Mazepagate. How do unscrupulous developers shape the information field for lobbying interests in Parliament?
Methodology for quantitative analysis and content analysis of Telegram channels
The problem. Reconstruction in times of war and assistance from international partners are significant resources that require transparent distribution. In addition, it is crucial for the people that the state, under the guise of war, when the function of control by the media, the public sector, and citizens is minimized, does not lose non-renewable resources such as forests, coasts, and water, which unscrupulous developers have been trying to seize for years despite the resistance of residents of various communities.
During the war, developers lobbied their interests in Parliament and pushed through bills with high corruption risks (11134, 11135, 11184, 11185, and 12089) to formulate favorable rules for reconstruction. Thus, at a meeting of the Environmental Committee on November 7, 2024, the author of one of these bills, MP Ihor Fris (Servant of the People ), noted that such bills are needed to prevent cases of pressure on business by law enforcement officers, such as the one that happened to Ihor Mazepa.
Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Oleh Tatarov personally requested support (12089).
Research hypothesis. Developers can use Telegram channels to construct a favorable information field that facilitates lobbying in the Verkhovna Rada for legislative initiatives that benefit developers.
That is why the Holka civil initiative decided to conduct a study of Telegram channels and developed a research methodology.
The analysis was conducted among popular Telegram channels in Ukraine. In particular, data on 1019 Telegram channels with more than 15,000 subscribers at the start of the study (December 5, 2023) were downloaded from the Telemetrio website (list of such channels). Then, all the messages of these Telegram channels were downloaded using Snscrape.
In data processing, we excluded no longer active or openly pro-Russian channels.
After that, we identified messages created after January 1, 2024, Using Python programming language libraries. We identified messages that mentioned Ihor Mazepa.
We received 1012 messages from 222 unique Telegram channels. The list of these Telegram channels is available here.
Next, we marked the messages referencing Ihor Mazepa and his activities. The markup was performed using the Sentiment analysis technique, after which the results were checked manually.
Messages with a “negative” attitude included news in which Igor Mazepa was directly accused of something, given offensive comments about him, or categorically condemned and accused of violating the law.
“Neutral” were the news items that presented information in a balanced manner. For example, news about opening cases against a businessman or reviewing a trial presented several points of view, contrasted evidence, etc. This category also included news in which it was impossible to determine the attitude of the authors.
The “positive” attitude was given to posts that categorically stated that Ihor Mazepa was innocent, presented one side of the case (the position of Mazepa, his lawyer, or his defenders), or accused the authorities or law enforcement of putting pressure on business or persecuting Mazepa without evidence. Such reports lacked a second point of view. This category also includes news with signs of manipulation or those that were openly paid for.
The labeling can be found here.
You can read the study text in Iryna Fedoriv, head of the Holka, on Ukrayinska Pravda’s blog.
