The work is devoted to the elucidation of social and communication features of covering the scientific innovations in the Internet media of Ukraine. On the basis of the agenda theory and diffusion theory of innovations with the help of content analysis and structured qualitative analysis, it is determined what topics are covered by the Ukrainian Internet publication, how they are covered and how modern feedback opportunities in Internet publications are used. The research is conducted on the material of the seven most visited Internet news media of Ukraine: «Correspondent.net», «Obozrevatel», «Today», «TV channel 24», «TSN.ua», «Ukrainska Pravda», «Censor.net» – from 1 January 2014 till December 31, 2018.
About 0.1% of the total number of materials turned out to be allocated to the covering scientific news and innovations (for comparison: in the British, Danish, Spanish media – 4-7%). Medicine and health care are devoted to 42.7%, history – 10.6%, psychology – 10.6%. The topics of minimal interest were agronomy, anthropology, mathematics, meteorology, pedagogy, sociology, chemistry.
Preference is given to topics related to people's daily lives, habits, basic needs – nutrition, safety (including health), sexual relations, sleep, belonging and more. It is noted that the majority (90.9%) of materials on scientific achievements are unoriginal: they are submitted with reference to the source or a chain from several previous source. Only 9.1% of materials do not indicate the source of the borrowing, that is, they are submitted as original (although they may not be). The greatest influence in the formation of the agenda regarding science in the Internet media of Ukraine has Western («The Daily Mail», «BBC», «The Independent», etc.) and the Russian media («Lenta. ru», «Gazeta. ru», «RIA Novosti», etc.).
Online publications in Ukraine talk mostly about the achievements of Western universities, primarily the United States (28%). The discoveries and inventions of the UK and Ukraine are devoted to 8.1% of materials.
The most frequently mentioned organizations are Harvard University (4%), NASA (2.9%), University of California (2.5%), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2.5%). Among the Ukrainian institutes are the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine – 1.8% and Kiev National University Shevchenko – 1.5%. References to the scientific source contain only 20.7% of the materials, the names of the authors of inventions or discoveries are indicated in 20.9%.
The study also considers the headings of publications on scientific news and innovations in terms of their main functions in the online publication. Described features of using attention-grabbing techniques such as simplification, invasiveness, negativization, provocativeness; reference to the main text, numbers, and questions are in news headlines about science. The most common were links to the main text – 75.2%; invasiveness, provocation, simplification are also common. To determine the function of informing, the headings were divided into three types: fully correspond to the essence of the publication, partially correspond or do not correspond. Full compliance was observed in 69.2% of cases, partial – in 21.9%, non-compliance – 9.1. It is emphasized that the inconsistency of the headlines to the publications content (as a consequence – inaccurate information) in the case of the studying topic becomes an acute problem when it comes to innovations that people can put into practice, especially medical ones.
In addition to the agenda, the study also looks at the diffusion factors (by E. Rogers) in media reports on scientific news and innovations. As for the «relative advantage» factor, it is found that most often it is not specified at all or is unclear – the total figure is 69.6%. Almost all cases where relative advantage was indicated (clearly or indistinctly) relate to practical scientific achievements.
