Доповідь на конференції World Human Rights, Toronto, 03.07.2014

Dear colleagues,

I'd like to present key results of content analytical studies, implemented by my organization. They cover printed and internet media. The main limitation of the results is time: our data describe situation before Euromaidan and Dignity Revolution in Ukraine. Now our society has been dramatically changed and I suppose media reflect these changes. So, presenting data cover time from late 1990s till summer 2013.

Data cover all publications in 3 national and local newspapers and the publications in internet-sites of Ukrainian information agencies. Items were selected because they had keywords of interest like Ukrainian and Russian equivalents for homosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, faggots etc.

Collected samle (over 300 printed items and 5000 digital ones) were coded and analyzed according main topic, author's attitude to homosexuality, hero, genre etc.

Printed media describe gays as: a man, living far from Ukraine (Western Europe or USA), rich (e. g. a politician like dutch Pim Fortein or german Hugo Westerwelle or a music star like Elton John). They described gays at a glance. Local issues (e. g. discrimination, hate crimes, or health) are reflected very limited.

So, the image of Ukrainian LGBT-people, shown in printed media, is far from reality and affected by key stereotypes.

On the other hand we have internet-media as a kind of fast and multimedia based news.

According to our data digital media presented more realistic, balansed image, they informed readers about key LGBT-events in Ukraine (like KyivPride or attempts to include sodomy laws to legislation).

Author's attitude to homosexuality was negative or neutral in printed media, but neutral or positive in digital one.

I think that the differences between 2 types of media can be explained by two reasons: 1) activity of local LGBT-NGOs which prepard and distributed press-releases about their work; 2) main genre of the texts of each type of media (analytical in printed and informational in digital).

Right and fast reproducing of news prepared by NGOs formed more realistic image in digital media, and news as a genre of short texts do not allow to reflect dominant social attitudes toward LGBT. Printed media as a kind of slow information prefer longer texts in which some analysis is included, so when the author writes about or world LGBT-news, (s)he can add his/her attitudes to the text.

Additionally I'd like to say that these 2 types of media focus to different audiences: readers of printed media are older, poorer and less educated people, and readers of digital news are more urban, more educated, richer and younger.

I suppose these differences seem to be reflected in Ukrainian Dignity Revolution: pro-Europian people which standed on Maidan were more pro-LGBT and read digital media, pro-russian people (contr-revolutioneers, anti-Maidan) widely use anti-LGBT-rhetoric and read printed media.