An organization called National Militia Units, which was founded for a year before, broke into the information space at the end of January 2018. The several events took place almost at the same time: the oath of brigads and their demonstrative interference in the adoption of the budget in Cherkasy, as well as the video leak about the actions in Kremenchug.
According to the results of the January-February 2018 campaign, the National Militia Units received more negative than positive about their reputation. The mass television audience has mostly seen moderately or sharply criticized scenes about the National Units. The similar situation was in Facebook. The most of the opinion leaders were unfriendly to them. We see all the signs of an information attack, which was prolonged by media and Facebook. However, it is difficult to call this situation a full-scale information crisis. After all, for such tipe of organizations, any attention - is a gain. Usualy the media (except for Pro-Russian) spreades less information about the activities of the far-right organizations, remembering them only through the direct actions: counteraction to LGBT-events, marches on Pokrova and on the Stepan Bandera's birthday. Even the National Militia Unit's press conference on January 31 was left without special attention.
The key factor, which stimulated both attraction of attention and the spread of the negative about the National Units was the coincidence in time of the oath of brigads and their actions in Cherkasy. Now is not clear whether this coincidence was deliberately arranged. But it helped the organization's positioning, because even the critics used this event to spread an extra portion of the negative.
The unique feature of such positioning was that among the negative aspects of the brigad's reputation we see the threat of democracy, political independence, but we don't see, for example, inefficiency or corruption. Consequently, the organization remains attractive to people of radical views, who can potentially enter such tipe organization. And in the case of some serious social or political upheavals, the National Militia Units even can take the label of "a strong organization, which capable of bringing the order." In the case, when a political or civic forces decides to organize a biggest informative attack against the National Units, than it was now, they will have to figure out how to spread the messages about inefficiency and corruption.
After downloading the full report, you will be able to see which TV channels were set up critically and which were the most loyal to the National Militia Units, where there was more negative on TV or in Facebook, as well as a more detailed analysis of other aspects of the communication of the units.
