Ukraine's Post-Communist Mass Media

Ryabinska Natalya Ryabinska

Description

Natalya Ryabinska calls into question the commonly held opinion that the problems with media reform and press freedom in former Soviet states merely stem from the cultural heritage of their communist (and pre-communist) past. Focusing on Ukraine, she argues that, in the period after the fall of communism, peculiar new obstacles to media independence have arisen. They include the telltale structure of media ownership, with news reporting being concentrated in the hands of politically engaged business tycoons, the fuzzy and contradictory legislation of the media realm, and the informal institutions of political interference in mass media. The book analyzes interrelationships between politics, the economy, and media in Ukraine, especially their shadowy sides guided by private interests and informal institutions. Being embedded in comparative politics and post-communist media studies, it helps to understand the nature and workings of the Ukrainian media system situated in-between democracy and authoritarianism. It offers insights into the inner logic of Ukraine's political system and institutional arrangement in the post-Soviet period. Based on empirical data of 1994-2013, this study also highlights many of the barriers to democratic reforms that have been persisting in Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity of 2013-2014.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Ucrania
• 21st century
• Sociology
• 20th century
• Media studies
• Ukraine

Informations

• Publié par: ibidem
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9783838270111
• Langue: English

Extrait

ibidem Press, Stuttgart
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Chapter 1Media and politics in the ‘gray zone’ between democracy and authoritarianism: an interdisciplinary approach
1.1. If not ‘transition’ then what? State capture and formation of a disabling environment for democratization
1.1.1. State capture
1.1.2. Bad habits from the past?
1.1.3. Informal institutions
1.1.4. Informal institutions and state building in transitional societies
1.2 The case of Ukraine
1.2.1. Ukraine’s oligarchic system
1.2.2. The role of informal rules
1.2.3. A trajectory of institutional change in Ukraine in 1994–2013
1.2.4. Institutional void, flawed formal rules, and the supremacy of informal institutions
Chapter 2Media capture in post-communist Ukraine
2.1. Media capture in Ukraine: actors, methods, and effects
2.1.1. Who are the captors of private media in Ukraine?
2.1.2. How does media capture affect Ukrainian media content?
2.1.3. What methods do media captors use?
2.2. Disabling environment: media regulators and media law
2.2.1. Regulatory and monitoring bodies
2.2.2. Media-related laws
Chapter 3The media market and ownership, and economic dimension of media capture in Ukraine
3.1. The Ukrainian media market
3.1.1. Size and wealth
3.1.2. Dependence on political advertising
3.1.3. Unfinished privatization
3.1.4. Foreign investments
3.1.5. The Russian factor
3.2. The dark side of media privatizationand commercialization in Ukraine
3.2.1. Oligarchic media ownership
3.2.2. Concentration of media ownershipand its nature in Ukraine
3.2.3. Implications of oligarchic media ownership
3.2.4. Market-driven tabloidization or ‘political yellowing’?
Conclusion: New obstacles to media reform in post-communist Ukraine
Bibliography
Foreword
Twenty five years after Ukraine became independent, there were still very few scholarly studies about contemporary Ukraine ’ s mass media. This book is a welcome contribution to the field. Thoroughly researched, Ryabinska provides the reader with an account of what has been happening in Ukraine ’ s media landscape, and a convincing explanation why the country continues to face challenges in this sphere and remains described as ‘ partly free ’ by international organizations.
She draws on the theoretical literature of comparative politics and regime change studies and presents an original argument. This discussion seems important for post-communist media research since the role of cultural legacies in media transformations is often overestimated there at the expense of analysis of structural obstacles to democratization which could arise or be purposely maintained in some post-communist countries in the period after the fall of communism, which (nota bene) has lasted about 25 years already. Her explanation is that Ukraine ’ s media has been captured by political and commercial forces as part of the larger process of state capture that continues to plague the country.
One of the key structural issues is ownership. Scholars have long argued that who owns the media matters (Bagdikian, Herman and Chomsky, McChesney, Schiller) since this determines editorial policy, and, to a large degree, content. Corporate media owners rarely have the public interest as their main goal, and this is also true in Ukraine. However, in Ukraine media ownership patterns have suffered from non-transparency, and Ukraine ’ s corporate media owners have many other businesses that are their main sources of profit. Researching and documenting the holdings these large corporate actors (who are sometimes referred to as oligarchs) is challenging, though not impossible. Ryabinska did this by drawing on available sources, previous publications (Dovzhenko, Dutsyk, Dyczok, Ligach o va), and expert interviews, which she used to trace the patterns of media ownership in Ukraine, and describe how this continues to pose an obstacle to the goal of freedom of speech. Furthermore, she places Ukraine in the broader, comparative context of other countries which had experienced communism.
In my own work (2014) I demonstrated how in numerous ways Ukraine ’ s media system is following global trends as it faces the same challenges as other countries do: a rapidly changing international environment, a globalized economy, as well as cultural and media convergence patterns. Ryabinska shifts the focus and argues that the trajectories of post-communist state- and institution- building do have relevance in Ukraine, and other east European states, and they largely affect as the media systems themselves, and their responses to various challenges.
Both approaches highlight the need for a comprehensive, comparative perspective for media analysis, since neither countries nor their media systems exist in vacuums, separate from political, economic, social, and international forces. Ryabinska ’ s study provides a detailed examination of all of these factors. An important feature of her analysis is that she does not view the state as a unitary actor, but explores the different dimensions and interplay between formal and informal institutions and practices. How a sophisticated array of legislation protecting media freedom and journalists ’ rights has not safeguarded either, since laws are selectively enforced, and often used as a punitive tool rather than how they were intended. How media ownership is integrally connected to political and other economic interests, and the implications of this. An innovative way of examining the classic tension between structure and agency.
Marta Dyczok, August 2016
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to my host institution, Collegium Civitas, for supporting my research in its final stage. I also gratefully acknowledge the role of the Central European University in Budapest in the rise and development of the ideas herein presented. It was the post-graduate course Ukrainian media change in Central-Eastern European Perspective , which I developed in the framework of its Curriculum Resource Center grant, that gave initial impetus to this research. Of particular value was the access to the Central European University library provided to me within this grant and other projects.
I also wish to express my gratitude to Ihor Balynskyi, Otar Dovzhenko, Diana Dutsyk, Zurab Alasania, Vahtang Kipiani, Ihor Roskladai, Victoria Siumar, and many other Ukrainian media scholars, journalists, and critics whose knowledge of the Ukrainian media system — as well as expertise on its formal and informal regulation — were highly helpful and stimulating for my research.
Several people read all or part of the manuscript version of this book and offered significant criticisms and suggestions. I am especially thankful to Volodymyr Kulyk, Marta Dyczok, and Serhiy Kudelia, whose valuable comments did much to make this book better. I am also grateful to participants of the Conference “ ‘ Braking ʼ News: Censorship, Media and Ukraine” at Harriman Institute, Columbia University in 2013, the Central and East European Communication and Media Conferences in 2013, 2014, and 2015 — as well as other academic symposia where I presented portions of this study. I would especially like to note a thoughtful discussion at Danyliw Annual Research Seminar in contemporary Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa in 2012, and express thanks to Dominique Arel, Paul D’Anieri, and Alexandra Hrycak who read my paper and made many valuable comments. Of course, all responsibility for any remaining shortcomings and errors is mine alone.
For permission to reproduce a caricature by Maryna Turovska on the cover of this book I am thankful to the Chief Editor of the Ukrainian Week magazine, Dmytro Krapyvenko.
I am also deeply thankful to Philip Earl Steele for proofreading the book.
Natalya Ryabinska , October 2016
Introduction
This book is an attempt to contribute to the analysis of the reasons behind the slow progress of media democratization in the democratic ‘ laggards ’ of post-communist Europe and Eurasia by focusing on the case of Ukraine. [1] Since 1989, some former communist countries (outside of the Soviet Union) have demonstrated remarkable success in achieving a degree of freedom in their media. Others — for example, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, as well as most of the former Soviet republics — fell behind other European states, thereby revealing the persistence of the old divides between communist and non-communist Europe. Ukraine finds itself in the second category, with its media demonstrating comparatively modest progress toward establishing independence and assuring pluralism since the end of Soviet communism: indeed, Ukraine has even experienced several antidemocratic backlashes. [2] Why do the Ukrainian media still remain only ‘partly free’ while the citizens of Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states have enjoyed a ‘free’ media since the mid-1990s? Why, despite the adoption of media laws corresponding to European standards and the establishment of private ownership in the media, are the Ukrainian press and broadcasting still far from independent?
These questions and the idea for this book arose in 2010 – 2011 when in the framework of the Central European University’s Curriculum Resource Center grant I developed an academic course entitled “Ukrainian media change in Central-Eastern European p erspective” and delivered it to PhD students of the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism in Kyiv, Ukraine. Together with my students I was then comparing the state of Ukrainian media with the advancements in the media systems of Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) at the moment when Ukraine witnessed a grave setback for democracy under the p residency of Viktor Yanukovych. We were also searching for answers as to the causes of the slow progress of media democratization in Ukraine. Having finished this study in 2016, I am convinced that the question I was asking and the answers I