Article
Article name The War of Narratives in Ukrainian Media Practices (the Case of Observing the Calendar of Holidays)
Authors Degtyareva O.V. Candidate of Political Science, Associate Professor, olgaspb2008@mail.ru
Bibliographic description Degtyareva O. V. The War of Narratives in Ukrainian Media Practices (the Case of Observing the Calendar of Holidays) // Humanitarian Vector. 2023. Vol. 18, no. 4. P. 144–154. DOI: 10.21209/1996-7853-2023-18-4-144- 154.
Section AXIOLOGY OF MASS MEDIA
UDK 81,42 81’22 141.319.8 070
DOI 10.21209/1996-7853-2023-18-4-144-154
Article type Original article
Annotation Media practices contributed to the formation of an inclusive community that brought together Ukrainian and Russian culture, but did not take into account ethnic feelings and traditions. Through the mass media, political forces were the source of the formation of ideological attitudes of citizens and ideas about socio-cultural normality, different from the policy of memory of the USSR. The traditional division of the Ukrainian media has become“own” and “alien”. As a result, a community was formed based not on a common Soviet past for Russians and Ukrainians, but on a common present for Eastern and Western Ukrainians. Thus, in the Ukrainian official discourse appeared a narrative about “Russia’s intervention in the problem of civil reconciliation of Ukrainians”, which led to a radical departure from the Soviet-inherited assessment of Ukrainian history in the light of the thesis on the unity of two peoples. Like other ideological differences in society, attitudes to past events became the subject of public debate. Thus, the mass media became the main source of historical knowledge for Ukrainian citizens, attracted attention to many topics and, at the same time, popularized certain episodes and corresponding values and identities to the detriment of others. They are the subject of this study. We managed to conduct content analysis of a number of ideologically polar Ukrainian media (Ukrainian-centric “Ukraine is young”, “Newspaper in Ukrainian” and pro-Russian “Segodnya”, “Fakny I kommentarii”) and to trace what media tools were used by them for media retrieval of the most significant historical dates, events and persons who had a key impact on the formation of identity of “their” and “foreign” audience. The analysis of media practice revealed two main contradictions, on the one hand, between secular and religious holidays and, on the other hand, between Soviet and nationalist narratives of history. We conducted the sociological survey among the students of the RANEPA and Kherson State Pedagogical University which demonstrated the socio-cultural impact of these media discourses. It turned out that one of the most important ways of media influence on the formation of the historical memory of the audience was observance of holidays and commemorative days, which establish a hierarchy of importance. This allocation is the main component of the media contribution to the calendar, which accompanies the activities of society as a holistic system, while maintaining the legitimacy of established taxonomies.
Key words media discourse, historical memory studies, calendar, memorable dates, soviet narrative, Ukraine, media practices
Article information
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