WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORD “NEW BUILDING”: URBAN ISSUES IN THE ODESA MEDIA

Abstract

Among the most important topics in the world of urban journalism is the topic of land ownership and housing affordability. In Ukraine, both in the media space and in scientific discourse, urban journalism is represented quite modestly. This makes relevant the goal of this work, which is to analyze the coverage of building development problems in Odesa by regional media in 2021. The last pre-war year was chosen deliberately since, with the beginning of a full-scale war, the agenda changed. The study used the thematic information search method, which was used to search for materials related, in one way or another, to building development issues in three online media (“Dumska”, “USI”, “Odeske Zhittya”) and two TV channels (“Suspilne Odesa”, “7 channel”) in 2021. Using published monitoring research data, we studied and described the context of the existence of media in Odesa in 2021. The study also used the discourse-analysis method, with which we tried to “find the hidden” and understand why such materials are published.

We managed to highlight authoritarian discourse when the author(s) declare the truth without offering alternatives. This is especially clearly seen in the example of media owned by businessmen or politicians, which promote the desired economic or political agenda. A good example is journalistic investigations that involve building developers, who are competitors of the media owner. Based on the interdiscursive nature of the text, we can note the presence of references to the hidden local-historical or, more precisely, the mythological discourse of "Old Odesa". This, in our opinion, is confirmed by the negative connotations of the word "new building", which are contained in all materials, except for commissioned ones: "new building" is something bad, something that disrupts the usual order of things.