Educational journalism in Ukraine: current status and development prospects

Abstract

The article deals with the development of the concept of “educational journalism” in Ukrainian and European journalism, defines the concept of “educational content”, typology and functions of the education media outlets. The study is relevant because it is the first time in Ukrainian journalism a thorough attempt was made to study the concept of “educational journalism”. The study aims to define the concept of “educational journalism” in the Ukrainian media discourse and analyze the typological and genre features (sampled by the selected online publications on educational topics). The research method is quantitative content analysis. It allows us to understand a range of problems in the field of education, which is the core focus of the analyzed media outlets, as well as the fields of education that are covered least of all. The novelty is connected with introduction of the concepts of “education media outlets”, “the path of educational journalism” into Ukrainian journalism and with the development of the structure of the multimedia editorial office that is specialized in education. The complexity of work on educational content is that educational journalism per se is a specialized field of knowledge, however, preschool, secondary education, higher education, inclusive education (among others are oligophrenic education, deaf education and blindness and education), postgraduate education, andragogy are defined among the fields of education. The study presents the results of quantitative content analysis of online education media outlets “Osvita.ua”, “Pedpress”, “Osvitoria” and “NUS” (6623 publications of these education media outlets were analyzed), which allowed to identify themes and genres that prevail in journalistic materials on educational topics, as well as the sources of origin of these materials — the author's or borrowed ones from other resources (in particular, The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine). The results of the study are not only of theoretical but also practical relevance, since they can be taken into consideration during the development of curricula for the training of education journalists, conclusion of terminology and formation of recommendations for the work of education journalists.