#Iamnotafraidtosayit in the Agenda of Ukrainian and Russian Mass Media: Nonpolitical Action Perception in the Conflict Sphere of Modern Journalism

Abstract

Nataliia Steblyna – PhD in Social Communications, assistant professor, chair of advertisement and PR, Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University, Odessa, Ukraine. Email: steblyna@onu.edu.ua

Due to its rather unexpected popularity, the hash tag #Iamnotafraidtosayit has became a leading topic for Ukrainian and Russian mass media. The campaign was large in scale, and was not without a degree of sensation: public figures became involved, bringing up cases of sexual aggression, rights violation and hidden conflict. What makes this case interesting for research is that it allows us to observe some of the specific features of an unfolding media-event on the basis of popular topics adopted from social networks. On the one hand, journalism studies show that the modern mass media remain dependent on traditional sources such as the government or the police, and rarely ask alternative sources for comments. On the other hand, the flash mob #Iamnotafraidtosayit is an example of ordinary people engaging in the process of mass-media agenda setting. After all, the claim that women are not reporting violence emerged from the voices of ordinary people. In order to analyze the specifics of the flash mob coverage, what was studied was the dominant frames used by the most popular Ukrainian and Russian mass-media. Two main frames were distinguished and discovered: conflict and responsibility. The frames were directed not towards solving the violence problem, but to publicise the flash mob’s interpretation of the phenomenon and show the possible threats for the participants and society. When discussing flash mob #Iamnotafraidtosayit, mass media rarely paid attention to any possible legal or legislative solution to the violence problem. Instead, journalists used the posts of social networks users to attract the audience’s
attention to publications. In addition, the campaign was interpreted as an occasion for suspicions, and forecasts about outbreaks of violence being caused by the flash mob were made. As a result of this coverage, the mass-media, which according to their social functions must contribute to the process of society reforming, played rather a passive role. In other words, journalists did not seriously accept these social networks’ initiatives, and did not propose tools for solving the problems raised by common users.