The topic of corruption is somewhat complex and painful for Ukrainian society. On the one hand, there is an attitude that "all topics are unimportant now, except for winning the war, and once we win, we will deal with everything", while on the other hand, the traditional Ukrainian tolerance competes with the opposite concept of zero tolerance for corruption, especially in times of war.
Given the context, in order to conduct such a study to the highest possible quality, we will have to overcome a number of barriers in the target groups. For this purpose, we propose a combined approach that combines strategic modelling technologies with media technologies.
The general line of the research is making a documentary about ways to overcome corruption in Ukraine after the war. This approach will allow us to gain access to public politicians.
Part of this filming process will be interviews with public politicians, and another part will be the filming of the simulation, which will be described below. The film will also include a part of the results of a sociological survey that will take place after the simulation.
The modelling will also have a hybrid format, a combination of SWreality's strategic modelling methodology and focus group research methodology.
Act 1: speeches are given by representatives of the target groups (2 politicians, 2 businessmen, 2 civic leaders) on the fight against corruption after the war. The audience, divided into the roles of the stakeholder groups, has to evaluate these speeches. After that, they are told that one of the speakers in each pair is a corrupt official and asked to make a guess which one it is - this is how we provoke a discussion, where we identify markers of corrupt officials for stakeholder groups, attitudes of different groups towards corruption and expectations about the degree of corruption among the target groups.
Act 2: we reveal who among the speakers "was actually a corrupt official" and 3 "corrupt officials" prepare new speeches - where they admit guilt and express regret for their previous corrupt activities. This is followed by a discussion: who did the different stakeholder groups believe, who did not, and why? What scenario of "Amnesty in Exchange for Guilty Plea" do they think is fair?
Act 3: now the "players" are representatives of the stakeholder groups, those who were previously the audience. A representative of each group has to speak and urge corrupt officials to plead guilty. And our 3 "corrupt officials" are now listeners, they listen to the speeches and give feedback - whose speech and which arguments for pleading guilty they find effective and which are not. General discussion after evaluating the speeches and arguments. The data collected from the simulations and interviews are analyzed and used to report on the economic and political aspects of the perception of the idea of "Guilty Plea", as well as to develop and refine the questions of the quantitative research.
The simulation and interviews are used to create a documentary film, which will be the centrepiece of the presentation and will allow journalists, politicians and public figures present at the presentation to discuss the idea of "Guilty Plea" in depth.