A Internationally Collaborative Study

UNESCO and the government of Japan are supporting a new project on media literacy and access to information about politics in Ukraine. The project, entitled ‘Access to Information and Media Literacy about Politics and Elections: A Collaborative Study of Ukraine’, seeks to enhance understanding of how the Ukrainian public accesses information on controversies about the war and politics, the degree they trust various media, and how individuals are adapting their media practices in the context of the ongoing war. It is supported by UNESCO and the People of Japan, with in-kind support from the University of Oxford’s Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC).

My colleagues and I are approaching this through a sample survey of 2000 respondents in Ukraine. The survey was designed by us and fielded through Rating Group, a survey organisation based in Ukraine, to gain insight on access to information and the media literacy of Ukrainians during the ongoing war following Russia’s invasion of the country. The survey will be complemented by qualitative research, based on in-depth interviews about the media landscape in Ukraine during this period. Analysis of the survey and in-depth interviews will provide us with insights on how Ukrainians access information about politics and the war in the present context of an information war – what I would call a ‘war on information’.

Results of the study will be disseminated widely and a report on the project will be published along with a series of short reports on key findings. The study will support recommendations on practical steps for Ukraine to address evolving issues of media literacy and the ability of its citizens to access reliable information in the context of a war on information as well as the people of Ukraine. In many ways, these recommendations could well be of relevance far beyond Ukraine, such as for other countries experiencing similar wars on information.

To conduct this research, we have developed an international collaboration, including four colleagues from Ukraine. This international team is undertaking both the qualitative case study and related survey research on how the public of Ukraine get access to information about politics. What sources are most often accessed and what levels of confidence do individuals have in the news and information they provide? Most generally, how has the media landscape and Internet users adapted to living in a war on information?

The international team is being organized and managed by the Portulans Institute, itself an international organization, headquartered in Washington, DC. The team is composed of social scientists at the Portulans Institute and the University of Oxford’s Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC) and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), along with Ukrainian social scientists affiliated with the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences Ukraine, and based in Ukraine, Ireland, and Germany.

Blogs, Working Papers, and Publications

Dutton, W. H., and Chernenko, L. (2024), ‘Telegram: A Platform of Value to the People of Ukraine’, blog posted on WordPress and Substack, 29 August. https://billdutton.me/2024/08/29/telegram-a-valuable-platform-to-the-people-of-ukraine/

Researchers

The team includes:

Dr Nataliia Boiko, Leading Research Fellow, Department of Social Psychology, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Science of Ukraine

Serhii Dembitskyi, Deputy Director, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Science of Ukraine

Olena Goroshko, Professor in Sociology and Public Administration in the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”

William H. Dutton, Director of the Portulans Institute, and Martin Fellow and OII Research Fellow, University of Oxford

Lisa Chernenko, a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and Associate Researcher at the Portulans Institute

Dr Grant Blank, Survey Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and Senior Research Fellow of Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford.

Mykyta Petik, a Ukrainian with a focus on IT Law and cybersecurity, a researcher and doctoral student at KU Leuven, Belgium, and Research Associate at Portulans

Embedded within the Ukraine Case Studies

This study is one among a larger set of embedded case studies of Ukraine, which together compose the Ukraine Case Studies Project. Information about the larger project and its larger set of collaborations is available on the Portulans website and this blog.