January–April 2026: state and independent campaigns analyzed within their own logics
This study examines two campaigns that unfolded in the Belarusian media field around the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster between January and April 2026. One campaign operated in state and pro-government media, the other in independent newsrooms. Both worked with the same subject, but their internal organization differed fundamentally: the state campaign was launched through a directive mechanism and a synchronized network of channels, while the independent media campaign emerged from autonomous editorial decisions and was distributed across time.
The analysis is built around three control points. The first — 20 January 2026, when a Russian strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure temporarily disconnected ChNPP facilities from external power. This point shows the baseline operating mode of both sides before the anniversary campaigns were launched. State media bypassed the cause of the incident and limited themselves to reporting normal radiation background. Independent media covered the event directly, drew on external sources, and embedded the Belhydromet statement within a broader information stream. The second point — 16 April, when the Single Day of Information methodological brief was distributed and a synchronized surge of Chernobyl-related vocabulary was registered in pro-government Telegram channels. The third — 26 April, the anniversary of the disaster, when both campaigns reached their peak capacity.
The methodology proceeds from the premise that state and independent media operate in different modes. State media operate in the mode of political logic: themes and emphases are set externally, and channels synchronously transmit approved formulations. Independent media operate in the mode of media logic: decisions are made by editorial teams, and publications are guided by audience demand, timeliness, fact-checking, and various forms of explanation. The study therefore uses an asymmetric approach: the state campaign is analyzed through the six points of the methodological brief, while the independent campaign is analyzed through four registers identified within the materials themselves.
Described through four stable registers. The affective register works with personal memory, witness testimony, the literary canon, and the sense of a continuing catastrophe. Its central function is to keep Chernobyl present as a living experience rather than a closed event of the past. The analytical register is built around data, expertise, the verification of official statements, and connections between Chernobyl and current issues, including BelNPP, nuclear weapons, and the absence of scientific contacts. The political register treats Chernobyl as a continuous thread in the political history of Belarus: through state decisions, the fate of relief funds, court cases, the status of contaminated lands, and the current political situation. The ritual register is connected to public action: marches, slogans, participation, offline programs, and the practice of memory in the diaspora.
This distribution gives the independent campaign several effects. First, the topic of Chernobyl is worked through in different temporal planes: through memory of the past, the data and risks of the present, the political biography of the topic, and public action. Second, different voices are heard in the campaign: witnesses, experts, editorial teams, march participants, political actors, and representatives of diaspora infrastructure. Third, different registers address different audiences: those for whom Chernobyl is cultural and personal memory; those who expect data and verification; those who perceive the topic through political context; and those who are ready to participate in public action.
Operates differently. It is set by the Single Day of Information (EDI) methodological brief, which consists of six points: the scale of damage, the leading role of Lukashenka, the return of populated localities to economic use, state assistance programs, controlled population health, and BelNPP as the natural continuation of the line of "overcoming." These points form not a set of topics but a single logical chain. First, the scale of the catastrophe is established; then the figure of the leader is introduced; then restored territories and state programs are listed; then the unsettling topic of health is closed; and finally, BelNPP is presented as evidence of mature management of nuclear energy. Assembled, this framework has three properties. First, it is monological: it allows no room for alternative voices, qualifications, or dispute. Second, it has a single mode of address: the same narrative is broadcast to a national audience without segmentation. Third, it is replicated through a network: the brief does not remain a separate document but is distributed across a synchronized pool of channels, registered as statistical surges on 16 and 26 April.
From these two internal organizations, five narratives take shape. State media construct the narrative "Overcoming": Chernobyl is presented as an overcome catastrophe, and BelNPP as the natural conclusion of accumulated experience. Independent media give rise to four narratives: "Echo", where the catastrophe remains a continuing experience; "Verification", where official claims are juxtaposed with data; "Political Biography", where Chernobyl is treated as a continuous thread in the political history of Belarus; and "Action", where memory of the catastrophe is expressed through marches, slogans, and participation.
A comparison of these narratives shows that they form an asymmetric field. On one side stands a closed story with a single mode of address. On the other stand four open narratives, each addressing a different audience and operating in a different register. Between them there is no full common ground for argument. The state narrative does not engage in polemic with independent media, and independent media, although they register the launch of the state campaign and deconstruct its framework, do not produce a unified response to it.
The way these narratives unfold around Chernobyl reveals not only differences in editorial strategy but also a deeper structural distinction between authoritarian and democratic media. In the first case, a topic is turned into a closed, synchronously replicated story. In the second, it is distributed across different registers, audiences, and modes of speaking, never reducing to a single center.
The state campaign builds Chernobyl along the past–future axis: the past is represented through damage and recovery, the future through BelNPP, while the present effectively drops out. Independent media engage with the present more broadly, through data, current events, political decisions, and public actions, but the January incident also receives no clearly articulated interpretation from them.
The state campaign relies on infrastructural resources: a synchronized network of channels, access to departmental reporting and medical statistics, physical presence on the territory, and central ceremonial events. Independent media draw on different resources: editorial autonomy, experience in deconstructing state narratives, links with the offline infrastructure of the diaspora, and the capacity to work simultaneously with different audiences. These resources do not compete directly and serve different tasks.
"Overcoming" does not acknowledge the existence of an alternative story and leaves no room for an external voice. The four independent narratives challenge the state story in parts: "Verification" deconstructs its claims, "Political Biography" records the practices from which it grows, "Echo" and "Action" operate in other coordinates — those of experience and participation. But together they do not form a single alternative story.
The study does not assess the influence of either campaign on public opinion and does not issue a verdict on winners and losers. Such conclusions would require different data: surveys, reach figures, audience perception measurements. Also outside the scope of this work are the substantive analysis of April publications by state media and a full comparison of the Belarusian case with other instances of media in exile.
For the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, two parallel campaigns unfolded in the Belarusian media field, each with its own structure and resources. On 16 April 2026, a methodological brief for the Single Day of Information, prepared by the Chernobyl Academy, was distributed to Belarusian institutions. Its content was replicated through a synchronized network of pro-government Telegram channels. In independent media, 14 newsrooms produced 121 substantive materials on the same subject over four months. The agenda was shaped through independent editorial decisions.
The aim of the study is to describe and analyze both campaigns, each through an instrument consistent with its own logic, and to show what narratives emerge from them and how these narratives relate to each other. The subject of the study is the operating logic of each campaign: which topics it accentuates and which it bypasses; the moments when it enters public view and the moments when it stays silent; how it responds to the actions of the other side and to unforeseen events; what resources it uses and what tasks it solves with them. The question of how either campaign influences public opinion lies outside the study. Such measurement would require audience data: surveys, reach figures, dynamics of perception. These data are gathered through other methods and are not part of the present study.
The two campaigns are organized fundamentally differently, and trying to describe them within a single methodological frame distorts both. The state media campaign has a single defining document and is characterized through its six points. The independent media campaign is characterized through four registers — four stable modalities of writing about Chernobyl, derived from the materials themselves. This difference defines the methodology of asymmetric analysis: each campaign is analyzed through an instrument consistent with its own logic, since a unified analytic language would distort both.
Thematically, the campaigns converge on the figure of Lukashenka, the status of contaminated lands, and the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant. Indeed, BelNPP is the principal point at which the state and independent agendas meet — with opposing positions. The thematic divergence: state assistance programs and population health. Independent newsrooms do not develop these topics owing to the structural absence of access to departmental reporting and medical statistics. In the Belarusian media field, parallel campaigns about Chernobyl coexist, each solving its own task and addressing its own audiences.
Methodology sets out the theoretical frame (the two modes of media operation: media logic and political logic), defines the key concepts (campaign, control point, register, point of the brief), and describes the corpus and the data cleaning procedure.
Section 1. Three control points analyzes three days of the study period. 20 January — an unforeseen event: a Russian missile strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure that disconnected ChNPP from external power. The baseline operating mode of each side is observed here, in the absence of an external structuring impulse. 16 April — a governing impulse: the distribution of the EDI brief and a synchronization signal in the Telegram network. 26 April — the calendar peak: the anniversary of the disaster, when both campaigns operate at full capacity. The section includes a sidebar, "Beyond the media: the Ekodom program."
In Section 2. The internal organization of the two campaigns, the structure of each campaign is described separately, on its own terms. Subsection 2.1 describes the four registers of the independent media campaign. Subsection 2.2 describes the framework of the state campaign: the six points of the EDI brief as a single logical chain, and the three properties of the framework — monological construction, single mode of address, and network replication.
Section 3 is devoted to narratives — the stories that emerge from each campaign's publications. Subsection 3.1 describes the state campaign's narrative "Overcoming." Subsection 3.2 describes the four narratives of the independent media campaign: "Echo," "Verification," "Political Biography," and "Action." Subsection 3.3 compares the five narratives: where they compete, where they address each other, where they pass each other by, and why no counter-narrative is to be found in the media field on either side.
The Conclusion returns to the methodological frame and summarizes three cross-cutting observations: the gap in engagement with the present, the asymmetry of resources, and the absence of a counter-narrative. A sidebar, "Comparable research cases," is appended to the conclusion.
The Methodological Appendix describes in detail the data cleaning procedure, the choice of clustering parameters, and the limitations of the study. The study draws on the FactCheck.LT FORESIGHT corpus — a collection of media materials from 18 Belarusian sources, holding more than 1.1 million documents at the time of writing. The analytical sample comprises 121 materials from 14 independent newsrooms. State media were analyzed in two modes: substantively at control point 20 January (4 materials after cleaning, from 213 raw matches) and through synchronization signals in the TGStat corpus at control points 16 and 26 April.
State and independent media operate in different modes, and this difference frames the analysis. In studies of the mediatization of politics, these modes are described as a difference of logics. In the mode of media logic in independent media, the decision to publish is made by the editorial team and is shaped by professional norms: audience demand, timeliness of reporting, recourse to expertise, fact-checking. In the mode of political logic in state media, materials are released as part of a directive cycle; topics and emphases are set externally, and the channel's function is the synchronous transmission of officially approved formulations.
In the Belarusian case, this dichotomy is not a theoretical abstraction but an observable structure. State media have an institutional mechanism of synchronization (the Single Day of Information) and regularly delivered mandatory briefs. The agenda of independent media is formed by editorial decisions. The difference of modes is structural, and this defines the methodology of asymmetric analysis. If a frame designed for editorial autonomy is applied to the state campaign, "absence of pluralism" must be recorded as a deficit, whereas for an apparatus operating in political logic, narrative unity is the target state. If a frame designed for a single center is applied to the independent media campaign, "absence of coordination" must be recorded as a weakness, whereas for distributed editorial practice, heterogeneity is the operating mode. Each campaign is therefore described through an instrument consistent with its own logic and assessed by its own criteria.
A campaign in this study is a sustained flow of publications about Chernobyl, produced by state or independent media within the study period, exhibiting an internal logic — a single framework, or a distribution across registers.
To make observation reproducible, three days within the study period are designated as control points. A control point is a day that meets three conditions: a significant event takes place on that day; the event is significant for both campaigns simultaneously; the day produces a sufficient volume of publications to observe differences. When all three conditions are met, silence itself becomes a statement: if an event is large and obligating and the media do not respond, this is an editorial choice that can be recorded and described.
The three chosen points differ by the nature of their occasion, and this difference is essential to the design.
20 January 2026 — an unforeseen event. A Russian missile-and-drone strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure disconnects Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant facilities from external power. No one chose this point, and as of this day the 40th-anniversary campaigns have not been launched. This is a test of each side's baseline operating mode: how state and independent media engage with a current nuclear incident when no external structuring impulse has yet been set.
16 April 2026 — a governing impulse. Through the channels of the state ideological infrastructure, a six-point methodological brief on Chernobyl is distributed for the Single Day of Information, and the pool of pro-government Telegram channels produces a sharp synchronous surge in mentions of Chernobyl. Two processes are observed at this control point: the launch of the state media campaign through a single synchronous wave, and the response of independent newsrooms registering this launch at the moment it begins, not retroactively.
26 April 2026 — the calendar peak. The anniversary of the disaster. This day is set by history; silence here is impossible, and both campaigns mobilize maximum resources. At this point the structure of each campaign appears in its own programmatic form, not as a reaction to an occasion set by another party.
The three points form a connected sequence: an unforeseen event reveals the baseline orientation, a governing impulse establishes the framework of one of the campaigns, and the calendar peak shows both campaigns at full extent.
The analytical base of the study is the FactCheck.LT FORESIGHT corpus — a collection of media materials from 18 Belarusian sources (state, pro-government, independent), accumulated over the past two years and updated daily through the automated collection of web and Telegram publications.
Within the study period from 1 January to 30 April 2026, an initial search using four Chernobyl-related markers in the texts of independent sources produced 1,590 matches. After double cleaning (by mention density and the position of the first mention, then by actual publication dates), 121 materials from 14 independent newsrooms entered the analytical sample. A detailed description of the cleaning procedure is given in the Appendix.
State media were analyzed in two modes. At control point 20 January — substantively, through the same cleaning procedure (213 raw matches, 4 substantive materials). At control points 16 and 26 April — through synchronization signals in the TGStat corpus: sharp surges in Chernobyl-related vocabulary in the synchronized pool of pro-government Telegram channels, registered as statistical outliers (+14.5σ and +13σ from background). This produces substantive material for the first point and an infrastructural signal for the other two.
On the night of 20 January 2026, Russian forces launched a massive missile-and-drone strike against Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Among the affected nodes were those that supplied electricity to the facilities of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The State Specialized Enterprise "Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant" facility, including the New Safe Confinement over the fourth block and the spent fuel storage facilities, temporarily lost external power supply. The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy confirmed the restoration of normal operations within several hours; the IAEA issued a preliminary statement on the situation. The radiation background remained within normal range.
This is a rare case in our material: a single event registered by all sides occurs within an observable 24-hour window. This makes it possible to see how it is reflected across different segments of the Belarusian media field. As of this day, the 40th-anniversary campaigns have not yet been launched: the EDI will appear only twelve weeks later, and the pre-anniversary wave in independent media will begin only in the third decade of April. No external structuring impulse has yet been set, and each segment operates in its baseline mode. This is what makes 20 January a diagnostic test: how a segment responds to an unforeseen event in the absence of such an impulse reveals the internal logic of its work.
In the period of 19–23 January 2026, Belarusian state media (SB, BelTA, STV, ONT, plus the corresponding YouTube channels) produced 213 marker matches on the topic of Chernobyl. After cleaning out technical mentions in navigation menus and "related publications" widgets, four substantive materials remained. All four are built around the Belhydromet statement on the stable radiation situation in Belarus, without reference to the reason this situation is being checked.
Following the incident at the Chernobyl NPP that occurred on 20 January, the radiation situation on the territory of Belarus remains stable. sb.by, 20 January 2026, Belhydromet quotation
The word "incident" is used without elaboration. The context of the missile strike, the military nature of the event, the responsibility for it — all are absent. The very fact that the radiation situation is being checked on this particular day remains semantically unframed. State media report the result of the measurement but do not report why the measurement had to be carried out. Additionally, on 21 January, BelTA publishes an article titled "The achievements of the Gomel region were presented at an exhibition in the Council of the Republic," in which Chernobyl is mentioned four times — already within the framing of "the revival of affected districts," that is, in the very logic that will become one of the points of the brief three months later.
In the same window, independent media publish ten materials with direct attribution of the event. Nasha Niva publishes the main report on the strike and the work of the New Safe Confinement (report of 20 January), as well as a summary of the Belhydromet statement (item from the same day) with a link to the IAEA. Reform publishes a breaking news item, "ChNPP reconnected to Ukraine's energy grid," at 20:56 on 20 January. PlanB, Svaboda, and Pozirk produce parallel materials.
Formally, independent media cite the same Belhydromet statement that state media cite, but they use it differently. Nasha Niva places the Belhydromet summary as a short news item within the stream of materials about the strike. Zerkalo and Reform make it part of a broader picture that includes IAEA and Ukrainian agencies. State media, by contrast, treat the statement as a self-contained subject. The same text functions differently in the two segments: in state media as a closing explanation; in independent media as one element of an unfolding event. This is the empirical manifestation of the two modes of logic. For a channel operating under political logic, the Belhydromet statement closes the topic: an officially approved measurement result has been obtained, and there is nothing more to discuss. For a channel operating under media logic, the same statement is one source within an information stream covering an unfolding situation, requiring supplementation through the IAEA, Ukrainian agencies, and expert commentary. The difference in the function of the same text across the two segments is not an interpretive nuance but a structural consequence of different working orientations.
The strike of 20 January raises specific practical questions for the Belarusian audience. Is contamination transfer possible under certain wind directions? Are products coming from districts bordering Ukraine being controlled? Has monitoring at border posts been intensified? Is the incident connected to the risk of recurrence? These questions follow from the very nature of an event taking place at a major radiation-hazardous facility a few dozen kilometers from the Belarusian border.
In the four substantive items produced by state media, none of these questions is raised. The Belhydromet statement records the current background level but does not explain under what conditions it might change, what will be checked in the coming days, what measures have or have not been taken. The audience receives the result of a measurement without an answer to the question of what this result means for its own situation.
Independent media respond to these questions in framing terms: through reference to the IAEA (international verification is underway), through Ukrainian agencies (restoration of power is confirmed within hours), through parallel materials on the structure of the New Safe Confinement (why a brief loss of external power does not entail an immediate radiation threat). This is not full expert analysis, but it is engagement with the practical requests of the audience — engagement that is absent in the state segment.
Three days after the strike, on 23 January, state media publish two coordinated news items (BelTA and SB): "Belarus has invited the UN Secretary-General's special representative to the events marking the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster." This is the first institutional move on the topic of memory to appear in the state segment, three months before the main launch of the campaign on 16 April. Chronologically, it follows not an anniversary or memorial occasion but the event of 20 January. This does not mean that the diplomatic initiative is a response to the strike. Preparations for the 40th anniversary had been underway in the state apparatus long before January, and the UN representative's invitation is embedded in a broader plan of events. What the chronological sequence does record is something different: for three days there is no response to a current incident, and on the fourth day there is a switch to the mode of working with the topic of memory. Chernobyl-as-current-object and Chernobyl-as-memory exist for the state campaign as two different communicative registers, and the switch between them is recorded in the material as an observable fact.
The first control point yields two diagnostic records. For state media: the topic of the current nuclear incident on 20 January did not enter public discussion; the Belhydromet statement is presented without indicating the reason for the check and without attributing the event; at the same time, the topic of Chernobyl is actively pursued in memorial mode in the same days. Chernobyl in the state media campaign is split into two separate objects: Chernobyl-as-current-object, removed from public discussion, and Chernobyl-as-memory, amplified through diplomatic initiatives. For independent media: work in the mode of streaming information with recourse to external sources and a framing-level address to the audience's practical questions.
The Single Day of Information (EDI) is a state-organized event held since 2003. On the third Thursday of every month, a methodological brief prepared by the Academy of Public Administration under the President of Belarus is distributed. On the basis of this document, lectures are held in workplaces, and publication plans are developed and executed in state media. The EDI works as a regular channel for delivering a unified agenda, with a fixed calendar rhythm and a standardized delivery format. The topics of the brief vary from month to month, but the synchronization mechanism is stable: on the same day, all institutions and state media receive the material simultaneously.
16 April 2026 was the regular EDI, devoted to the 40th anniversary of Chernobyl. The date coincides with the launch wave of the campaign as registered by the TGStat signal: on this day, the frequency of Chernobyl-related vocabulary in the synchronized pool of pro-government channels is many times higher than the usual background — a statistical outlier of plus fourteen and a half standard deviations. The EDI of 16 April is the governing impulse: the moment at which an external structuring document, setting the thematic framework for subsequent work, enters the state media campaign.
The brief performs two operations of different natures. The infrastructural one synchronizes the network of channels through the EDI mechanism. The substantive one establishes the thematic framework through six sections of the narrative. These two operations are grasped differently. The infrastructural one is visible only from outside — through statistical instruments that register synchronous surges in the frequency of vocabulary. It does not become a topic in publications: neither the state channels replicating the brief nor the independent newsrooms responding to its appearance discuss the infrastructural side of the brief. The substantive operation, by contrast, is grasped from within: the framework set by the six points is examined in independent newsrooms' publications. Observation of the two operations of the brief is thus distributed across two levels: the infrastructural level is captured externally, through corpus analysis; the substantive level — in independent newsroom publications.
The six sections of the brief form a single logical chain. The first describes the scale of damage to Belarus: the most affected country, 23 percent of territory exposed to radioactive contamination, 21 districts in the contamination zone, 138,000 evacuated. The second — the leading role of Lukashenka: from 1994 he personally led the program for overcoming the consequences. The third lists 1,657 populated localities returned to economic use after passing radiation control. The fourth is devoted to six state programs of assistance to affected territories. The fifth asserts that oncological indicators are under control and do not exceed the European level. The sixth justifies the construction of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant in Astravets as the natural continuation of the line of overcoming.
This framework sets out the framing and theses for subsequent publications in state media. In the terminology of mediatization studies, frameworks of this kind are sometimes called an informational exoskeleton: an external rigid structure that holds the form of collective utterance. As applied to the topic of Chernobyl, the framework performs three operations.
The first — a shift of temporal focus. All six sections work with the past (the scale of damage, the history of programs, the accumulated result of recovery) and with the future (BelNPP as the natural continuation). The current present (continuing burdens, ongoing risks, unresolved questions) does not enter the narrative. This is why the January strike against Ukrainian energy is not integrated into the campaign of memory: a current nuclear incident belongs to the present, while the framework operates along the past–future axis, bypassing the present.
The second — a redefinition of the type of facts. In January, the relevant facts were current instrument readings at specific geographic points (Bragin — 0.34 µSv/h, Vasilyevichi — 0.11, Zhitkovichi — 0.10, Mozyr — 0.10). Formally these are figures of the present, but in January's materials they are presented without a stated reason for the check and without attribution of the event. In April, with the launch of the memorial campaign, what becomes relevant is reporting: the accumulated outcomes of state activity (23 percent of territory, 138,000 evacuated, 1,657 restored localities, six programs). Instead of a measurement result tied to a moment, a summary of results tied to long-term state work.
The third — building the narrative around the figure of one leader. The second section of the brief directly attributes the leading role to Aliaksandr Lukashenka; the remaining five create the institutional backdrop for this role: the scale of damage shows what had to be led; the restored localities, state programs, controlled health, and BelNPP show how that leadership concluded. The disaster becomes an event in relation to which the narrative speaks in one voice. The voices of scientists, doctors, liquidators, local administrations, and international organizations are not inscribed in the narrative.
These three operations turn Chernobyl from a topic permitting different angles into a closed narrative focused on a single figure, with ordered reporting facts and a temporal axis that bypasses the present.
On the day of the brief's distribution, 16 April, four materials appear in independent media that do not respond to it directly: a greeting from Tikhanouskaya to environmental workers, announcements of the "Charnobylski Shliakh" march, and a factual material from BDG marking the 40th anniversary. After 24 hours, on 17 April, seven materials appear, including direct responses to the brief. This is the densest day of independent publications until the pre-anniversary wave of 23 April. The launch of the state campaign is registered by independent newsrooms within twenty-four hours.
On 23 April, Belsat publishes a detailed deconstruction of the brief under the headline "'We managed on our own' and 'there are no risks': the new ideologists' brief on Chernobyl." The same day, the material is reprinted by udf.name. This is the first case recorded in our database in which an independent outlet does not comment on a state narrative, but directly names the brief, dissects its structure point by point, and describes the logic of the framework. The seven days between the launch and the public deconstruction of the state campaign represent a short turnaround, especially given that the EDI document itself has the status of an internal one, not intended for outside circulation.
The moment of registration and the moment of deconstruction stand at different distances from the brief's distribution: 24 hours and seven days respectively. To register the very fact of the launch, it is enough to see the abrupt appearance of a new topic in a synchronized network — this is the work of attention. To deconstruct the framework, one needs to dissect its structure, link the points into a logical chain, and describe the operations the framework performs on the topic — this is analytic work that takes time.
At the 16 April control point, the state media campaign solves the task of scaling: a single narrative, synchronously replicated across the network, secures the unity of the official position. The independent media campaign solves the task of engagement with audience demand: not the scaling of one message, but the coverage of different audience segments through different angles. These two tasks are not mutually exclusive, since they belong to different modes of logic.
The third control point is structured differently from the first two. 26 April is the calendar peak of both campaigns, an occasion neither chose: it is set by history. Silence here is impossible, and both mobilize their maximum resources. At this point, the structure of each campaign appears not in reactive form but in its own programmatic form, at full capacity. At point 1, a response to an external stimulus was observed; at point 2, the arrival and propagation of a governing impulse. In both cases, the work of the segments was manifested through their relation to a particular event. At point 3, the event is obligating but impersonal: the anniversary carries no informational task of its own, it merely demands appearance. Therefore, at point 3, each campaign is required to display its own program, not adjusted to anyone's occasion.
On this day, a second signal of the campaign's launch wave is registered in the corpus of pro-government Telegram channels: more than thirteen standard deviations from the usual background. In independent media, 38 materials from 14 sources are recorded — three to four times higher than any other day in the study period. The pre-anniversary wave of 23–25 April yields another 24 materials. In total, the four days around the anniversary account for 62 materials, more than half of all the substantive content analyzed across four months.
This concentration is not an even distribution of materials across days but a mass release of materials on a single day. The main reason for the concentration is shared by both campaigns: the anniversary date works as a natural synchronizer that does not require a directive document. Independently of one another, editorial teams in both state and independent media plan materials around the anniversary — this is a baseline effect of a memorial date, common to the entire media field.
In addition, for the state media campaign, concentration on the anniversary is a continuation of the brief's work of 16 April: the same synchronized pool of channels, the same EDI infrastructure, the same thematic framework, only in a more intensive mode. The TGStat signal shows that on 26 April the same synchronization is at work as ten days earlier.
For the independent media campaign, the specific factor is the prolongation of concentration in the days before and after the anniversary through the offline program of Ekodom: events held in 17 locations in 13 countries. Each such event generates media materials (reports on marches, reviews of exhibitions, citations of readings), and the peak of 23–25 April is in part a media echo of this offline program.
Point 26 April records the simultaneous mobilization of both segments on a shared occasion. The structure of each segment, previously displayed in fragments, is at this point unfolded at full size. The baseline orientation of the state segment, manifested in January as silence and in April as synchronization, on the anniversary appears as the full-scale replication of the six points of the brief. The baseline orientation of independent media, manifested in January as streaming information and in April as structural deconstruction, on the anniversary appears as simultaneous work in four different registers, distributed across different audiences. Neither orientation changes at the peak; both unfold.
The consolidated calendar of events published by Ekodom covers 17 locations in 13 countries. Coordination is provided by Ekodom; local structures in each city secure the venues. The program runs from 21 April to 8 May; its planning was carried out long before the launch of the state campaign on 16 April.
This infrastructure explains the second component of the concentration of independent publications on 23–26 April. Each event generates media materials: conferences produce reports, exhibitions yield reviews, marches turn into photo essays. The pre-anniversary peak is the media echo of the offline program. In the media corpus on which the principal analysis is based, this infrastructure is visible only in part — some events do not result in publications.
Source: ecohome.ngo/merapryemstvy-da-dnya-pamyatsi-charnobylskaj-avaryi-2026
The internal organization of the independent media campaign is derived from the publications by means of clustering by semantic similarity. In the materials of independent newsrooms, this clustering reveals four stable ways of writing about Chernobyl. The distribution of materials across these four groups remains stable when the number of clusters is varied from four to six, which confirms the robustness of the observation.
To understand what a register is, consider four materials published on a single day, 26 April 2026. Sviatlana Alexievich, in a long interview with Radyo Svaboda, recalls 26 April 1986 and her work on "Chernobyl Prayer." BDG publishes a piece, "Have ChNPP radionuclides decayed in Belarus?", with expert commentary and a data table. Nasha Niva runs a long article on the "Children of Chernobyl" Foundation, dismantled by Lukashenka, weaving the foundation's history together with the biography of the Hrushevy family. Zerkalo offers a photo report from the "Charnobylski Shliakh" march in Vilnius and Warsaw, with the slogan of the march, "For an Independent Nuclear-Free Belarus." All four are about the same event — the anniversary of Chernobyl. But they engage with the topic in fundamentally different ways: one through personal testimony, another through the comparison of figures, the third through political biography, the fourth through the coverage of public ritual.
Each of these four ways of writing we call a register. A register is a stable form of engaging with a topic: which function the text serves, which audience it addresses, which speech moves are accentuated. A register is not defined by the language of publication and is not assigned to a particular outlet: a single outlet may operate in several registers depending on the task of a given material, and the same topic may be presented in different registers by different authors. When we write that "the register accentuates such-and-such," we mean that in the materials clustered as that register, this accent is in fact present.
Language correlates with register but does not determine it. The affective register in our material is more often realized in Belarusian, the analytical more often in Russian; the political and ritual registers are present in both languages. This statistical regularity is irrelevant for the analysis of registers: an affective text in Russian, or an analytical one in Belarusian, does not cease to be a text of its register.
This is a form of writing about Chernobyl that accentuates witness testimony, personal memory, citation from the literary canon, and the registration of a sense of loss and continuing echo. Address in this register is to the audience's emotional memory, not to its need for information or analysis. The sources in which the register is most often present: Svaboda (13 materials), Belsat (11), Pozirk (9), Reform (5), Zelyony Portal (4), Gazetaby (3). The main peak fell on 26 April (16 materials), with pre-anniversary peaks on 23 and 29 April.
The central material of the register is Sviatlana Alexievich's interview with Radyo Svaboda on 22 April (archive of the recording). The Nobel laureate returns to 26 April 1986, to her work on "Chernobyl Prayer," to the discussion of the recent British-American series. This is a broad biographical interview in which Chernobyl appears not as an event but as an axial experience for Belarusian self-consciousness, still operating forty years on.
In parallel, on 26 April, a statement by the United Transitional Cabinet is published by Pozirk: "Chernobyl became a symbol of irresponsibility and betrayal, a symbol of threat." This is the institutional position of Belarusian political emigration in emotionally charged categories. The third key material is Pozirk's longread of 26 April, "Chernobyl as a fact and a continuing catastrophe."
Forty years on, its echo does not fade despite the efforts of Aliaksandr Lukashenka's regime. And Belarusians will live for a long time yet with the fear of radiation. Pozirk, 40th anniversary longread, 26 April 2026
What matters in this register is not information or argument but the emotional preservation of the topic as alive. There is no rebuttal here, only the position of a witness.
In this register, the material accentuates the comparison of figures, the deconstruction of state-media claims, the recourse to independent expertise, and the connection of historical catastrophe with current concerns (Russian nuclear weapons, the absence of scientific contacts with Ukraine). The audience is the reader who expects data and argument. Sources: Zelyony Portal (8 materials), Zerkalo (8), Reform (4), DW Belarus (3), BDG (2), Euroradio (2). The main peak fell on 26 April (nine materials), with strong peaks on 25 April (five) and 24 April (three).
The central material is a deconstruction of the brief published by Belsat on 23 April, "'We managed on our own' and 'there are no risks': the new ideologists' brief on Chernobyl" (reprinted by udf.name on the same day). Belsat reproduces the very logical chain of the brief that we reconstructed above and comments on it point by point. This is not a commentary or a publicistic outburst; it is structural deconstruction.
In parallel, BDG publishes factual materials: on 25 April, "What is known about radiation background in Belarus and contacts on ChNPP," and on 26 April, "Expert reports whether ChNPP radionuclides have decayed in Belarus." Here a methodological move is accentuated that is the opposite of the affective register: the materials present data on isotope decay along with the fact that there are no contacts with Ukrainian scientists on the subject. This is not a position; it is verification.
On 26 April, Reform publishes an article, "The United Transitional Cabinet calls for the withdrawal of Russian nuclear weapons from Belarus." This is a political document within the analytical register: the context of the ChNPP anniversary is used to move from historical catastrophe to a current question of nuclear dependence.
In this register, the connection of Chernobyl with the current political situation is accentuated: reports on the actions of the state or the opposition tied to Chernobyl; biographical stories (a foundation, a liquidator, a politician); the registration of the political context of the moment. The address is to the reader for whom Chernobyl is a "variable" in the current political situation. Statistically, Nasha Niva dominates this register (19 materials out of 28), but not exclusively: Zerkalo provides 4 materials, Pozirk 2, Reform 1. This is the only register in which the January flow is comparable to the April one: 11 materials in January, 17 in April. All other registers operate almost exclusively in April.
The themes of this register stitch Chernobyl into political context. On 7 April, Nasha Niva publishes "The government of Belarus has changed the status of Gomel-region lands." This is the very logic of "1,657 localities restored," but recorded in the genre of reporting nine days before the launch of the state campaign. On 26 April, a long article appears about the "Children of Chernobyl" Foundation, dismantled by Lukashenka, in which the political history of the foundation is interwoven with the biography of the Hrushevy family.
January materials in this register include the strike of 20 January (six of the ten materials published that day fell into this cluster) and the court ruling on the HBO/Ihnatenka case on 11 January. In this register, Chernobyl is treated not as a topic but as a continuous political plotline with its own biography: court cases, strikes, state decisions, opposition activity, personal histories.
In this register, the coverage of public ritual is accentuated: the "Charnobylski Shliakh" march, citation of the slogan, reports with participants, links to the offline program. The audience is participants or potential participants in public action. The peak fell on 26 April (8 materials), with a strong peak on 17 April (3). Sources: Reform (6 materials), Zerkalo (4), udf (2), Euroradio (2). All the materials are coverage of "Charnobylski Shliakh," the annual march of the democratic forces.
The central material is a Zerkalo report of 26 April on the marches in Vilnius and Warsaw, with the participation of representatives of Tikhanouskaya's office and Ales Bialiatski. The 2026 march slogan: "For an Independent Nuclear-Free Belarus." This formula is repeated by all sources in the register.
This register accentuates practice. "Charnobylski Shliakh" offers not text but action. On 26 April, different public events take place to mark the anniversary: a state ceremony in Minsk with the participation of a UN special representative and the marches from the Copernicus monument in Warsaw and from Sapieha Park in Vilnius. The independent media campaign covers both kinds of events, but in different registers.
The distribution of materials across four registers in the independent media campaign produces three effects.
First, the topic of Chernobyl is worked through in all temporal planes simultaneously. In materials of the affective register, work is with the past through personal testimony and with a continuing present through the formula of the "echo." In materials of the analytical register — with the present through data on isotope decay and through linkage with the current topic of nuclear weapons. In materials of the political register — with the continuous biography of the topic: court cases, strikes, state decisions on the Gomel lands. In materials of the ritual register — with the present as practice: march, slogan, action. No temporal plane is left unaddressed.
Next, different voices are heard across different registers. In the affective register, these are the voices of witnesses: Alexievich, Pozirk longread authors, the United Transitional Cabinet on behalf of political emigration. In the analytical — the voices of experts brought in by Belsat, BDG, DW Belarus. In the political — the voice of the editorial team, of Nasha Niva and Zerkalo, through the genre of reporting. In the ritual — the voices of march organizers and participants.
And finally, different registers address different audience segments. The affective addresses the reader for whom Chernobyl is personal or cultural memory. The analytical — the reader who expects data. The political — the reader for whom Chernobyl is a variable in the current political situation. The ritual — the participant or potential participant in public action. The total reach is achieved through the simultaneous operation of different registers for different audiences, not through the replication of a single message for all.
This section examines the function of the points within the logical chain of the framework: what each point rests on, what it justifies, what place it occupies in the narrative. The substantive analysis of specific April publications by state media falls outside the scope of the study: the state segment in April was analyzed only through infrastructural synchronization signals in the TGStat corpus. The framework is analyzed through the document that defines it. We register that the narrative is replicated across the network — through the +14.5σ signal on 16 April and +13σ on 26 April.
The function of this point in the overall framework is to establish the significance of all that follows in the narrative. The greater the scale of damage, the weightier what was done in response. The figure of 23 percent works as the reference point against which the achievements of points 2–5 are measured. Without it, the point about 1,657 restored localities would lack a commensurate scale, and the point about six state programs would lack a commensurate task. The figure is fixed as a fact of the past requiring registration, and this is what makes it a stable reference point.
The function of this point is to build the narrative around a single figure. The damage of the first point obtains in the second a single respondent: the restoration of lands and the implementation of state programs are attributed to the decisions of one person. The 1986 incident and the 2026 initiatives are connected in the second point by a single biographical line — not with the state as an institution, but with the figure.
The function of this point is the materialization of the result. If the first point sets the scale of the task, the second attributes leadership to one person, the third shows the solution in a countable form: 1,657 — a concrete number that can be pronounced, repeated, replicated. This is the most "report-like" of the points: a purely quantitative claim that turns overcoming into a countable result.
The preparation of this point is visible in January materials, three months before the launch of the campaign. On 21 January 2026, BelTA publishes "The achievements of the Gomel region were presented at an exhibition in the Council of the Republic," in which Chernobyl is mentioned within the framing of "the revival of affected districts." By 16 April, the logic of the third point does not appear for the first time — it is codified as a directive formulation from already existing administrative practice.
The function of this point is the institutionalization of overcoming. The third point gives a material result through a number; the fourth gives an institutional backdrop through a list of programs. Overcoming ceases to be a single act and becomes long-term systemic work.
The health of the population is presented as an observed, measured, and maintained-within-norms characteristic. The function of this point is to close the most unsettling component of the Chernobyl topic. The other points by themselves do not close the question of health. And the question of health is the principal source of public anxiety associated with radiation; without it, the framework would have an open, most disturbing part of the topic. The fifth point closes this gap with the assertion of control and the comparison with the European level. This is not work with the practical fears of the population but their displacement from the narrative — through translation into an object under observation.
Nuclear energy is presented not as a new challenge or a continuation of dependence, but as mature management of peaceful atom, made possible by accumulated experience. The function of this point is to move the topic from the logic of harm to the logic of development. Chernobyl appears not as an open trauma calling into question the very idea of nuclear energy, but as an overcome catastrophe after which the country has come to manage atom maturely and professionally. In the sixth point, the framing works in reverse: what in other narratives might be an argument against nuclear energy here becomes an argument in its favor. This is the final step of the entire chain — the conversion of catastrophe into the foundation for the next step in the same industry.
The framework manifests itself not only in the characteristics of individual points but also in their totality. Three operations described at the level of engagement with the topic (the shift of temporal focus, the redefinition of the type of facts, the narrative around a single figure) are joined by three properties of the framework when assembled.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Monological construction | The six points do not allow for internal disagreement and leave no room for qualifications: alternative positions on any of the points are absent from the narrative. This is not an assembly of partially compatible claims, but a single closed chain in which each successive point rests on the previous one and does not admit dispute. |
| Single mode of address | The six points have one audience — the national one — to which the unified official position is simultaneously delivered. Audience segmentation is not envisaged: the same narrative is broadcast to all without distinction. |
| Replication across the network | The framework does not stay in the EDI document; it is distributed through a synchronized pool of channels: the wave of 16 April produces +14.5σ from background, the anniversary of 26 April produces +13σ. The framework operates not as a text but as a replicated directive. |
In the state campaign, the framework of six points generates a single narrative, "Overcoming," which is broadcast through a synchronized network of channels. This is a story in which Chernobyl is an overcome catastrophe. The damage was enormous, but the leadership took responsibility, the lands have been restored, the programs implemented, health is under control, and nuclear energy has become not a source of threat but evidence of maturity. Each subsequent element of the story rests on the previous one, and the entire chain leads to a single conclusion: the problem is solved, the country has coped, the future is secured. The audience receives a story with a beginning (damage), a middle (overcoming), and a conclusion (BelNPP). Here there are no open questions, no continuing risks, no unresolved consequences. Everything that pertains to the present has been moved into the category of the controlled and the completed. The January 2026 nuclear incident does not fit into this story and therefore does not enter it.
"Overcoming" is broadcast not as one of the possible views on the topic but as the only position. The monological construction of the framework does not allow for diversity: the voices of scientists, doctors, liquidators, local administrations, and international organizations are not inscribed in the narrative. The address is single — the national audience to which the narrative is "delivered."
All six elements of the narrative chain are oriented either toward the past (damage, leadership, restoration, programs, health) or toward the future (BelNPP). The current present — continuing burdens, ongoing risks, unresolved questions — is not part of the narrative. The January 2026 nuclear incident, when a Russian strike on Ukrainian energy disconnected ChNPP from external power, could enter the narrative only if the construction allowed engagement with the current present. The construction does not allow this, and the incident remains outside the framework. The Belhydromet statement on the stable radiation situation is published without indicating the reason for the check; the present is present as the result of measurement, but the actual situation in which the measurement is being made has been removed from it.
A register is a modality of writing about a topic. When several authors in several newsrooms write consistently in one modality, a recognizable story takes shape from their texts — a narrative. In the independent media campaign, four narratives emerge from four registers.
This narrative emerges from the materials of the affective register (47 materials, 39% of the sample; Svaboda, Belsat, Pozirk, Reform, Zelyony Portal). Its central texts: Sviatlana Alexievich's interview with Radyo Svaboda on 22 April, the United Transitional Cabinet's statement of 26 April, Pozirk's longread "Chernobyl as a fact and a continuing catastrophe."
The story is that the catastrophe has not been overcome; it continues as experience. Chernobyl here is not an event of 1986 but an experience axial to Belarusian self-consciousness, still working forty years on. Alexievich returns to 26 April 1986 and to her work on "Chernobyl Prayer." The United Transitional Cabinet speaks of Chernobyl as "a symbol of irresponsibility and betrayal." The Pozirk formula, "the echo does not fade," expresses the essence: the problem is not closed and cannot be closed by declaration; it exists as living experience for as long as witnesses live and the literary canon continues to operate. "Belarusians will live for a long time yet with the fear of radiation" is not an analytic statement but an emotional formula of the topic's continuing presence in the audience's life. "Echo" preserves the topic of Chernobyl as emotionally significant for an audience that might otherwise relegate it to the past.
This narrative is formed by the publications of the analytical register (30 materials, 25% of the sample; Zelyony Portal, Zerkalo, Reform, DW Belarus, BDG, Euroradio). Its central texts: Belsat's deconstruction of the brief on 23 April, BDG materials on radionuclide decay (62–64%) and on the absence of scientific contacts between Belarusian and Ukrainian scholars on the ChNPP topic, the Reform piece on the United Transitional Cabinet's call for the withdrawal of Russian nuclear weapons from Belarus.
The story: official claims about Chernobyl are subject to factual verification, and verification reveals discrepancies. Radionuclides have decayed by 62–64%, not disappeared. There are no scientific contacts on ChNPP between the two countries. The EDI brief is not an expert document but a directive framework, and its structure can be dissected point by point. Belsat's material of 23 April is the key text for this narrative. An independent outlet for the first time directly names the document a brief and dissects its logic: between official claims and the factual situation there is a gap, and the gap can be shown through data. This is the only narrative of the four that directly responds to the substantive operation of the brief.
This narrative emerges from the materials of the political register (28 materials, 23% of the sample; Nasha Niva — 19 materials, Zerkalo — 4, Pozirk — 2, Reform — 1). Its central texts: Nasha Niva's report of 7 April, "The government of Belarus has changed the status of Gomel-region lands," and the 26 April piece on the "Children of Chernobyl" Foundation, dismantled by Lukashenka.
This is the story of Chernobyl as a continuous plotline in the political history of Belarus. Court cases (the HBO/Ihnatenka case in January), strikes (20 January), state decisions on lands (7 April), the dismantling of relief funds, the loss of benefits for the children of Chernobyl-affected families — all these are elements of one continuing political story in which Chernobyl intersects with the current situation. Here the January flow is comparable to the April one (11 materials in January, 17 in April), because the political biography of the topic is not tied to the anniversary date. Nasha Niva's piece of 7 April is an example of how this narrative records the logic of state practice before "Overcoming" turns it into a narrative.
The narrative is built from materials of the ritual register (16 materials, 13% of the sample; Reform, Zerkalo, udf, Euroradio). Its central texts: Zerkalo's report of 26 April on the marches in Vilnius and Warsaw with the participation of representatives of Tikhanouskaya's office and Ales Bialiatski; Reform's reports on announcements of the "Charnobylski Shliakh" march and on its results.
"Action" tells a story in which the topic of Chernobyl requires not only words but also a public response. The "Charnobylski Shliakh" march is not a commentary on the topic but an answer to it. The 2026 slogan, "For an Independent Nuclear-Free Belarus," is a formula uttered by people walking together. On 26 April, different public events take place: a state ceremony in Minsk with the participation of a UN special representative, and the marches from the Copernicus monument in Warsaw and from Sapieha Park in Vilnius. "Action" mobilizes the diaspora through the public practice of memory and connects the independent media campaign with Ekodom's offline program. The political demand for nuclear-free status is articulated here through ritual.
Previous sections described the structure of each campaign (registers and framework), the thematic content of each, and the stories that take shape from this content for the audience (narratives). This section compares the narratives identified above. Thematic overlap does not yet mean that narratives meet. Two campaigns may work with the same topic while telling opposing stories about it. They may work with different topics, ignoring each other. They may directly address the content of the other side, or "pass each other by."
The single point at which all five narratives are simultaneously present is the topic of BelNPP. The sixth point of the state campaign enters the agenda of three of the four registers and is mentioned in the fourth. No other topic produces such density of overlap. "Overcoming" makes BelNPP the natural conclusion of a line moving from harm to mature management of peaceful atom — the final step of the chain in which catastrophe is converted into the foundation for development. "Verification" calls into question the foundations of this conclusion through data and expertise. "Political Biography" embeds BelNPP into the history of nuclear dependence on Russia, including the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. "Action" articulates the demand for nuclear-free status through the slogan of the march, "For an Independent Nuclear-Free Belarus" — not as an argument but as a collective public utterance. "Echo" places the topic of atom in the emotional categories of irresponsibility and threat through the formula "atom in the hands of an authoritarian regime."
Thematic overlap here is at its maximum, divergence of position likewise. Five stories look at one object and see different things in it. The state narrative places BelNPP in the position of a concluding inference; the four independent narratives turn it into the organizing focus of reflection and critique. This is narrative competition in its pure form: the coexistence of stories, each offering its own picture of the world.
A counter-narrative is a holistic story constructed as a direct response to another, as its replacement. There is no such counter-narrative on Chernobyl in the Belarusian media field.
"Overcoming" is a self-sufficient story, broadcast regardless of what independent media say. The framework of the brief contains no polemic with alternative positions, mentions no independent sources, and does not respond to the Belsat deconstruction. The narrative is built not as a reply to another's story but as the only story, not allowing for the existence of another. This can be read in two ways. Either the state campaign does not regard independent media as a meaningful interlocutor. Or, no less plausibly, it deliberately does not acknowledge the existence of an alternative story, because the very acknowledgment would legitimize it. To mention in the brief that there is something to verify or something to grieve over would be to admit that the topic is not closed. A monological construction is stronger when it is alone in the room. Silence in this case is not the absence of a reply but a way of not creating space for dialogue.
The four narratives of independent media are not a counter-narrative either. Each of them is an autonomous voice with its own audience. "Verification" deconstructs "Overcoming" but does not propose an alternative story of overcoming. "Political Biography" registers the divergence of practice from declarations but does not propose an alternative program. "Echo" and "Action" operate in the coordinates of experience and participation, outside the logic of overcoming altogether. A counter-narrative would be one more voice — a single alternative story constructed as a response to "Overcoming." There is no such voice in the media field, and the issue is not the absence of coordination among newsrooms: a counter-narrative could be built by a single newsroom. But for an alternative story of overcoming, independent media need conditions that are absent in the media field on this topic.
Alternative data are needed (real health statistics, real reports on programs, the real state of restored lands), and independent media have no access to departmental reporting.
A subject of the alternative story is needed, the agent on whose behalf it is told. There is agency in the Belarusian democratic field: the United Transitional Cabinet issues statements, Ekodom coordinates the offline program in 13 countries, newsrooms make decisions, people walk in marches. But this is distributed agency with different scales and audiences. A counter-narrative under conditions of distributed agency presupposes a particular unifying modality. A counter-narrative under conditions of distributed agency is a poorly developed practice — not only in the Belarusian case. In the wider field of media in exile and in the diaspora, examples of successful counter-narrative are few. Theoretically, such a counter-narrative could grow from a common formula (as in the slogan of the march), from a programmatic document (as in the United Transitional Cabinet's statement, but in an analytical rather than affective modality), or from the initiative of a single newsroom (as in Belsat's deconstruction, but with the proposal of an alternative story rather than only the deconstruction of another). Each of these paths requires resources that the current media field does not possess.
Beyond the point of competition (BelNPP) and beyond the question of a counter-narrative, each of the four independent narratives relates to "Overcoming" in its own way. Three types of relation can be distinguished in the material.
"Verification" addresses the content of "Overcoming" directly. Belsat's material of 23 April is the point at which one narrative meets another: the framework of the state campaign is named a brief, its structure is dissected point by point, its claims are juxtaposed with data. This is not a commentary or a publicistic outburst; it is a structural deconstruction, a mirror operation in relation to the substantive operation of the brief itself. The seven days between the distribution of the brief (16 April) and the publication of the deconstruction (23 April) are a short turnaround, especially given that the EDI document has the status of an internal one. At the same time, the address remains one-sided: "Verification" deconstructs "Overcoming," but "Overcoming" does not respond to the deconstruction. The framework provides no place for dialogue with an external voice.
"Political Biography" does not address "Overcoming" itself but the practice from which "Overcoming" later grows. Nasha Niva's material of 7 April on the change of status of Gomel-region lands shows the mechanism that the brief codifies as an achievement nine days later: the state, by decree, changes the status of previously radiation-hazardous lands. "Political Biography" records the logic of state practice before "Overcoming" turns it into a narrative. This is not a response to a story but the registration of the action that precedes the story.
"Echo" and "Action" do not address "Overcoming" at all. They operate in different coordinates: "Echo" maintains an emotional connection with the topic through testimony and the literary canon; "Action" mobilizes participation through public practice. "Overcoming" does not enter their space: in its picture of the world, the catastrophe has been overcome (there is nothing to grieve), and the public practice of memory in the diaspora is institutionally and territorially beyond its reach. Emotional memory and street action are levels for which the framework of the work has not made provision.
"Overcoming" works with state assistance programs and population health as evidence of competence. Points 4 and 5 are the area of weakest presence in the agenda of independent media.
None of the four independent narratives builds its own story on these topics. "Verification" approaches the topic of health from a different angle — through the absence of scientific contacts between Belarusian and Ukrainian scholars. "Political Biography" approaches the topic of assistance as a mirror — through the dismantling of independent foundations: the state campaign claims its own assistance programs, while independent media record the suppression of independent assistance by the state. But there is no systematic alternative story on these topics.
The reason is structural. Systematic engagement with the topics of state programs and health requires access to departmental reporting and medical statistics. The state apparatus has this access; independent media operating from emigration do not. One can gather expert opinions, personal testimonies, data on isotope decay; one cannot obtain regular Ministry of Health data or departmental reports on program implementation. On these topics, "Overcoming" is left without an alternative picture not because independent newsrooms decline the work, but because they structurally lack the instrument.
The limitations of both sides are not accidental and not specific to the topic of Chernobyl. Monological character, single mode of address, replication through a synchronized network, bypassing the present — these are properties of the political-logic mode as such: any other topic processed through the EDI would yield the same framework properties. Distribution across modalities, different voices, different addresses, the absence of a counter-narrative — these are properties of the media-logic mode: independent newsrooms work this way with any topic. The parallel existence of the five Chernobyl narratives is a manifestation of the structural difference between authoritarian and democratic media. Material from four months shows precisely how this difference is manifested in engagement with a specific topic under control conditions.
Within the study period, five distinguishable narratives took shape in the Belarusian media field on the topic of Chernobyl. One — in state media: "Overcoming," a closed story in which Chernobyl has been overcome and BelNPP is presented as the natural outcome of that story. Four — in independent media: "Echo," in which the catastrophe is grasped as continuing experience; "Verification," at the center of which is the gap between official claims and data; "Political Biography," in which Chernobyl is treated as a continuous plotline in the political history of Belarus; and "Action," in which the response to Chernobyl is expressed through march, slogan, and participation. Together these five stories form an asymmetric field: on one side stands a closed story with a single mode of address; on the other, four open narratives addressing different audiences and operating in different registers.
The baseline orientations of both sides remained constant across all three control points. In state media this manifested itself as silence on the current incident in January, the synchronous transmission of a single narrative in April, and the full-scale replication of that framework on the anniversary. In independent media — as streaming information with recourse to external sources in January, the registration of the launch of the state campaign and the deconstruction of its framework in April, and then simultaneous work in four registers on the anniversary. None of these orientations changed over the four months; both unfolded gradually and gained scale from one point to the next.
This stability allows the comparison of the five narratives to be treated not as a set of separate observations but as a manifestation of a deeper structural difference between authoritarian and democratic media. This difference is connected not only to editorial decisions or to the quality of journalism. It is in the first instance determined by the different logics in which the two sides operate. The four-month material shows how this difference manifests itself in engagement with a specific topic: which stories take shape from publications, how they are circulated, where they compete, where they exist in parallel, and what actions each of them makes possible.
The five Chernobyl narratives exist in parallel: the state campaign does not engage in polemic with independent media, and independent media, although they register the launch of the state campaign and deconstruct its framework, do not produce a unified response. "Overcoming" is constructed as a self-sufficient story. It does not require an external interlocutor and does not envisage an alternative position. The four narratives of independent media are organized differently: they do not reduce to a single line, do not close into a unified version of Chernobyl, and address different audiences. Therefore, between the five narratives there arises not direct competition for a single meaning but the parallel existence of different ways of speaking about Chernobyl.
The gap in engagement with the present is visible at two points of the analysis. The first — 20 January, when state media bypass the current nuclear incident and publish the Belhydromet statement without indicating the reason for the check. The second — 16 April, when the framework of the brief is built along the past–future axis and effectively bypasses the present. The comparison of narratives confirms this observation. "Overcoming" structurally does not allow engagement with the actual present. The four narratives of independent media engage with the present in part: through data, through practice, through connection with the current context. Yet a clear interpretation of the January incident is not articulated in them either. The present therefore remains the most weakly developed semantic axis of the Belarusian media field on Chernobyl, both for state media and for independent media.
The two campaigns rely on different resources, and this determines the tasks each can solve. The state campaign has infrastructural resources: a synchronized network of channels, access to departmental reporting and medical statistics, physical presence on the territory, the central ceremony in Minsk with the potential participation of a UN special representative. The independent media campaign has editorial resources: experience in deconstructing state narratives, links with diaspora offline infrastructure in 17 locations across 13 countries, the capacity to operate simultaneously in several registers and with different audiences. These resources belong to different types of media, address different tasks, and do not compete directly. It is precisely this asymmetry that explains why state assistance programs and the topic of population health remain weak points in the agenda of independent media: working with them requires access to departmental data, which independent newsrooms structurally lack.
There is no holistic counter-narrative on Chernobyl in the Belarusian media field, on either side. "Overcoming" is a self-sufficient story. It does not envisage the existence of another position: its framework contains no polemic with alternative interpretations and no place for an external voice. The four narratives of independent media are four autonomous voices, each with its own audience and task. "Verification" deconstructs "Overcoming." "Political Biography" records state practice before its codification into narrative. "Echo" and "Action" operate in the coordinates of experience and participation. But none of these narratives — and not even their totality — forms an alternative holistic story.
A counter-narrative would be one more, separate voice. For its emergence, conditions are required that the media field does not currently possess: alternative data, including access to departmental reporting; a single subject of the alternative story, whereas the Belarusian democratic field remains distributed; a programmatic modality, whereas the four existing modalities do not produce closed stories with a final inference. A counter-narrative under conditions of distributed agency remains a poorly developed practice — not only in the Belarusian case but in the wider field of media in exile.
Several questions remain outside the study; answering them would require different methods and different data. First, the influence of the five narratives on public opinion. Such analysis would require audience data: surveys, reach measurements, perception tracking. Second, the substantive analysis of April publications by state media. In this study, the April state campaign was examined only through infrastructural synchronization signals. Third, the comparative context: how the Belarusian case relates to other instances of media in exile. In this text it is only sketched in the sidebar and would require a separate comparative study.
Belarusian independent media work in emigration is a particular case within the broader research field of exile media and diaspora media studies. Several international cases have at different times become the subject of systematic study as comparable cases.
Studied as an example of independent newsrooms operating without access to the territory of their country and amid the parallel existence of official state communication. Part of the research literature on this period engages topics close to ours: the resilience of distributed editorial practice without a single center, the ways of working with memory and history in emigrant publications.
After 1979 — an example of long-term media existence in emigration that has spanned several generations. Studies of this case raise questions about the change of editorial strategies over time and the connection between the diasporic media field and the offline infrastructure of émigré communities.
Including the work of organizations such as Bellingcat in its Syria-related investigations, studied as an example of distributed verification work in the absence of access to territory. A separate research interest concerns how such work relates to traditional journalistic production and how it changes the requirements placed on sources.
El Faro in El Salvador, Confidencial in Nicaragua, and others — examples of newsrooms operating under pressure and partial emigration, with a sustained practice of long-form analytical writing and their own expert infrastructure.
These cases do not offer ready-made models for the Belarusian situation and are not directly compared with it in our work. They indicate the kind of research context in which the Belarusian case may subsequently be examined. In-depth comparative analysis would require a separate study using the methods of comparative media sociology and drawing on field data about editorial practices that we do not have at our disposal in this work.
The analytical base of the study is the FactCheck.LT FORESIGHT corpus — a collection of media materials from 18 Belarusian sources: state, pro-government, and independent. At the time of the study, the corpus contains over 1.1 million documents and is updated daily through the automated collection of web and Telegram publications. For this work, the independent segment of the corpus (14 sources) and the state segment at the reference points of January and April were used.
The initial search using four Chernobyl-related markers in the texts of independent sources for the study period (1 January – 30 April 2026) produced 1,590 matches. Many of these matches are technical and do not reflect the content of the publication. For instance, the Nasha Niva website carries a "related publications" widget; if even one of the headlines in this widget mentions Chernobyl, any article on that page is counted as a "Chernobyl mention" regardless of its topic. In addition, for one source (Belsat), the "publication date" field in our database contains the date of the last crawler pass, not the actual date of the material's release, which yields a systematic dating error.
A double cleaning was applied. First, by mention density and the position of the first mention: a material is counted if the text contains at least three markers and the first marker appears no later than 500 characters from the beginning. This filters out rare incidental mentions through widgets and mentions through navigation menus. Second, by actual publication dates, restored through interpolation of identifiers in URLs for sources with sequential identifiers and through manual verification for sources with "slug" URLs.
As a result of the cleaning, 121 materials from 14 independent newsrooms entered the analytical sample. The retention rate is uneven across sources: outlets with clean page structure (Zerkalo, Reform) retain 25–31% of matches; outlets with rich navigation (Nasha Niva, Pozirk) retain 2.8–3.5%. This reflects structural features of the source web pages and the quality of separating main content from navigation in their content management systems.
State media were analyzed in two modes. At control point 20 January — substantively, through the same cleaning procedure. The initial search produced 213 matches in the 19–23 January window for the sources SB, BelTA, STV, ONT and the corresponding YouTube channels; after cleaning, 4 substantive materials remained.
At control points 16 April and 26 April — through synchronization signals in the TGStat corpus: sharp surges in Chernobyl-related vocabulary in the synchronized pool of pro-government Telegram channels, registered as statistical outliers. Z-scores: +14.5σ for 16 April and +13σ for 26 April from background. This is an instrument that works not with the content of individual publications but with their aggregate distribution over time.
The internal structure of the independent media campaign is derived from the materials themselves through clustering by semantic similarity. Technically, this is a procedure in which each material is represented as a point in a multidimensional space (vector representation via text-embedding-3-small), normalized, after which the set of points is divided into stable subgroups using K-means. The number of clusters is selected automatically through a measure of separability (silhouette score). For numbers of clusters from 3 to 8, the best score is obtained at four clusters (value of 0.187). This is acceptable separability for thematic material of medium connectivity. The distribution of materials across these four groups remains stable when the number of clusters is varied from four to six, which confirms the robustness of the observation.
The six points of the EDI brief of 16 April 2026 are reconstructed from the archived document. The document is available in archived copy (FactCheck.LT FORESIGHT MAS). The analysis of the functions of the points within the framework's logical chain (Subsection 2.2) and of the operations the framework performs on the topic (Subsection 1.2) draws on the document itself and on its structure.
The material does not include social networks (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X). The analysis of Telegram is limited to those independent channels present in FORESIGHT. The YouTube segment is not included in this work. The state segment in April was analyzed only through infrastructural synchronization signals, not through substantive analysis of publications. The marking of cells in the thematic map is subjective and may be revised. The time zone for web sources is set approximately (CET, CEST, or UTC+3 depending on the source's system, with a margin of ±2 hours); this is not critical for daily peaks and trends but requires additional verification for intervals shorter than a day.