The war in Ukraine has been widely reported in media and endlessly discussed on social media. Fake news has spread, and an information war is being waged. News media organisations should be a natural place to go for timely, reliable, fact-based reporting on the war. However, interest in traditional news content is in decline. Over two thirds of Australians actively avoid news to some extent, and only 41% trust news media. In contrast, YouTube is increasingly used for news, especially for younger people. On YouTube, Denys Davydov, Artur Rehi, and The Russian Dude, have amassed large followings from their almost daily reports of the war, producing platform journalism. Reports are factual with sources given for fact claims. Sources include statements from Ukrainian and Russian officials, reports from government and open-source analysists, as well as geo-located images and footage uploaded by Russian and Ukrainian combatants, often shared on Telegram or TikTok.
Support for Ukraine is clear with these citizen journalism youtubers which mainly appears in things such as framing Russian military success as bad, and Ukrainian success as good. They also occasionally mobilise their audiences to raise funds for Ukrainian charitable causes. They don’t try and hide it from their audience. Arguably this openness builds trust; evidence for this is in the comment sections of their videos. Every now and then they speculate on future military actions and next stages of the war, though this is not unlike what is produced from more mainstream journalists where speculations on how the war will end are common, and claims are made about which side is winning.
Youtubers are adaptable and have great creative control to adjust and keep their audiences engaged. This can include becoming more journalistic. Artur Rehi recently made such an adaptation, producing a feature story in which he accompanied an aid convoy from Estonia to Ukraine, where he also interviewed several Ukrainian soldiers who’d recently seen action at the front. While mainstream news media may be unpopular for large sections of society, people still want to be informed. Many see citizen journalists on YouTube as their trusted sources of news.
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Chris Hall
PhD researcher