Audience perceptions to independent media in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova

The Thomson Reuters Foundation is delivering assistance to independent media across Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova to enhance their capabilities to produce high-quality journalism.

The Foundation has commissioned audience research in each country to:

• Provide independent media with audience insights which they might not otherwise have access to;
• Support the identification of additional activities to assist media to build trust with their core audiences;
• Contribute to the wider literature on trust in the media.

Since June 2019, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, in partnership with BBC Media Action, has helped independent media in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova by focusing on building editorial and technical skills through mentorship and training, as well as supporting newsrooms to build audience-centred approaches to content developed in line with Reuters’ standards of high-quality journalism.
We have also been supporting newsrooms to develop more viable business models that better adapt to audiences’ habits and expectations and market conditions. The Thomson Reuters Foundation has provided direct support to more than 20 outlets from regional to local newsrooms. Alongside these capacity building efforts, the Foundation has trained more than 100 journalists on topics such as how to report effectively and safely on the impacts of COVID-19 and frozen conflicts in the region. We have worked with universities, press associations, and media NGOs to support the wider media ecosystem and ensure long-term, sustainable changes for our partners.
This research is funded by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Eastern Partnership Independent Media Project. The three country reports, linked below, can be found in Ukrainian, Georgian, Romanian, English and Russian.