TK MILAB Speaker Series

Krzysztof Rybinski ’s (Vistula University) presentation titled „Media freedom, bias, and manipulation in the post-soviet space. A machine learning analysis of one million articles from five countries.” on September 21, 2:00 pm.

We propose a new measure of media freedom called relative political sentiment and present several applications using a unique dataset of more than 1.1 million articles from four post-soviet countries and Poland. The analysis shows that media freedom is most heavily constrained in Kazakhstan and was until recently in Belarus too. There are large differences between post-socialist democracies and autocracies in media patterns during presidential elections. The paper documents that the image of the United States in post-socialist online media is neutral, while China uses the media effectively to promote its narrative in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine. The friends and foes analysis reveals that Russian media are negative about Poland’s political elites and vice-versa. Polish media are also critical about the Ukrainian politicians, while the Polish political elites’ image in Ukraine is mixed. We also document Kremlin influence in Ukraine’s media.

The seminar will be broadcasted via Zoom application. Participation is subject to prior registration. The Zoom link of the event will be sent to registered participants via email. Register here!