One in ten news of online media outlets of the so-called “LPR” and “DPR” contains hate speech – IMI

One in every ten news of online media outlets of the so-called “LPR” and “DPR” includes direct hate speech. 95% of such news are related to Ukrainian public and authorities: “junta of Kyiv”, “occupational authorities”, “the Nazis”, “punitive expeditioners”, “Kyiv clique”, “Banderites”, etc.

Those are the results of the monitoring of the Internet publications of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, conducted by the non-governmental organization “Institute of Mass Information” in January 2017.

In addition, 11% of the materials published on the resources analyzed by IMI turned out to be fakes, that is, contained invalid or false information. At that, 87% of all fakes were about events in Ukraine, in particular, in the area of ATO.

In addition to explicit hate speech, online media outlets of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” included many news with negative sentiments against Ukraine and Ukrainians, both in the headlines and in the text proper. For example: “Spring was signified by rampant protest marches and general antagonism to the junta of Kyiv”, “Former punitive expeditioner Sviuk “destroyed” his “Azov”: They are just tattooed carrion”, “Near Kyiv, hunters with thermal sights shoot people at nights”, “The Fourth Reich: in Kyiv, books are burned in furnaces”, etc.

“It will be difficult to painlessly integrate into Ukrainian society the people, who have been staying in the intentionally distorted information space the local media created on the territories beyond the Ukrainian government control. Local population is under influence of propaganda that instigates antagonism and exacerbates fear and xenophobic attitudes towards Ukraine. For this reason, it is extremely important to restore the broadcasting of Ukrainian mass media on these territories, and to alleviate the influence of this propaganda”, – said media expert Olena Holub, the supervisor of IMI monitoring programs.

Also, according to the research, in the online mass media outlets on the non-government controlled territories of Donbas, 82% of materials about the self-proclaimed authorities of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” are commendatory, 8% are neutral, and no materials with criticism whatsoever.