Government Authorities' Media-reputation in Ukraine: Anti-crisis Tools

Nowadays, media act as a conduit between governmental authorities and the public. The adjusted mechanism of interaction between public authorities and the media, effective and open information policy of the state, filling the information space with key messages today are just some of the main government’s tasks in overcoming the crisis. The purpose of this article is to explore the main trends that exist in Ukrainian political and information spheres in order to develop anti-crisis tools for the effective formation of the media reputation of governmental authorities of Ukraine. In the process of research, a number of general scientific and special research methods were used, in particular, structural-functional, comparative, qualitative-quantitative, empirical research, etc. The lack of clear communication strategy, professional anti-crisis structural units for information monitoring and analysis, insufficient diagnostics of citizens’ reaction to communication messages and attempts to resolve conflicts and crises situations cause the decrease of Ukraine’s reputation in the international arena, makes it impossible for the public authorities to resolve crisis issues and inform the citizens during crisis and emergency situations. As a result of the research, it was stated that there is a lack of articulation of meaningful answers to painful questions and purposeful concentration of media and public attention to help to solve problems instead of spreading destructive sentiments. Under the new conditions of information space globalization and information wars, the state is obliged to bring Ukraine’s media legislation to European standards, ensure national interests’ preservation, take timely measures to protect vulnerable groups from potentially harmful content, without hindering the right to freedom of speech. Under these conditions, the level of trust in state institutions is dramatically falling and, public authorities should closely collaborate with civil society organizations. One of the key diagnostic methods is prompt media monitoring, which would allow to quickly analyze the nature of the problem that caused the crisis and choose the best response strategy, from formal recognition of the problem and action plan to eliminate its consequences to try to stop / slow down the spread of information. Thus, it would be possible to carry out the right conclusions from large information flows. It is concluded that in order to overcome systemic political crisis it is necessary to introduce targeted actions of the state leadership in the direction of interaction with the public, to build a clear and effective information and communication policy and a set of effective anti-crisis communication tools