11 Jan Discussing Ukraine in V4 mainstream media: the future vis-à-vis European integration

Posted at 15:15h in NEWS by
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, media coverage of the country has increased significantly. Interpreting and commenting on events, putting them in the news and shaping the debate about Ukraine’s future prospects in relation to European integration has thus become an important part of the responsibility of most mainstream media.

“The study presented consists of a media analysis and focus group discussions. CEID conveyed the narrative analysis of four chosen Hungarian media outlets to identify the key messages used concerning Ukraine and Ukraine’s future EU membership. Following this, focus group discussions were organized to map the Hungarian respondents’ opinions about the same topics. This way we could showcase the Ukraine-related messages in the media outlets with the highest reach, and the potential recipient side of them. The Hungarian results significantly differed from the results of all three other countries, showing a one-sided, strongly negative image of Ukraine, deeming absolutely non-desirable and impossible that Ukraine could ever join the EU. The focus group discussions corresponded to this as the respondents depicted Ukraine in a negative light and repeated the propagandistic messages.”- Dorka Takácsy, Research Fellow, CEID

However, as the war drags on, the V4 citizens’ awareness of the conflict has diverged. At different times, some topics have been given more emphasis than others, making the quality of coverage often incomplete or unconvincing. Some countries emphasise the autonomy of reporting, which in turn allows for broad and in-depth coverage, while there are regimes that narrow the information and use the topic of war to produce stories for domestic purposes.

This comparison of Ukraine’s future in the news coverage of the V4 countries provides a more comprehensive media picture. It reveals the most common narratives in the news, alongside the dominant ones, and the less represented aspects of how Ukraine’s future is perceived. The aim is to improve coverage of different scenarios for Ukraine’s future, to provide the public with better information and a more diverse interpretation of news across the V4 countries.

To this end, Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy has collaborated with the the Polish Res Publica Foundation, the Slovak Foreign Policy Association under the leadership of EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy from Czechia.

The publication is the final report of the project Discussing Ukraine in V4 mainstream media: the future vis-à-vis European integration, more about which can be found here.

Dániel Bartha
daniel.bartha@ceid.hu


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