While the consumption of traditional media is diminishing, Internet use is on the increase in Ukraine, according to “Media Consumption Survey. Ukraine 2016,” a report released last month by Internews Network in partnership with USAID.
Covering 2015 and 2016, the report features data from all the Ukrainian regions, except Crimea and the areas under rebellion in Eastern Ukraine.
According to the report, the share of Internet users among Ukrainians aged 18 to 65 years has reached 76%, up 5 percentage points up from 2015. Almost all are active users going online at least once per week. The network is mainly used for information searches, messaging and news consumption.
According to the study, news consumption patterns are emerging in Ukraine. Consumers under 35 years of age tend to increasingly get their news not from news sites, but from news aggregators and social networks.
Ukr.net (34% reach), Yandex (19%) and Mail.ru (6%) are the top three national news aggregators in Ukraine, according to the study.
Among social networks, Vkontakte remains the first source of news, with 27% of the Ukrainian Internet audience using it for such purpose (up from 23% in 2015).
Facebook comes second with 21%, up from 12% over the past year, while Twitter is at the fourth place with a mere 4%.
Generally speaking, the consumption of news from Russian websites is shrinking — from 25% the Ukrainian Internet audience in 2015 to just 14% in 2016.
Vkontake still leader
In terms of general use beyond news, Russian social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki remain the most popular networks in Ukraine. However, the audience of Facebook and Twitter grew significantly over the past year (+9 and +5 percentage points, respectively).
Facebook nearly matched Odnoklassniki in terms of popularity, and for Ukrainians under 25, Facebook is preferred to Odnoklassniki, says the study.
Despite the dynamic development of online media, television remains the main source for getting news, due to its hold on the audience over 35. The top three TV channels are 1+1, Inter and STB.
Internews Network is an international media development non-profit organization.
