The dissertation is a comprehensive study of the role of positive, negative, and neutral information in shaping and reflecting media reality under conditions of prolonged socio-political crises, particularly during the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The study analyzes the functioning of media negativism, examines the transformation of news headline tonality, and explores its influence on public sentiment, trust in institutions, and information demand.
The empirical basis of the research consists of 79,907 news headlines from the Ukrainian online media outlets Ukrainska Pravda, Suspilne, and NV published in 2022–2023, as well as press service reports of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2022 to 2025. The analysis was conducted using the keywords war, military, General Staff, AFU, occupied, and missile, followed by the classification of news items into positive, negative, and neutral categories.
The first chapter examines the reasons for the predominance of negative information in news reporting, the use of positive and negative messages in manipulative practices, the psychological effects of consuming negative content, and changes in information demand under different social circumstances.
The second chapter presents the results of the content analysis of news headlines. A multi-level method of media content analysis combining machine-based generation of a dictionary of key vocabulary with subsequent contextual evaluation of messages is proposed. The study establishes the ratio of positive, negative, and neutral news and identifies the communication strategies employed by Ukrainian media. The findings demonstrate the predominance of neutral information (40%), while the share of negative news (31.7%) exceeds that of positive news (28.3%). It was established that Ukrainska Pravda and NV tend toward neutral coverage, whereas Suspilne systematically employs negative content. The research also reveals a tendency toward increasing negativization of the information field as the war continues.
The third chapter analyzes the relationship between media content and public sentiment on the basis of sociological studies. It also examines the communication strategy of the press service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which systematically uses positive messages to shape the image of Ukrainian resistance and strengthen public trust in the army, while negative messages are employed to construct the image of the enemy and consolidate public opinion.
The conclusions summarize that positive, negative, and neutral information are important instruments for constructing media reality. The study demonstrates that under crisis conditions the media not only reflect events but also actively shape the informational picture of the world through lexical choices, message tonality, and communication strategies. It also establishes that wartime conditions alter the traditional interpretation of tonality: negative vocabulary may acquire positive meaning depending on the context, which requires a contextual approach to news analysis.
The research further confirms the relationship between the nature of media content and public sentiment: the consistently high level of trust in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and belief in victory correlate with the positive coverage of the army's activities in the media and official communications. It is concluded that the balanced use of positive, negative, and neutral information is an important prerequisite for the responsible functioning of the media during prolonged crises.
