Topics of the month. What do Ukrainian online media write the most about?

Main conclusions:

1. The most popular topic is “Emergencies and Investigations”. There was the most news on this topic in three months — 15% of all news in the 36 media we surveyed. In July, this topic took first place in the media, and in August-September moved to second.
2. “Politics” and “Economy” were twice included in the top 3 topics in July-September. There was 11% to 16% political news per month. After the August “calm” in September, “Politics” came out on top. News on the economy was 8-10%. The “Economy” ranked third in the number of news items in July and September, and in August the media paid less attention to it (sixth place).
3. In August, the “World” topic came to the fore — the increase of up to 16% of news compared to 9% in July. This is due to the protests in Belarus, about which the Ukrainian media wrote often. The situation with “Foreign Politics” is similar — it rose from tenth place in July to fifth in August. Interest in these two topics has grown the most in the three months under review.
4. During the third quarter, “Coronavirus” consistently ranked 4th in the media. However, “Quarantine” was only in 12-13 places.
5. News about the “War and the Army” ranked 9-10th in terms of the number of news during the period under review. This is less than “Culture” and “Sport”.
6. The least media were writing about “Science and Technology” (about 3% of news per month) and about “Weather” (1-1.5% of news). The residual topic of “Other” gained from 0.5 to 1%.

How we’ve been calculating: For the study, we selected 36 popular Ukrainian media (see the selection logic in the extended methodology at the end of the article).

By “news” we mean all the materials that came to our analysis. These can be news items, articles or columns — depending on the structure of the media’s website. But the vast majority is actually news items.

For news we have identified 15 topics (Fig. 1). You can read their transcripts in the section “Defining topics” at the end of the article.

We set the algorithm (SVM) on the basis of the news topics that we marked, as well as topics posted on the websites of some media. With its help, we identified topics for 406 thousand news. For news in Ukrainian, the f1-score (a kind of accuracy determination) of the set algorithm is 80%, for news in Russian — 77% (more details are in the “Methodology” section).

Text: Our analysis included 405,788 news items from 36 online media in July-September (Fig. 2). The most news was on the Suspilne website — almost 22 thousand (this is due to the fact that their website also contains news from regional branches), followed by Channel 24 and Znaj — 19.7 thousand news each. The least was in Economichna Pravda — 2723 news, Zaxid.net — 3289, and Hromadske — 3733 materials.

Topics of the month

“Emergencies” were in the top 3 topics throughout the whole quarter. The total share of news in this category for three months is 15%, and this is the highest figure. The terrorist in Lutsk became an “Emergency” in July, posts about him accounted for about 6% of all news in the month. In August and September, the topic was in second place. The most notable event in September was the crash of the AN-26 airplane near Chuhuiv (6% of the topic).

In second place according to the media’s attention was “Politics” with 13%. It was also in the top 3 during the whole quarter. Interest in the “Economy” is slightly lower — third place in July and September, sixth in August. In August, the ranking of topics was headed by the “World” (Fig. 3). More details below.

In July, the highlight of the “Politics” topic was the dismissal of the NBU Chairman Yakiv Smoliy and the appointment of his successor, Kyrylo Shevchenko. The same event became central in the topic of “Economy”. The media had been writing about the impact of the situation on the dollar rate, loans, inflation and other indicators. In August and September, we did not find any economic events to which the media paid special attention.

During July-August, in the topic of “Politics”, the media wrote a lot about the development of the situation with the detention of Wagner Group in Belarus: the probable disruption of the operation by the Ukrainian side, intentions to create or instead to prevent the creation of a temporary commission of inquiry in parliament, etc. The same event took a significant place (about 1,500 news items in total) in the categories of “Foreign Politics” and the “World” — the media wrote about the actions of the Belarusian and Russian authorities in this situation, the reaction of other countries. MP Yurchenko, from “Servant of the People”, was the newsmaker of September (about 800 news items) — the media were discussing that he was possibly bribed and the government’s reaction to these accusations. Twice less attention, but only for two days, received the release of Fokin (about 400 news).

The most dynamic topics were the “World” and “Foreign Politics”. In August, the “World” jumped from fifth place in the number of news to the first (from 8.5% to 15.8%). And “fForeign Politics” — from the tenth to the fifth (from 4.5% to 8.3%). This rapid growth is due to the elections and protests in Belarus, which are related to these topics.

In August, the word “Belarus” and its relatives were in almost 38% of the news category “World”, in September — in 26%. For comparison, in July, Belarus accounted for slightly less than 6% of the “World’s” news. In the “Foreign Politics” category, the situation is similar: in July, less than 12% of foreign politics news was about Belarus. In August, the share of news about Belarus in this category reached 66%, in September it fell to 43%.

Who cares for what: which media are the most interested in each of the topics?

We can say that the life of the Ukrainian media space is centered around politics and emergencies, these topics are in first or second place in terms of the share of news in 31 of the 36 media outlets considered.

Suspilne wrote the most about “Emergencies and investigations” — 31% of its news was devoted to this topic. A lot has been written on this topic in the media, which can hardly be considered as quality ones — Apostrophe, Znaj, Facty and more. NV, Channel 24 and Economichna Pravda were the least interested in the emergency events.

ZIK (28%) ranks first in the relative amount of “Politics” news. In second place is Interfax-Ukraine, in third place is Gordon. Ukrainska Pravda and Censor.NET close the top five. Korrespondent.net, SohodniSegodnya and TSN were the least interested in politics (6-7% of news in these media concerned politics).

Economichna Pravda, which is not surprising, loves the topic of “Economics” the most (and devotes 59% of its news to it). In second place is Liga.net, a quarter of its news is devoted to the economy. Next are the news agencies Ukrainian News and Interfax-Ukraine, as well as RBCK-Ukraine, which states that the news section is licensed as the news agency. Apostrophe, Suspilne and TSN are the least interested in the economy the least (3-5% of news). In the Ukrainska Pravda feed, only 2% of the news is devoted to the economy, which indicates a clear “division of labor” with the EP’s branch website.

All media, except Znaj, Politeka and Economichna Pravda, wrote about the coronavirus in more than 6% of their news. Suspilne (16%) covered the pandemic the most. Slightly less did Vgolos, UP, Interfax-Ukraine and TSN.

Instead, the media rarely wrote about quarantine — on average 2-4% of news. Ukrainian News, Suspilne and RBCK-Ukraine paid the most attention to it — 5-6% of news, the least — EP, NV and TSN (1.2-1.6%).

Apart from political news, Babel most often acquainted its readers with the world news — 23% of news. It was ahead of Korrespondent.net, which is in second place, by 5 percentage points. Zaxid.net and Suspilne (least 5%) were the least interested in the “World” topic.

Radio Svoboda most often wrote about foreign politics (16% of news). In second place is Gordon, in third place — Focus. In total, 13 of the 36 media outlets we reviewed devoted more than 10% of third-quarter news to foreign politics, and their figures do not differ much. Suspilne, Znaj and Politeka were the least interested in this topic.

Zaxid.net and Suspilne (17% and 15% of news, respectively) are leaders in covering news on the topic of “Society”. Almost all media outlets devote more than 3% of their news to this topic.

Censor.NET, Ukrainska Pravda and Radio Svoboda (8-9% of news) most often wrote about the Russian-Ukrainian war and the army. On average, the media devoted 5% of their news feed to this topic. The least (about 2%) Suspilne, Strana.ua and Znaj wrote about the war.

In the topic of “Sports” the record holder by a wide margin is SohodniSegodnya, which for the quarter published 24% of sports news. In second and third place is Espresso TV and Channel 24. 20 of the media we reviewed are less interested in sports (less than 5% of news), and the UP (and EP), Interfax-Ukraine and Censor.NET are least interested in them.

If you are very interested in “Show Business or Culture”, you will have to visit Politeka and Znaj (which belong to the same media holding). They devoted 42% (!) and 22% of their news to this topic, respectively. The rest of the media wrote on these topics in an average of 4% of news.

Focus is most interested in science and technology (8%). More than 6% of news was devoted to this topic by Hromadske, NV and Liga.net. But in general, only half of the media we reviewed wrote about science and technology in more than 2% of the news. Apparently, they do not find this topic interesting for their readers.

In the topic of “Life / Lifestyle” (useful tips, recipes, horoscopes, etc.) the undisputed leader is TSN (18% of news). The second place was shared by Channel 24 and Fakty (12% each). On the third is UNIAN (10%). In total, only eight media outlets devote to this topic more than 5% of news, and 18 media outlets — less than 1%.

The media rarely wrote about the “Weather” — from 0% to 4%. Most of all did Vgolos, Ukrainian News and UP.

The remaining category “Other” (news selections, newscast and programs with various topics, etc.) gained 6% in Channel 24. In other media, its share did not exceed 3%. Much of the “other” in Channel 24 is its own material: newscasts, various programs that are difficult to categorize.

To be liked by everyone: the main topics of each media and the focus on these topics

As the main topic of each of the media, we identified the topic to which this particular media devoted most of its news. It turned out that only in 11 out of 36 media the main topic can claim more than 20% of news (Figs. 4, 5). And the main topic is clearly expressed only in Economichna Pravda (economy) and Politeka (show business). Other media outlets try to provide their readers with news on various topics.

In most media, you can identify 3-5 main topics, which corresponds to 50-60% of the news of these media. However, it can be assumed that the media try to satisfy the tastes of as many readers as possible, which is logical if the goal is to increase the number of views and keep the reader on your website.

Defining topics

Emergencies and Investigations — emergencies in Ukraine, trials, murders, terrorist attacks, floods, explosions, fires, detentions, investigations, etc. This is a characteristic of the vast majority of news on this topic (read more about this in the extended methodology below).

Politics — news about politics in Ukraine, adoption of laws, political polls, news about candidates, statements of politicians, appointments and dismissals, etc.

Economy — news about the economy in Ukraine and the world, NBU (exchange rate, interest rate), tariffs, budget, minimum wage, covidious fund, indexation, IMF loans, exports, investments, allocation of money, laws related to the budget or directly to the economy, etc.

Coronavirus — news about coronavirus in Ukraine and the world, statistics of new cases, deaths, outbreaks, vaccines, etc.

Quarantine — news about quarantine restrictions related to coronavirus in Ukraine and the world, new zoning, school closures / openings, etc.

The world — world news (except political), protests, incidents abroad, here are also included news of protests in Belarus and the United States.

Foreign Politics — world political news, may concern Ukraine, statements and actions of foreign politicians, conflicts, etc.

Society — news about public life in Ukraine (not about politics and economy), rallies, External Independent Evaluation, etc.

War / Donbass / Army — news about the Russian-Ukrainian war, losses, firing, Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, checkpoints and the army in general.

Sports — news about sports in Ukraine and the world.

Show Business and Culture — news about Ukrainian and foreign “stars”, new songs, movies, TV series, exhibitions, etc.

Science and Technology — technological and scientific innovations, presentation of new models of technology, scientific researches and discoveries, etc.

Life / Lifestyle — recipes, diets, horoscopes, life-hacks, holidays, etc.

Methodology

For the study, we formed a list of Ukrainian online media based on open ratings of the Internet Association of Ukraine, Gemius, Kantar, Similar web data, USAID-Internews research, monitoring of the Institute of Mass Media and Media Detector.

We add media to the monitoring taking into account the following factors: the position of the media in the ratings and researches mentioned above, the technical possibilities of data collection, assessments of the relevance of the media from the editorial board and us, as researchers.

For simplicity, by “news” we mean all the materials that came to our analysis (these can be articles and columns — depending on the structure of the media’s website).

We selected 15 topics for the news, which were manually posted for 7695 media materials: 5506 materials in Ukrainian, 2189 — in Russian. Also, we supplemented this array with 4488 materials with topics that the media posted by themselves on their website (if these topics were included in our list): 3345 — in Ukrainian, 1143 — in Russian. Themes from the websites may not match the manual coding, as the websites did not have the entire list of our 15 topics. Conventionally, news from the related category “Foreign Politics” could get into the topic of the World, because the latter was not listed on the site. But such a step — collecting tags from websites —, has improved the accuracy of identifying news.

Based on 12,183 topic-marked materials, we set and tested the SVM algorithm for news classification (75 to 25 array size ratios for training and testing). We measured the success of the model with an f1-score, which in addition to the truly positively defined topics (as in the formula of ordinary accuracy) also takes into account false positive and false negative results. For Ukrainian news, the f1-score is 80%, for Russian news — 77%. Prediction matrices for the Ukrainian and Russian languages ​​show that the most often incorrectly defined topic is adjacent to the correct one, for example, the topic “Foreign Policy” is often defined as the “World” or “Politics”.

For media materials for July-September, we set the topics using a trained algorithm. 5 news —manually, because they were in English. As well as news with the mention of the fall of the AN-26 near Chuhuiv, we decoded as “Emergencies”, because many of them the algorithm had attributed to the “World”.

If you are interested in the code for classification, write to [email protected].