Specifics and trends of coverage of religious conflicts in the media environment

Abstract

Introduction. In times of great upheaval, people feel an urgent need to see a measured and balanced picture of events. It soothes, gives a sense of control over one’s life. In Ukrainian society, there is an increased interest in the topic of religion, because two-thirds of citizens consider themselves believers. Considering such a high percentage of believers in Ukraine, representatives of the mass media sector cannot and should not avoid the topic of religion, especially when it comes to conflict situations.
Relevance of the study. Since the war waged by Russia against Ukraine also has a pronounced religious aspect, it is relevant to investigate how the approach of domestic regional media to covering the specified topic changed before and during the large-scale war.
Methodology. The research used such methods as content analysis, the comparison method, the systematic approach, and the generalization method. To achieve the results, the content of the publications of the Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions, namely the Internet resources “Panorama”, “Slobidskyi kray”, “Pervaya polosa” and “62.ua” were analyzed. Monitoring was carried out from 01.01.2022 to 06.30.2022.
Results. Analysis of the content of online publications of the North-Eastern region revealed that on the eve of a full-scale war, materials on religious topics were mostly informative and entertaining in nature. During a full-scale war, the choice of genres shifted exclusively to news. Journalists did not use new formats that would interest young people, either before or during the war. During the large-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, the degree of tension in publications on the specified topic increased significantly. Hate speech, emotionalism and irrevocability appeared in the materials. The tonality of the headlines and quotes of the headlines and quotes in the news speaks of the aggravation of the religious conflict between representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. There are cases when journalists use unverified information, which is a direct violation of journalistic standards. There is a noticeable tendency to ignore important religious topics.
Conclusions. A promising direction for further research can be a comparative analysis of coverage of religious topics in other regions of Ukraine. It will help to form a general picture of its presentation before and during the full-scale war in Ukraine. Based on the results of these studies, it is possible to formulate basic recommendations for journalists.