Some Aspects of the Humanitarian Challenges of the Safe Reintegration Processes of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Separate Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions: the Role of the Media

Abstract

The article raises the issue of a large number of socio-humanistic challenges that will inevitably accompany the safe reintegration of TOT ORDLO (Temporarily Occupied Territories of Separate Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions). These include problems of the citizens identification, dual citizenship (Russian Federation continues to distribute Russian passports), legal harmonization, education acquiring (in particular, enrollment to Ukrainian institutes of higher education of those who graduated from ORDLO and do not speak Ukrainian), vaccination against COVID-19 who crosses the Entry-Exit Checkpoint.It has been established that the term ‘safe reintegration’, which appeared in political and politological discourse, interprets this safety as a two-way process, which implies that the residents of TOT ORDLO must hear us, and we must hear them. That is, Ukrainians who find themselves in the occupation must understand and see that Ukraine hears them, knows about their problems, knows how to solve these problems and feels their hopes. How to achieve this? It has been found that in order to make the necessary information accessible to such persons, it is necessary to: a) ensure the availability of Ukrainian TV-channels (or other information resources) on these territories; b) create, produce and present a relevant content that will send the necessary messages and form stable attitudes and beliefs.The analysis of the availability of Ukrainian TV-channels on the media landscape of ORDLO and monitoring of the activity of the newly created ‘Dim’/‘Dom’ (‘Home’) TV-channel was conducted. By means of the content analysis, the quantitative and qualitative composition of the abovementioned TV-channel was singled out and the topics of the broadcast that interested an audience the most (by number of views in November and December 2020) was determinated. Alongside this, a review of Ukrainian news channels covering the problems of the temporarily occupied territories residents was performed. The following patterns are characterized and determinated: the most visited news coverages concern the peaceful settlement on the temporarily occupied territories, the foreign policy on the Russia-USA vector, the domestic policy of the Russian Federation and the policy of Ukraine relatively Donbass. The outstanding interest of residents of the occupied territories is attracted by the rubrics, which shall cover the problems of the region, show the audience’s interest in social, humanitarian and environmental issues.