Information Streams in the Net Mass Media Network Analysis

In March-May 2020 the newsfeed of said 26 media outlets included almost 281,000 different news items and articles. The champions according to the number of materials published are Channel 24, Syohodni, and UNIAN. LIGA.net, Radio Svoboda, and ZIK published the smallest number of news and articles (Fig. 1).

In the 281,000 texts, we have found 12,096 citations of the media outlets on our list (the remaining 96% of news contain links to other sources, i.e. less popular media outlets or no links at all). In this article, we are looking only at reciprocal citations of the selected 26 media outlets. 

Most often the media referenced the Interfax Ukrainian information agency – 1,528 times (Fig. 2). However, 40% of this number is courtesy of Censor.NET (621 references to Interfax-Ukraine). It is the highest detected citation index of one media outlet by the other.

Over 1,000 citations were garnered by RBK-Ukraine (1,487) and Radio Svoboda (1,452). The TSN website received almost a thousand links, however, 494 of them belong to the UNIAN information agency (in its turn TSN most often quotes UNIAN – apparently, because they are part of one media holding). Other media outlets cited others less than 270 times. 

The least cited media were Politeka, Espreso TV, and Focus. They received 36, 41 and 51 citations respectively.

Reciprocal links (a large number of links to one another) have been identified in the following mass media:

UNIAN – TSN

35% (494) UNIAN links were to TSN. TSN referenced UNIAN in 19% of cases (48 times). For both media outlets, these are the highest citation indices of other media.

Ukrainian News – Strana.ua 

20% (82 times) – 20% (66 times). For Ukrainian News (UN) Strana.ua is the second most important source after RBK-Ukraine. For Strana.ua Ukrainian News is also the second most important source after Interfax.

Obozrevatel – Gordon 

11% (62 times) – 14% (98 times). These outlets most often cite each other and less frequently reference other sources.

Politeka – Znai

16% (85 times) – 8% (30 times). For Politeka Znai is the third most important source, while for Znai Politeka is the fourth in the list of sources. Yet, out of the 36 links to Politeka, 30 were found in Znai news. These media outlets are part of one media holding, which is indicated on their websites.

How is a network read: the stronger the links of a certain media outlet, the closer to the provisional center of traffic it is. The strength of links is also determined by the frequency of citation and well as the frequency with which other media outlets are cited.

An interactive schedule with a larger scale is available on a separate page. To see the number of citations between the two outlets, click on the link. To hide a block of information, click on the white space. 

See the table with all citation indices here

Conclusions

1. We have looked at 26 online media outlets with a large reach and have identified that they are referencing one another only in 4% of news pieces they publish (a total of 12,099 citations in three months). Most often the outlets reference Interfax and RBK-Ukraine. This might be explained by the fact that they are news agencies. They publish the news quickly and consequently are a source of information for other media. The third place on the list of most frequently cited is held by Radio Svoboda.
2. 40% of quotes of Interfax belong to Censor.NET. And 53% (494) of links to TSN are found on UNIAN pages. Other media referenced others not more than 268 times.
3. As far as reciprocal links go, the following pairs of media outlets shall be singled out: UNIAN – TSN (35% links of UNIAN were to TSN and the percentage of TSN links to UNIAN is 19%, or 494 and 48 times respectively), Ukrainian News – Strana.ua (20% – 20%, or 88 and 66 times), Obozrevatel – Gordon (11% – 14%, or 62 and 98 times), Politeka – Znai (16% – 8%, or 85 and 30 times).

Methodology: For our analysis, we have selected 26 popular Ukrainian online media outlets. Unfortunately, NV did not make it to our rating due to technical limitations, even though this outlet occupies the first place in ratings. We will try to include it in our future studies. 

When we speak of “citation of a media outlet” we mean only those outlets that are on the list for analysis; News pieces and articles are materials of online media outlets that are found on the newsfeed.

The analysis was based on citations used in the newsfeed materials for March-May 2020. We eliminated the materials which made it to the newsfeed if the publication date was earlier than the said period. By citation we mean mention of the source. We analyzed only the mentions between the 26 media outlets from our base. Respectively, references to any other source not on our list were not taken into account in this analysis. Also, we did not take into account the links to subsidiary media (for instance, Ekonomichna Pravda). Double citations, for instance, “Liga.net citing Radio Svoboda” were considered – the mention was counted for both media.

The citations themselves were identified using the patterns of news piece structuring for each of the media outlets. For instance, most of the news pieces on the Ukrayinska Pravda website have a “Source” section. The outlets which do not have this section indicate the source in a specific paragraph of each news piece. We were looking for mentions in those passages. 

The bulk of links to Radio Svoboda, RBK-Ukraine, and Interfax-Ukraine was checked manually and cleared of the mentions of Radio Svoboda foreign services and the Russian RBK. This is because some media indicate RBK as their source while implying RBK-Ukraine, that is why it was hard to filter out such cases using the software. For Radio Svoboda it was hard to indicate all names and variants of mentions of its foreign services so as not to factor them in.

How were the links between the outlets identified: for each outlet we made a list of sources they cite most frequently and put down a rating score instead of the number of citations. The largest number of quotes – 1st place, the second largest number of quotes – 2nd place. We then added the scores for all pairs in the following manner: “Media 1 cites Media 2” and “Media 2 cites Media 1”. The next stage was to sort the sums received in descending order. We discarded the pairs where the absolute number of quotes for at least one outlet was less than 16. Since in this case, the difference between neighboring sources on the rating for one outlet will be equal to several units, it is hard to see whether there is a connection between the outlets or not. In summary, we have identified 4 pairs of media outlets that earned the lowest scores. Such outlets have been established as interconnected (Fig. 3). 

The network has been visualized with the help of the ForceAtlas2 algorithm.