Half year report 2022
Serving a society of brave and free people
The Internews Ukraine team, like all Ukrainians, met the new year in 2022 with anxious feelings. We had been working on change-making initiatives until the morning of February 24 changed everyone’s agenda. At the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, our immediate task became preserving the entire team and all our projects. We ended up in different parts of Ukraine and the world, but we have been working together every day on the strategic goal of Ukraine's victory. We would like to share our achievements from the first half of 2022 on the fronts of media support, strategic communications, and information security.
TOLD THE WORLD ABOUT THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
While working from bomb shelters, the team of our English-language media UkraineWorld.org launched the #UkraineWorldTestimony project to tell the stories of war victims, and #UkraineWorldAnalysis to share expert commentary on what was happening in the country in wartime.
The UkraineWorld Facebook page reached more than 42 million unique users, and the number of subscribers increased to 96 thousand during the first six months of the Great War. On Twitter, its audience skyrocketed to 200 thousand users, with a monthly reach of 125 million! UkraineWorld also launched Twitter pages in Italian and German to reach more audiences with the truth about the Russian aggression and bring more support to Ukraine.
Along with podcasts from The New York Times and Sky News, the Explaining Ukraine podcast was named among the top 6 English-language podcasts about Ukraine by The Guardian. It has been listened to 430,000 times on SoundCloud.
The UkraineWorld experts provided comments and interviews to the Financial Times, Le Monde, Atlantic Council, FRANCE 24, Radio Liberty, and other international media.
In March, with the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, we organized an online press conference with the Ukrainian mayors for 80 international journalists. Foreign media learned first-hand about the shelling of cities, the war crimes committed by the Russian army, and Russia's violations of international law.
The @his.facts TikTok channel, which we created in the first days of the full-scale invasion, garnered over 7,500 followers from Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Israel and other countries within a few months. It features Russian-language videos which tell about the history of relations between Ukraine and Russia, Russia's fake narratives, and the world's reaction to the Russian invasion. The channel's videos have been viewed more than 5 million times. The video about the failed Russian forcing of the Serpent's Wall (Zmiyevi Valy) near Bilogorodka (Kyiv region) was the most popular, reaching 2 million views, which was an absolute record among other his.facts videos.
STRENGTHENED THE COMMUNICATIONS OF UKRAINE’S PARLIAMENT
The USAID Program "RADA: The Next Generation" was officially launched on February 8 during the panel discussion "Parliament in Action: Digital Future and Innovations in the Work of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine." The program aims to promote "next generation" reforms that will enable Ukraine's parliament to become a modern and effective institution for the country's democratic development.
After the outbreak of full-scale war, the program team launched the Parliaments on the Front Line information digest. 50 issues of the digest were provided to 18.9 thousand parliamentarians from 59 countries, representatives of the European Parliament, NATO, G7, and foreign diplomatic missions. It reports on the work of the Verkhovna Rada in wartime, Russia's war crimes, and the reactions of world legislative bodies.
Our team created 2,000 visual materials that were published on the Verkhovna Rada's social media pages. They included quotes from Ukrainian and foreign politicians and cultural figures, infographics about Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and other relevant data. This communications support helped to reach more than 16 million users on Facebook and gain 73 million impressions on Twitter.
Experts from the Program also advised the Rada on maintaining social media pages and participated in filling out the Questionnaire for Ukraine's accession to the EU.
UNITED DOMESTIC MEDIA AND JOURNALISTS
To support editors from the East and South of Ukraine, we launched the Emergency Assistance Program within the project "Strong Media — Strong Society." Due to the scholarships, ten newsrooms created media projects about the war, displaced persons' lives, volunteers' work, and other topical issues.
In May, we held an online discussion, "Environmental chronicles: how the invasion of the Russian Federation affects the environment of Ukraine," to draw the media's attention to the aggressor's environmental crimes. The event participants participated in the scholarship competition. Sixteen winning newsrooms covered the environmental consequences of Russian aggression, such as nuclear terrorism or forest fires in the Kherson region.
We also provided mentoring support to newsrooms from 7 regions of Ukraine and individual consultations on digital security for ten regional media.
In addition, nine publications from the most affected regions by the war received financial support to cover salaries and purchase necessary equipment. The editors prepared almost one and a half hundred materials and created 13 information hubs to provide the population with current news in the conditions of war.
MADE DIGITAL SECURITY A PRIORITY
For the third year in a row, we investigated the regulation of the online space in Ukraine by analyzing high-profile draft laws on the protection of personal data and access to public information.
We also looked at the stability of the Internet in Ukraine during wartime and the prospects of holding Russia's propagandists responsible for their information aggression against Ukraine.
HELPED PROTECT DISPLACED UKRAINIANS
In June, we participated in the opening of Ukraine's first Rescue Center in Zaporizhzhya for people who left the zone of active hostilities and temporarily occupied territories. For this event, our team created explainers on combating domestic violence during the war, and provided informational and logistical support to the Center.
A million Ukrainians received information on how to access free medicine during the war thanks to our Guaranteed! communication campaign implemented with the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, the National Health Service, and leading medical NGOs. The project involved two promotional campaigns, three expert publications, consultations and the development of communication plans and project budgets for six partner organizations.
CREATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR EDUCATION AND CREATIVITY
In May, the team of our international art project ARTIFAKE, which worked to popularize media literacy through street art, held online workshops for Ukrainian children and teenagers. The classes helped schoolchildren learn to live with their emotions during the war with the help of art. Later, we combined 500 drawings of Ukrainian children in the video "War Through Children's Eyes," which was viewed more than half a million times.
Almost 3,500 users joined our Teach and Learn During the War online educational marathon as part of our "Ukrainian language for national communities: learn to reach the top." communication campaign. We held 11 events for teachers, students, and parents with the participation of well-known Ukrainian psychologists, pedagogues, and educators. We also help online reading for children with writers Kateryna Mikhalitsyna and Sashko Dermanskyi.
As more and more Ukrainians have switched to the state language in their daily lives, we produced and distributed 21 stories about how members of national minority communities in Bukovyna and Transcarpathia successfully learned the Ukrainian language. Opinion leaders shared their experiences learning the national language and how it helps them develop and support their communities. The videos have been viewed almost 300,000 times on social networks.
The first half of 2022 was a tremendous test of strength for our team and all Ukrainians. Together, we are overcoming new challenges. We are more united than ever and ready to work for our shared victory.