Partiality, patriotism and propaganda: Aggregating local news sources in Ukraine

Abstract

This chapter examines the activities of reporters and news sources in the Ukrainian conflict. It adapts a typology that was developed by David Deacon to examine the motivations of reporters in the Spanish civil war. The Bellingcat group of citizen journalists are examples of parajournalists, news sources identified by Michael Schudson that have begun to act more like reporters. Bellingcat verified material on social media that tracked the course of the covert Russian invasion in 2014, including sightings of the Buk missile launcher that destroyed Malaysian airliner MH17. The author interviewed people from social media in Ukraine to investigate how their political and personal affiliations affect their credibility for the international news organisations who use them as sources.