The Media’s Influence on Shaping Public Opinion during Martial Law
Abstract
This article explores the role of various media in shaping public opinion during martial law in Ukraine. The study aims to evaluate the extent to which media influences public perception, unity, and societal response under the conditions of military conflict. The research methods employed include content analysis of mass media materials, sociological surveys, and graphic and comparative analyses to measure media impact. The study is based on data from sociological surveys and the thematic content of regional media from 2021 to 2023, encompassing key breaking news and regional media narratives. The findings reveal that media play a vital role in disseminating information, promoting national unity, and highlighting critical issues such as support for the armed forces and humanitarian aid. The influence of Internet sources and regional media has notably strengthened, with much of the content focusing on war-related issues, societal consolidation, volunteerism, and aid for victims. The study also identifies that, during crises, media can shape worldviews, influence political polarization, and mobilize public engagement through patriotic narratives and volunteer campaigns. The research concludes that media, especially regional outlets, significantly contribute to societal cohesion and informed decision-making during martial law. However, challenges such as media bias and potential manipulation remain. The study findings can contribute to understanding the role of the media in the conditions of military conflict and the formation of public opinion.
Full text article
References
Busselle, R., & Van den Bulck, J. (2019). Cultivation theory, media, stories, processes, and reality. In M. B. Oliver, A. A. Raney, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Media effects (pp. 69-82). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429491146
Detector Media. (2023). Media literacy index of Ukrainians: 2020-2022. Retrieved from https://detector.media/doc/images/news/58855/ua_report_medialiterasy_index-dm_20-21-22_final.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1f3RUwhFyVRTYsB5aAyQNb8EGCKrP93nG7rVeel_XU8gJ5S24EDmLda8w
Durante, R., Pinotti, P., & Tesei, A. (2019). The political legacy of entertainment TV. American Economic Review, 109(7), 2497-2530. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20150958
Elejalde, E., Ferres, L., & Schifanella, R. (2019). Understanding news outlets' audience-targeting patterns. EPJ Data Science, 8, 16. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0194-8
Foos, F., & Bischof, D. (2022). Tabloid media campaigns and public opinion: Quasi-experimental evidence on Euroscepticism in England. American Political Science Review, 116(1), 19-37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542100085X
Gnatyuk, S., Akhmetova, J., Sydorenko, V., Polishchuk, Yu., & Petryk, V. (2019). Quantitative evaluation method for mass media manipulative influence on public opinion. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2362, 71-83. Retrieved from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2362/paper7.pdf
Hamborg, F., Donnay, K., & Gipp, B. (2019). Automated identification of media bias in news articles: An interdisciplinary literature review. International Journal of Digital Libraries, 20, 391-415. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-018-0261-y
Huang, J., Cook, G. G., & Xie, Y. (2020). Do mass media shape public opinion toward China? Quantitative evidence on New York Times with deep learning. Retrieved from https://arXiv.org/abs/2012.07575
Huang, J., Cook, G. G., & Xie, Y. (2021). Large-scale quantitative evidence of media impact on public opinion towards China. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00846-2
Husak, O., & Fialka, S. (2018). Social media influence on public opinion and youth behavior. In A. Jankovska (Ed.), Development trends in pedagogical and psychological sciences: The experience of countries of Eastern Europe and prospects of Ukraine (pp. 350-369). Riga: Publishing House "Baltija Publish-ing". https://doi.org/10.30525/978-9934-571-27-5_17
KMIS. (2023a). Dynamics of trust in social institutions in 2021-2023. Retrieved from https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1335&page=1
KMIS. (2023b). Media consumption in liberated and frontline territories. Retrieved from https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1308&page=1
McCombs, M., & Reynolds, A. (2002). News influence on our pictures of the world. In M. B. Oliver, A. A. Raney, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Media effects (pp. 11-28). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410602428-5
McNair, B. (2017). Fake news: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315142036
Munteanu, N. A. (2020). The role of the media in promoting national security interests. Bulletin of the Transil-vania University of Braşov, Series VII: Social Sciences and Law, 13(1-Suppl), 113-122. https://doi.org/10.31926/but.ssl.2020.13.62.3.12
Pansanella, V., Sirbu, A., Kertész, J., & Rossetti, G. (2023). Mass media impact on opinion evolution in bi-ased digital environments: A bounded confidence model. Scientific Reports, 13, 14600. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39725-y
Park, S., Kang, S., Chung, S., & Song, J. (2009). NewsCube: Delivering multiple aspects of news to mitigate media bias. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 443-452). New York: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518772
Putkalets, L. A., & Vyshnevska, G. B. (2023). Regional mass media in the context of Russia's information and psychological war against Ukraine. In Functioning of the Ukrainian media during martial law in Ukraine: Scientific monograph (pp. 93-107). Riga: Publishing House "Baltija Publishing". https://doi.org/10.30525/978-9934-26-270-8-6
Sheremet, O. S., Voluiko, O. M., Posmitna, V. V., Poda, T., & Bidzilya, Y. M. (2021). Political and legal aspects of the information warfare. Amazonia Investiga, 10(45), 31-41. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2021.45.09.3
Soloski, J. (2019). The murky ownership of the journalistic enterprise. Journalism, 20(1), 159-162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918809250
USAID. (2023). Ukrainian media use and trust in 2023. Retrieved from https://internews.in.ua/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/USAID-Internews-Media-Survey-2023-EN.pdf
Wike, R., Silver, L., Fetterolf, J., Huang, C., Austin, S., Clancy, L., & Gubbala, S. (2022). Social Media Seen As Mostly Good For Democracy Across Many Nations, But US Is A Major Outlier. Pew Re-search Center, 6, 1-81. https://issuelab.org/resources/41469/41469.pdf
Yavçan, B., & Ongur, H. O. (2016). Determinants of media criticism in a democracy in transition: Applying field theory to Turkey. International Journal of Communication, 10, 2422-2443. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4597
Authors
Copyright (c) 2024 Yuriy Bidzilya, Yevhen Solomin, Viacheslav Shvets, Andrii Heletei, Hanna Hetsko
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal provides immediate and free open access to all its content and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This means readers are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as proper attribution is given. This policy is consistent with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.