Freedom of speech and media literacy: results of a nationwide survey

Freedom of speech and media literacy: results of a nationwide survey

Donors, performers and partners

The study was carried out within the partnership between the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine and the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine (memorandum of cooperation of 10 October 2024).

The press release and the presentation were prepared by Serhii Dembitskyi, Deputy Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Sociological Sciences.

The survey on which this report is based was conducted by the CATI studio of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine in the course of the research project “The national resilience of Ukraine during the Russian-Ukrainian war: social configurations”. Funding was received from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine under the budget spending line “Support for research and scientific and technical (experimental) development of priority importance for the state” of budget programme KPKVK 6541230.

Technical support (access to IP telephony) was provided by the research agency Research UA, a partner of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine.

Parameters of the study

The research instrument was developed by Serhii Dembitskyi (Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine) in cooperation with Dmytro Shvydchenko (National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine).

The results of the survey represent the adult population of Ukraine (aged 18 and over), excluding the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories of the south and east of Ukraine.

The survey was conducted by computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) using a random sample of mobile numbers.

The fieldwork stage of the study ran from 27 October to 7 November 2025. For a sample of 1,007 respondents, the statistical margin of error at a 95% confidence level and a design effect of 1.1 does not exceed 3.2%.

Methodological features

Freedom of speech was studied in terms of Ukrainians' agreement with the need for self-censorship (revealing conformism) when expressing their views publicly, including on the internet. The following were used in the study as external reference points for such self-censorship: the norms of public morality, the political course of the authorities, the prevailing moods in society, European values, Christian values, the state's views on history, the position of experts, considerations of national security, national ideology, scientific facts and Ukrainian traditions.

To study media literacy, the recommendations from Tom Chatfield's book “Critical Thinking” were adapted, which made it possible to formulate 8 ways of checking whether news is true. For each of these, respondents indicated both its effectiveness (awareness of the tools of media literacy) and the fact of using it (declared application). The second aspect — declared application — was assessed only for those methods the respondent had named as effective.

Key findings

1. Ukrainians display a high level of conformism and, accordingly, a low level of nonconformism. An absolute majority of Ukrainians agree with the need to align their public statements with 7 of the 11 external reference points for self-censorship. These are (in decreasing order of influence) considerations of national security, Ukrainian traditions, the norms of public morality, scientific facts, national ideology, the state's views on history and Christian values.

The 4 external reference points for self-censorship that do not win the approval of an absolute majority of Ukrainians are, accordingly, European values, the prevailing moods in society, the political course of the authorities and the position of experts. Even for these, however, the level of approval does not fall below 37%.

2. Among Ukrainians, then, conformism (6.6 points out of 11) is higher than nonconformism (3.1 points out of 11). For a correct interpretation of these figures, however, the additional results described below should be taken into account, since both conformism and nonconformism may be constructive or destructive depending on the social context in which they are applied.

3. An absolute majority of participants correctly recognise 6 of the 8 methods of verifying information that were studied. These are searching for the news on trusted resources, checking that the date is consistent with the events, checking the news against independent additional facts, checking the authenticity of photographs and video in the news, assessing the professional quality of the material, and checking the primary source of the news.

Greater difficulty in recognising effective methods of verifying information arose with determining the reliability of the resource publishing the news (46% correct answers) and assessing how emotive the material is (35%).

As for the declared application of the listed tools, only two of them are, according to the answers, practised by an absolute majority — searching for the news on trusted resources and checking that the dates and events given in the material are consistent. The prevalence of their use does not differ statistically significantly from 50%. For the remaining tools the figure for declared application falls in the range from 25% to 43%.

4. The mean value of the index of awareness of media literacy tools is 4.6 points out of 8, and the mean value of the index of the declared application of media literacy tools is 3.1 points. Tellingly, about 10% of respondents named no method of verifying news as effective, and almost 28% do not use them at all. At the same time almost three quarters of respondents said they apply at least one of the methods of verifying news on a regular basis.

The question of how to interpret the level of Ukrainians' media literacy from these results remains open. Answering it calls for dedicated expert discussion.

5. Statistical analysis established that considerations of security, rationality and civilisation, which are positively associated with media literacy, are fairly widespread among Ukrainians. This means an orientation towards such external reference points for self-censorship as considerations of national security, scientific facts and European values. Perceptions of the remaining reference points are not associated with the indicators of media literacy.

Age and level of material well-being are also associated with media literacy: as age rises, the indicators of media literacy fall, and as the level of material well-being rises, they increase.

More detailed results in the form of charts are given in the presentation of the study's findings.