Dense coverage Russian invasion of UkraineConsidered Europe’s biggest armed conflict since the Second World War, Reuters failed to reverse the disinterest in the news in most countries surveyed by the Reuters Institute for Journalistic Studies in Oxford.
in a complementary study Digital News Report 2022 (DNR) assessing consumption and trust in global journalismThe institute found that most of the populations of five countries—Brazil, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—follow closely the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Despite this, the rejection rate of the news on the subject is high: about 40% in Brazil do not follow the information about the Russian occupation.
Even with a decline in confidence in the news, many follow the war
On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The world’s leading news organizations sent or hired reporters to the occupied territories to cover the conflict.
Media professionals, civilians and politicians – most notably Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – have also used social networks like TikTok, Telegram and Twitter to document the horrors of war in real time for a global audience.
To understand how people access news about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and to explore its impact on overall trends in information consumption, the Reuters Institute commissioned the British YouGov platform to survey five countries.
The report was prepared by Professors Kirsten Eddy and Richard Fletcher.
“These countries were chosen because they represent different levels of affinity to the conflict, from Poland, which borders Ukraine, to Brazil and the United States, which are on different continents,” they justified.
The survey was conducted from March 29 to April 7 with 1000 respondents from all nationalities.
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Despite the decline in news confidence in nearly half of the 46 countries surveyed for the 2022 Digital News Report (DNR), most people closely follow information about Ukraine in the five countries analyzed in the supplementary study.
The attention is greatest in Germany, which is geographically close to conflict and where impacts such as the risk of gas shortages are most strongly affecting the lives of ordinary people.
In Brazil, which is politically and geographically more distant from conflict, 39% do not follow the issue closely – 10% of them do not consume any information about the war.
The researchers point out that some of this data is in line with data already found in the Digital News Report on people who do not consume any news sources in markets such as the US and UK.
But they noted that in countries such as Brazil and Germany, the proportion of 18-24 year-olds who do not pursue conflict is particularly high compared to other age groups.
And in the US and UK, women are slightly more likely than men to show no interest in war.
When asked which news source they pay the most attention to when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, television tops three lists out of five countries - the first source is Germany (46%) and Brazil (44%).
In the US and Poland, the combination of online news sites, independent media and social media has a larger share – but TV is still the most used source for searching news about the conflict.
In terms of age, television nepotism is declining. In the UK, for example, over half (55%) of people aged 55 and over are their primary means of communication about war.
But only 13% of 18- to 24-year-old Britons learn more about the Russia-Ukraine conflict from TV rather than other means such as social media.
While countries like Germany use TV the most to get information about the war, in Brazil social media is a particularly important resource, with 23% of people searching for news on these platforms.
Interest in the news has not waned and may even increase with the extent of the war.
Supplementary research into NDR also explored whether the trend of disinterest in the news was reversed by comprehensive coverage of the conflict in Eastern Europe.
As NDR shows, interest in news has dropped significantly across all markets, from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.
Meanwhile, the proportion of those who say they often or sometimes avoid the news has risen sharply across countries.
This type of "selective avoidance" has doubled in the past five years in Brazil (54%) and the United Kingdom (46%), with many respondents saying the news has a negative impact on their mood.
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In the study that followed, researchers at the Reuters Institute pointed out that media coverage of the war did not reverse this and may even have increased apathy towards the news.
"Overall, we find little evidence that these long-term trends are reversing - even temporarily - and there is possible evidence that they are accelerating in some cases."
In other words, real-time broadcasting of the first month of the war in Ukraine analyzed the populations of five countries to further avoid the news, according to the report.
In Germany, Poland, and the United States, the proportion of people who say they actively avoid the news sometimes or often has increased.
The largest increase was in Germany (7 points), but significant increases can also be seen in Poland (6 points) and the USA (4 points).
“We know that one of the main reasons people avoid the news is its negative impact on their mood.
So it wouldn't be surprising if the deeply depressing and disturbing nature of the conflict is causing more people to turn away from it."
In the UK and Brazil, where news smuggling was already high, there was no evidence of further increases – but neither was there a decrease.
Also, in these two countries, the decision to avoid news has increased sharply in recent years – 11 percentage points from 2019 to 2022 in the case of the UK; and 20 percentage points in Brazil, according to the report.
“Despite its severity, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has done little to reverse falling interest levels in most countries, even in the short term.
When we look at the confidence levels in the news, we see a similar picture. Despite the courage of journalists in Ukraine and the remarkable stories they produced, confidence in the news was unaffected, with the exception of a 4 percentage point increase in the UK."
Brazilian press managed to tie the war well
The Reuters Institute also evaluated the media's performance in reporting the war according to the perception of the audience in the five countries surveyed.
It is widely seen that the press does a particularly good job of keeping people up-to-date on the latest conflict news – in all five countries almost half or more of respondents agree that the media is doing a good job.
"But overall, they think the media is not doing well in explaining the wider effects of the conflict or offering a different perspective on the conflict - clearly showing in five countries where news organizations can do a better job. The crisis continues to spread."
In Brazil, 52% consider the media to be influential in explaining the wider implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the highest rate of any analysed.
Context and clarity may reflect disinterest in the news
With the war in Ukraine still raging and possibly given the difficult and often visually impactful nature of conflict reporting, researchers are finding evidence of accelerating news evasion in many countries.
So even a story as interesting and meaningful as the war in Ukraine has not reversed the rising levels of news apathy in many countries.
The report concludes that as the conflict continues, it will be particularly important for newsrooms to redirect their efforts to explain their wider impact.
“Clear explanations and contextualization of the Russia-Ukraine conflict – both what it means for those most affected by the war in and around Ukraine, and its broader implications for global audiences – may appeal to a segment that avoids such news. they want it."
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source: Noticias
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