Un(in)formed terrain: problems facing the study of religious journalism in Ukraine today

Abstract

In our contemporary age, religious information and religious media did not appear in mainstream Ukrainian culture until the 1990s. Until then, for more than 70 years, Ukraine generally took atheistic approaches to the study and discussion of religion and related issues – including in the scientific field. This high level of secularisation fundamentally complicates all work with religious topics, highlighting Ukraine’s need to formulate a theoretical basis for the study of religious journalism in its universities. At present, issues of religious communication and journalism are most widely studied within the context of the Catholic Church and implemented in the Catholic media of the Vatican, Italy, and Poland. In these religio-cultural contexts, core principles guiding the activities of religious journalists, the workings of the media, and attitudes to communication have already been formulated. These examples, according to the author, could be utilised as a basis for implementing the study of religious journalism in Ukraine today.