News Consumption about the Ukraine War in Israel and Germany

The post-lunch session on this second day at IAMCR 2023 starts with Vered Elisha Malka, whose focus is on the consumption of news about the current Russian-Ukrainian war in Israel and Germany. Media coverage of the event has been extensive, of course, and news media consumption patterns may be influenced by a number of underlying parameters. Such media consumption patterns also affect public opinion about the war, of course.

Most existing studies of such patterns tend to focus on how people facing war use media to suit their information needs; the present study, by contrast, is interested in how people from third countries consume news about war. Motivations for such news consumption may include people’s objective and subjective proximity to the war, and their views about the countries at war; news consumption is also affected by levels of trust in news and journalism.

The present study compared consumption of news about the war between Ukraine and Germany, both of which host considerable numbers of Ukrainian refugees and also have a long history of immigration from Ukraine (and indeed from Russia, too). Both countries also have complex relationships with Russia, varied and mature media landscapes, and similar democratic values.

The present project ran questionnaires of news users in both countries to explore the parameters influencing news consumption, and found that consumption of legacy media in both countries was significantly predicted by objective and subjective proximity to the war, political interest, and age; in Israel, the lower media trust was, the greater was also the use of social media for accessing news about the war.