Journalism and Media in Times of War
The full-scale war in Ukraine presents unique challenges for mass media and the journalistic community. It is not only about journalists on the scene of the most resonant events, capturing moments that instantly make headlines in global media.
Even in areas of Ukraine where there is no direct combat and where performing professional duties is less life-threatening, local media [3] operate under the pressure of the new wartime reality: facing survival issues, adapting to legislative restrictions of martial law, and addressing ethical dilemmas. Journalistic ethics in a country at war represent a delicate balance between basic professional standards and the safety concerns of military and civilians, the moral burden on readers, strengthening the local population's trust in authorities, and transformations in civic consciousness among readers and media professionals. For instance, in the example below, local media promptly informs residents about the consequences of a missile strike and street closures, likely near the impact site, yet commentators express outrage. The enemy can simultaneously exploit information crucial for citizens' awareness and comfort to adjust their strikes.
❗️❗️Rashist rockets hit the territory near the Lviv airport. I can't name the address in real-time yet, but it's definitely not the airport. In the buildings of our "ATP-1", windows are damaged. The situation on the ground is being clarified and will be published later. Be careful, follow the instructions during the air raid, and do not distribute photos from the shelling site.
>You are not normal people. You are told not to publish the place or districts, what and where. But it doesn't get to you. Are you leaking information on purpose? >ZAHID NET posted information about the location of the explosions on their website!! The main thing is to be the first.
❗️ We ask Lviv residents to avoid Horodotska. The street is blocked by the police. Traffic jams are forming at the entrance and exit of the city and in the Motozavod area.
>don't write the streets, how much should I ask you? >People, think that there are Muscovites cursed among us.
The full-scale war has compelled the media to reconsider the principles of their daily work: in emergency communication mode, they, for example, shift the balance of attention in managing their various media (focusing on Telegram channels as standalone media, posting fewer links to websites or YouTube channels, branded photos, and videos), deviating from editorial policies (allowing reposts of unverified news, dubious sources, posts in a different style). The primary focus is on delivering urgent messages to their audience, addressing vital issues with them, and experiencing shared traumas at the level of their native city, village, or region.
Appeal to readers⚡️
We, the editorial office of Gwara Media, have been working in Kharkiv since 2018. All this time, we have been telling you about the creative potential of Ukraine, its sustainable development, education, and human rights.
Since the beginning of our work in the East, we have fundamentally used only the Ukrainian language because we believed in the future of Ukrainian culture and considered its development to be our mission.
Today, at a time when Russia has started a full-scale war against Ukraine, we are changing the way we work.
We believe that our mission as journalists now is to promptly disseminate the most important information regarding the security of our readers' cities (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv and other cities). We'll let you know about the fakes we're working on and useful tools you can use to protect yourself here and now.
Let's stay together until the end!
Gwara Media on social networks:
Instagram — instagram.com/gwaramedia
Facebook — facebook.com/gwaramedia
In turn, the "inner" chats of local media channels represent cohesive reader communities, limited by narrow geography, characterized by a high level of trust, and becoming valuable sources of testimonies about events in the region.
❗️ During the air alert, public transport will not take new passengers on board. ▪️ From now on, public transport drivers must stop at the nearest bus stop or choose a safe place to park, inform passengers about the danger and the location of the nearest shelter, open the doors and recommend them to go to a safe place. ▪️ Passengers who do not want to leave the vehicle and go to the shelter can continue their journey along the route. ▪️ Then, passengers are not boarded, and the vehicle continues along the route to the final stop, where it will stay until the alarm is over. ▪️ Local self-government bodies should provide carriers with lists of shelters along vehicle routes and make this information visible at bus stops.
>Fine, pay them as much as 10 hryvnias, and they still won't take citizens during alerts. This is some arrogance kind of nonsense >It seems to me that it is better to be in transport during an alert than at a bus stop >I have no words, it's crazy🙄 Nothing will teach our people. Thank God that you had no missile strikes. Is Vinnytsia not enough for you? >How good that I walk on foot after the price increase)
In today's realities, we are learning to distinguish between "traditional" mass media and the so-called "new media" on social networks.
This dataset also explores other phenomena from the digital world: the Telegram platform itself is a new and relatively unregulated field for journalists' professional activities [7]. In today's realities, we are learning to distinguish between "traditional" mass media and the so-called "new media" on social networks, among which anonymous Telegram channels hold a special place in the information field of the Ukrainian war. All of this urges us to update our understanding of the rights and responsibilities of mass media, methods of regulating their activities, the level of trust, and the ethical handling of information. Along with using Telegram as an unrestricted and anonymous channel for disseminating information about the war, we at the same time accuse the platform of working for Russians [8], question the appropriateness of official structures having a presence on it [9], ponder why Telegram channels should acquire the status of registered media outlets [10], if this action is voluntary under Ukrainian media law [11]. We realize that today, media professionals and legislators are actively developing a common position and universal solutions regarding Telegram's place in the information space of war, and the final results of these considerations in the future may fundamentally differ from the current vision of the Archive team.
WARNING! The activity of the enemy's communication channels is NOT just disinformation. This is informational terrorism. Such actions of the enemy on the network went beyond the scope of fakes or ordinary information manipulation, as they are explicitly aimed at intimidating the population of Ukraine, inciting panic and psychological terror, which entirely falls under the definition of terrorism.
The information front in Telegram: enemies who facilitate the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the messenger.
Let's attack together. We won't give the enemy a chance! Check information only from official sources.
The selection of archival units for the dataset was carried out using keywords such as media, journalists, war correspondents. Additional searches used keywords like news, propaganda. Furthermore, manual searches for archival units were performed based on titles, URLs, and descriptions in thematic collections: "Urban and Local," "Official and News Channels," "Russian Propaganda and Fakes," "Occupied Territories," "Culture," "Religion," "Military / Political Blogs," "Personal Blogs / War Diaries / Artistic Reflections".
The basis for selection was the affiliation of the channel/chat with the media professional sphere, as indicated by the authors or contributors of the channel/chat. Their owners emphasize this in the title, URL, and original description. This conclusion can also be drawn from the archivist's description based on content review. However, assessing the truthfulness or ethicality of this self-positioning may not always be possible.
Many of the selected channels and chats associate themselves with media outlets registered in Ukraine. Besides Telegram, they have other communication channels, allowing for tracking the synchronicity of publications and reposts. These archival units mainly belong to thematic collections such as "Urban and Local," "Official and News Channels," or specialized thematic collections based on journalistic activity.
Map of shelters in Shostka (good quality, PDF file)
Channels and chats that associate themselves with media outlets and media professionals from other countries besides Ukraine were also included in this dataset. There are certain channels and chats of media outlets that operate by Russian legislation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
Additionally, the dataset includes channels and chats whose self-positioning is assessed as journalistic, even if there are no signs of their direct connection to specific media outlets or organizations. Such media for describing themselves may use terms like journalist, war correspondent, news agency, newspaper, magazine, journal, news, and info.
That's what Zelya hung out at the summit. Meet the victory of the year. And the hell with already lost territories (120 thousand sq km), the hell with Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye, the hell with 80 thousand dead and 10 thousand prisoners, the main thing is borsch, an ancient Sumerian dish. Khokhly have no other values. Lard, halushki and sharovary. Waiting for citizens' celebrations.
Borsch, as a Ukrainian dish, was included in the UNESCO cultural heritage list.
The dataset includes channels and chats of journalistic organizations and professional communities that have official status (including the channel of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and its "inner" chat) or operate at the level of user associations on social media platforms.
Only two people create a newspaper in a village in the front-line zone in Zaporozhye
*******, where the newspaper "*****" has been published for 90 years, is located in the part of the Zaporizhia region where the Defense Forces of Ukraine managed to prevent the invaders. Today, this is a front-line zone. It often "hits" here.
The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, ***** ****, hopes to save the publication to "write history." Currently, she creates the newspaper in cooperation with only one employee - ***** *****, who designs the newspaper. The rest of the workers left for safer places.
The women kept the usual number of pages, although they worked practically publicly! More about this history of resilience is in the material of the press service of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.
✨We thank you and the same desperate newspapermen and women! Journalists are important! Now, they are literally writing history!🇺🇦
The presence of hyperlinks to media websites is crucial for connecting Telegram sources with online media.
For each archival unit in this dataset, the presence or absence of links to media websites is separately indicated. This information is vital for concluding the relationship of the Telegram source with online media that conducts full-fledged and controlled activities in Ukraine. Typically, in channels and chats related to media or professional organizations, active links to the website are featured in the description or the form of links to materials in posts. Links may also be used in the channel, chat title, or URL. In some cases, conclusions about the connection of the Telegram source with a specific media outlet were made based on the systematic branding of photos and videos. All these indicators only indirectly point to the connection of this Telegram media with a particular editorial team; this information is based on the words of the channel/chat administrators. For more precise information about such a connection, it is advisable to verify using other indicators (for example, whether this Telegram source is listed as official on other publication platforms). The dataset also includes blogs and communities that do not have a website. If the author of a personal blog is an employee of a specific media outlet at the time of archiving, the website of this media outlet is not specified.
The dataset includes channels and chats from 13 thematic collections. The dataset contains archival units, with 22 classified as moderately sensitive data and 57 classified as sensitive. (For more details on sensitivity levels, refer to the project report in the section on Access, ethical and legal issues).
Outside the dataset are channels and chats that media workers identify as their audience or part of. However, there are no indications that the media professionals are authors or participants in the community (for example, educational initiatives, press services, analytics, and experts). The complete list of these channels and chats, available in the Archive, can be found under the audience tag journalists.
Channels and chats that publish materials from various sources, including references to media outlets in a digest format without systematic citation of the same mass media, are not included. They may be marked with the keyword media.
The dataset does not include channels and chats that exhibit characteristics of media outlets and journalistic activities but lacks explicit positioning. Therefore, their self-identification should be classified as "anonymous Telegram channels" or social media communities. They should be searched for in the Archive using keywords such as news, analytics, propaganda, and the audience tag news readers.
During manual search within thematic collections, attention should be paid to distinctive formulations in the names and URLs of anonymous Telegram channels, for example, типовий, реальний, хуйовий, насправді, справжній, рулить, курилка, беседка, болталка.
It is also essential to note archival units where names, URLs, and original descriptions use wording typical of traditional media outlets (examples of such names: новини, новости, події, газета, вісник, известия, правда, news, live, life, fm, post, info, inform, інформатор, оперативний, тв, tv, 24/7), but lack further indications to classify them as media outlets. There are more original cases in the Archive, for instance, a channel humorously calling itself "Khmelnytsky BBC" without declaring any connection to this local branch of the British corporation (it is unlikely such a branch exists). No other indications of self-positioning as a media outlet were found for this channel, so it was not included in the dataset.
An additional search should be conducted to identify cases where channels and chats, regardless of their main thematic focus, inform their audience about current events through reposts from media outlets and news Telegram channels. This method of information dissemination is characteristic of almost all archival units.
The illustrations are taken from the Telegram Archive of the War.
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