«Coronavirus_info» pro bono community project in Viber and Telegram

At the very beginning of the quarantine, in order to avoid information panic and timely inform Ukrainians about the epidemiological situation, the Institute of Cognitive Modeling created a «Coronavirus_info» pro bono project.

The communities of the same name in Viber and Telegram have become the only verified by the Ministry of health of Ukraine and credible information sources regarding the coronavirus situation in Ukraine.

> 3 500 000 subscribers

In 3 days, the community became the largest in Ukraine and in the midst of the lockdown had more participants than the top-5 Viber communities of Ukraine together

> 870 000 subscribers

In the midst of a lockdown, the channel was the first most popular and second most cited among government communication channels
It had 6.7 times more subscribers than all the government Telegram channels together

The main project goal was to create trustworthy information platforms about the spread of COVID-19 for Ukrainians.

Project data:

7 people were in charge of «Coronavirus_info» communities
At the peak of the lockdown the community numbered about 4.5 million subscribers, exceeding niche TV channels
Depending on the period and the general epidemiological situation, there was 10-15% fluctuation of the audience’s attention to the resource
One day publication coverage reached 2.9 million users in average, at the peak of the lockdown it was 497,000
«Coronavirus_info» was among top 10 resources most commonly read by Ukrainians
Thanks to fast and transparent communication with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the assistance of mobile operators, it was possible to cover even a larger amount of Ukrainian audience. So, about 32 million SMS-messages were sent before Easter

The campaign to counteract coronavirus infection «Coronavirus_info» was shortlisted for the international European Excellence Awards 2020 in two categories: «Issues & Reputation Management (Covid-19)» and «Multi-Channel Communications».

Content of the Channel

Alongside, the team created a network of satellite channels. Psychological Support Channel advised on how to maintain mental health and cope with anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. Corona Kyiv channel covered the life of the Ukrainian capital during the pandemic. Coronavirus in numbers channel gave important data from all around the world during the coronavirus period. The Viral Stories channel provided the readers with the real stories of how people deal with COVID-19. Expert Doctors Channel advised and destroyed health myths during the Covid-19 pandemic.