Lviv Media Forum joins the project "Pandemic and Media: How to transform Fear into Solidarity"

Since the quarantine in Ukraine has been imposed, Lviv Media Forum has launched four projects to support media during the crisis. Besides, the organization implements joint media initiatives promoting constructive journalism, which help to solve social problems rather than increase tensions.

In early April, Lviv Media Forum has joined the multidisciplinary research project "Pandemic and Media: How to Transform Fear into Solidarity," developed by Natalka Humeniuk. It is a pilot project of the Laboratory of Public Interest Journalism, which will be developed in Ukraine in cooperation with sociologists, media institutions, as well as Ukrainian and British journalists.

Together with our partners, we tried to find out how journalists can intimidate less and consolidate citizens more. Frequently the authorities (and the media) talk to the audience like to children, provoking people to feel like they cannot control the situation, and all decisions are made for them. High-quality and well-thought-out content, based on constructive journalism, should return to the audience a sense of control over the agenda, responsibility for their actions, and understanding that a lot of things depend on them.

The project team of the Laboratory of Public Interest Journalism has prepared five short videos on how people overcome the challenges of the pandemic through self-organization and proactivity. The stories were broadcasted on the Public Broadcasting digital platforms (website and social networks), as well as on air within the marathon "On Quarantine" of the UA: Pershyy TV channel. Now a group of sociologists from the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research is surveying the audience's reactions to this video. As a result, we will prepare recommendations for developing editorial policies and strategies for constructive discussion in times of polarization. The research methodology was developed by Kharkiv sociologists and the project team together with experts from the innovation program "Arena" of the London School of Economics and Peter Pomerantsev, it's co-director and the media expert.

To overcome non-standard challenges, we need to look for non-standard solutions and look out-of-the-box. We are grateful to the International Renaissance Foundation for supporting bold, innovative, and interdisciplinary research.