Urban media practices: European and Ukrainian experience
Authors: Тemchenko L. 
Published: February 2020

The article deals with the world theoretical and practical approaches to the development of urban journalism and examines the practical aspects of the functioning of this field in the media industry. The practical experience of Western colleagues in creation of urban content is identified, examples of successful implementation of local and hyperlocal journalistic projects aimed at producing a quality information product and solving important social problems of local communities are analyzed.The relevance of the topic can be explained by the need to reflect some of the recent changes that have taken place in Ukrainian cities under the influence of different political, historical, social and cultural aspects. The subject field of urban science combines research in the fields of sociology, demography, economics, geography, philosophy, psychology, history and cultural studies. Mass media play an important role in this process, which in the classical sense is the role of mediators between the authorities and the local people.In the process of study general scientific methods of comparison, synthesis, analysis and induction were used. With the help of comparison, it became possible to understand the difference between world urban journalism practice and Ukrainian one, as well as estimate the peculiarities of editorial approaches to development of new journalism formats, and their potential in the context of audience engagement. Synthesis method, which involves combination of the main theses on the basis of common thematic orientation helped to outline the main themes and problems presented in the articles of Ukrainian and British web-sites. With the help of analysis method, the main features and concepts of the editorial policy of the urban projects were investigated and the problematic field of the publications was outlined. The method of induction was used to analyze subjective statements of the blog authors, their single experience that was extended to the general practice of perceiving the image of certain cities by the reader. We also used a descriptive method to depict how Ukrainian cities are presented in the materials of the Ukrainian Week website and the method of content monitoring with the aim to develop the array of journalism articles and find out additional information about the authors.Ukrainian urban resources, as well as European ones, predominantly operate online, due to economic and technological factors. It is noted that modern communication technologies enrich the perception of the urban discourse. City websites serve to “minimize” the official agenda and become “city researchers” and “guides” in various areas of urban life. The thematic spectrum of the “Cities” (The Guardian), “We Love Brussels,” “Skyscraper,” “The Village Ukraine” websites is presented in the work, the strategies of content creation are analyzed. Attention is drawn to the thematic variability of the websites, which reflects the diversity of urban life. The media development of the city was studied on the example of the "Ukrainian Week" magazine. The Private Urban Studies blog mainly contains amateur materials that present the authors’ reflections on life in metropolitan and peripheral cities. Such journalistic projects contribute to the creation of urban discourse and the formation of urban identity.