon the news when scrolling the feed. Today, Svidomi has an audience of 172,000 followers on the main Ukrainian-language Instagram page, and over 300,000 followers across all social platforms.

So how do we make young people read the news?

The first step is a daily dose of news

It was almost impossible to force young people to read extensive analyses and follow everything that happens in Ukraine. Therefore, the team developed a strategy to give five pieces of news daily.

The first news item was always a standard one – a ceasefire violation in eastern Ukraine; even before the full-scale war we aimed to remind readers about the Russian-Ukrainian war that began in 2014 but had faded into the background for most Ukrainians until early 2022.

Other news included politics, society, and culture. From time to time, we published analytics and interviews, tailoring their length to fit nine Instagram slides + cover.

Svidomi also used popular platform tools like live streams with famous people. We developed a unique design for each news item – a catchy picture that Instagram loves.

In three years, Svidomi had grown to an audience of 50,000 people.

Not playing by the rules

Since launch, the editorial team stated it did not believe that media could be neutral and, therefore, showed its position.

When in 2020, the court imprisoned activist Serhii Sternenko for “murder” (in fact, self-defence), Svidomi supported Sternenko, covered all the courts, conducted interviews with him, and even came out with a statement and collected letters to send to the pre-trial detention centre. We again came out with support when the court later imprisoned soldier and musician Andrii Antonenko despite a lack of evidence.

We rallied a strong community of like-minded people around us, who went on to share information about us.

*Svidomi’s CEO Anastasiia Bakulina* *at the rally supporting Sternenko. Courtesy of Yuliia Bondar*

Two months before the full-scale invasion

In December of 2021, news about Russia’s escalation and troops buildup on the border with Ukraine began to spread. The theme of war was not new for Svidomi.

The team covered the topic extensively – for example, discussed the likelihood of war with the head of prominent Come Back Alive charitable foundation, Taras Chmut, on Instagram.

In addition, we monitored what was happening in the east and temporarily occupied territories, which allowed readers to take a broader view. At the same time, Svidomi wrote about why there was no place for panic: we talked about a strong army, global support and the availability of military resources.

Medical training for the Svidomi team. *Courtesy of Yuliia Bondar*

A few days before the full-scale invasion, the team worked overtime. It was the first time when we started to publish news at night – we understood that the audience wanted to know what was happening as quickly as possible.

February 24

On February 24 last year, our concept of five news a day stopped working – too many important events took place. We significantly increased the number of news stories posted on Instagram, and the design of colour pictures turned black and white.

Svidomi published more than 100 posts daily at that time, so within a few days Instagram banned the page for almost a month. We created a reserve @svidomi_special and an English-language version @svidomi_eng, which has almost 54,000 followers now, mainly from the USA and the UK.

After the main Instagram account had been unblocked, the designers came up with an updated news digest format – to compile news and publish them in 10 pieces daily.

*Svidomi’s Instagram feed before and after the start of Russia’s open invasion*

Back to the slow mode

In ramping up the number of posts, Svidomi lost its identity. We had been a filter for young people. With the beginning of the full-scale war, the number of followers stopped increasing; Ukrainians were tired of news about the war.

We decided to return to a slow but adapted-to-war format.

We are publishing two news digests – at noon and 10 pm. In addition, Svidomi has developed weekly thematic digests: humanitarian and military assistance, Security Service work, what is happening to the prisoners of the Kremlin, music and cinema news, how many children died as a result of the war, how much grain Ukraine exports, as well as the energy sector overview.

The audience finds the format valuable and keeps growing. Important social stories help attract new readers – most recently, Svidomi CEO posted on Instagram about the case of alleged sexual assault conducted by drunken party organizers, who abused girls under the influence of alcohol and tranquilizers, filming and posting it online. Anastasiia Bakulina’s post got wide engagement, with almost 500,000 likes. Svidomi covered the topic and supported the victims; we invited Masha Efrosinina, a United Nations Population Fund Goodwill Ambassador, for a live stream and designed an article about sexual violence. On that day Svidomi got 7,000 followers.

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How to make young people read the news? We are focusing on Instagram