The Law оf Ukraine “On Media”: Ethnocultural Aspects in Public Broadcasters' Official Web Resources

Abstract

Legislative norms regulating the media sphere are an important tool for ensuring freedom of speech, transparency, and access to information in modern democratic societies. Each country develops its media legislation in accordance with specific historical, socio-political, economic, and ethno-cultural factors. This article focuses solely on the ethno-cultural aspect of modern media legislation in Ukraine, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which has not yet been the subject of a specialized study. The proposed research does not claim to be exhaustive. It merely outlines general issues and proposes a methodology for studying the ethno-cultural specificity of media legislation in a comparative aspect, using public broadcasters as an example. Each country develops its own models of public broadcasting, the comparative study of which also requires separate research. The article outlines only the general features of the legislative regulation of public broadcasting in the Ukrainian, German, and British media landscapes. The application of the parametric content analysis methodology is demonstrated through examples of specific broadcasters, focusing on the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On Media” (2022), which marked a significant milestone in the development of Ukraine’s media legal framework. A comparative parametric analysis was conducted on the presentation of information about this law in different formats on three web resources: “Suspilne. Suspilne Lviv” (Ukraine), “DeutschlandFunk” (Germany), and “BBC World Service” (United Kingdom). This analysis also highlighted ethno-cultural aspects in the presentation of information for Ukrainian and foreign audiences, which is crucial in the context of compliance with journalistic standards.