Relevance of the problem
Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 placed a double burden on Ukrainian newsrooms: on top of the global challenges journalism faces everywhere, war added a set of challenges unique to Ukraine. Among the country-specific ones, the author highlights a sharp deterioration in the security situation (329 outlets closed during the first 1,000 days of the full-scale war, per the Institute of Mass Information), the forced merger of leading TV channels into a single "Yedyni Novyny" (United News) broadcast under a March 18, 2022 decision of the National Security and Defense Council, and the mass displacement of newsrooms and journalists from occupied territories.
The author groups global challenges into technological, political, and economic ones. Technological challenges blur the line between professional and non-professional journalism and raise new ethical questions — including whether detachment is even possible for a journalist covering a war for their own country's independence. Political challenges stem from a worldwide crisis of trust in traditional media as information "gatekeepers," amid rising populism and politicians' (including Volodymyr Zelensky's, since 2019) preference for direct communication with audiences via social media over classic media. Economic challenges are the cumulative effect of the above: a shrinking ad market, the winding-down of donor funding (including USAID), and the absence of systemic state support, compounded by a staffing crisis driven by mobilization, migration, and journalists leaving the profession.
Problem statement
Against this backdrop, media-consumption research in Ukraine (Internews Ukraine, 2025) records a paradox: despite all the difficulties, audience trust in Ukrainian media rose after the invasion. The author stresses that the causes of this rise are only now being clarified, and names the spread of engaged journalism — specifically, the launch of reader communities with membership-based revenue models — as one hypothesis. This remains a hypothesis rather than a proven conclusion: the author explicitly notes that confirming the link would require a separate empirical study.
The article documents a shift in scale: while in 2021 paid reader communities were isolated experiments by individual newsrooms, by 2025 community-building had become a trend — the Institute for War and Peace Reporting ran training for more than 30 regional media outlets that already have, or are building, communities (the author is personally involved in organizing this training). According to data cited by representatives of The Ukrainians Media and The Kyiv Independent in October 2025, the most successful "community-first" outlets generate more than half their budget from voluntary reader support.
The author delineates the boundaries of "engaged journalism": a systematic form of interaction between media and audience in which the most active segment of the audience takes part in the newsroom's work. Participatory journalism — audience involvement in content creation — is presented as just one manifestation of this broader phenomenon. The least intensive form of engagement is described as reflective interaction (comments, letters, donations); the most intensive is co-governance, where the audience influences a media outlet's strategic and personnel decisions. The article is explicit that a paid-access (paywall) model is not, by itself, engaged journalism — though paywalled media can also practice engaged journalism for other reasons.
State of research
The theoretical framework opens with Jürgen Habermas's public sphere — a space of rational-critical discussion that legitimizes power. The author traces how technological change (the shift from vertical to horizontal networked communication, per Manuel Castells) blurred the line between media and audience, creating both risks of information fragmentation via social-media algorithms (Cass Sunstein) and potential for participatory culture (Henry Jenkins).
The article then draws together several traditions of community research more broadly: Carole Pateman's theory of participation and collective decision-making, Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of citizen participation" and Nico Carpentier's levels of media participation, the classic uses-and-gratifications theory of Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch (which the author narrows to two need types — practical-cognitive and value-emotional), Robert Putnam's social capital theory, Zizi Papacharissi's concept of affective publics (instant mobilization through shared emotional resonance rather than argument), and Etienne Wenger's communities-of-practice theory (a community's resilience is built through regular interaction, shared rituals, and norms). Elinor Ostrom's economic theory of commons governance is applied separately — information within a community is treated as a shared resource that can be managed as sustainably as a material one.
At the intersection of these theories, the author also reframes the journalist's role: the classic "gatekeeping" model of David Manning White gives way to one in which the journalist acts more as a curator and conversation moderator, co-creating meaning with the audience (drawing on Alfred Hermida, Chris Peters, and Marcel Broersma), while retaining the capacity to set the agenda (Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw) and frame issues (Robert Entman).
The theoretical account is illustrated with three Ukrainian examples. The Kyiv Independent's community numbers over 22,000 members (as of October 2025), and reader remittances form over 70% of the newsroom's budget — the author reads it as an affective community with clear formalization. The Ukrainians Media unites over 3,500 people and is treated as an attempt to build deep social capital with a nationally active audience. Ukraїner's volunteer model is cited as a unique example of combining content co-creation with building a community of responsible citizens.
Unresolved issues and aim
The author frames the core problem as follows: existing descriptions of media communities, while grounded in theory, give no methodological basis for comparing communities across newsrooms. The article's stated aim is therefore to develop an original conceptual model for analysing and comparing media communities, suitable for further empirical research.
Conceptual model: seven parameters for describing a media community
The article's main output is the author's seven-component model, which allows any media community to be described not only quantitatively (number of members, contribution size) but also qualitatively. Below are the model's parameters with a short description and theoretical grounding for each, following the article's original table.
| Parameter | What it describes | Theoretical grounding |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Value proposition | Why the community exists; the shared idea that unites members | The concept of "domain" in Etienne Wenger's communities of practice |
| 2. Level of formalization | Clear rules, procedures, division of roles (e.g., a community manager) | Elinor Ostrom's design principles for robust institutions |
| 3. Member contribution | What resources members invest — money, time, content, expertise | Henry Jenkins's participatory culture |
| 4. Level of interaction | How engaged members are: from reflective interaction and consultation to co-creation and co-governance | Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of participation"; Nico Carpentier's models of participation |
| 5. Shared practices | Recurring rituals, events, symbols, and traditions of the community | Etienne Wenger's communities of practice |
| 6. Value-emotional factors | Affective reasons for engagement — belonging, solidarity | Zizi Papacharissi's "affective publics"; uses and gratifications theory |
| 7. Practical-cognitive benefits | Rational benefits of membership — knowledge, connections, exclusive information, discounts | Uses and gratifications theory (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch) |
By the author's own account, this matrix lets researchers compare different media communities, identify strengths and weaknesses in how they are organized, and assess communities' potential both for a newsroom's financial sustainability and for strengthening democratic practice more broadly.
Conclusions
The author concludes that the spread of engaged journalism in Ukraine during the war is not a situational reaction to economic and security pressures, but a logical consequence of global shifts in the media landscape that simply manifest with particular intensity in Ukraine's wartime context. On this reading, media communities become platforms for sustaining public discussion and strengthening civic solidarity precisely when trust in traditional institutions is unstable and the information space is fragmented.
At the same time, the article explicitly warns against overgeneralizing: the rising attention to engaged journalism is occurring amid wartime emotional mobilization — patriotism, volunteering, civic solidarity. Conclusions about the success and sustainability of these models therefore cannot be automatically transferred to peacetime contexts or other countries; this is set out as a direction for further empirical research, including on post-war material.
Andrii Ianitskyi is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Student at the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy." ORCID: 0009-0002-3770-4282.
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