Narratives of Polish-Ukrainian interaction in Polish documentaries

Abstract

Introduction. The research aims at studying key narratives being transmitted in television documentaries in Ukraine and Poland in the context of displaying two peoples’ interaction in historical, cultural and social fields. The television product elucidated the image of Ukraine and the Ukrainian for a Polish viewer became the material for analysis. Methods of research: content analysis as a systematic research technique of objective description of the existing content of communication in the media material, which was used at the stage of studying the general problematic direction of the documentary series; the method of analysis, comparison, and synthesis used in determining the typology of images and problems, narrative analysis as a way of evaluating existing mental attitudes that are realized through implemented narratives. Results and discussions. The makers of «The Ukrainians» series tell about available failures to agree and problematic areas in the Polish-and-Ukrainian discourse. The editor-inchief of TVP Dokument Tomasz Piechal says: «We wanted this series to become a possibility for everybody to learn each other better. It has been an important unfinished theme and now, when the Russian aggression caused even more significant migration from Ukraine to Poland, it has become even more important. We have to begin becoming more familiar» [12]. Thus, the advance learning of this problem is topical as never before.