Media Criticism in Ukraine: Development Trends and Prospects

Nowadays, considering the intensity of the modern information space development and the need for media criticism, development tendencies and prospects of media criticism in the realities of Ukraine are relevant to study. In order to analyze the different areas of media criticism, the functioning and specificity of the main publications and their social role were analyzed in the article. The system method, methods of comparison, analysis and synthesis were used in the article. The activity of the leading Ukrainian media outlets was considered, the peculiarities of their content and the scale of influence on the readership were analyzed. The specificity of specialized media criticism was characterized on the basis of the publications "Media Critica", "Telecritica", "MediaSapiens", "Detector Media", "Media Lab", "MBR (Media Business Reports)". The article also analyzed popular media criticism features presented by blogs and readers’ materials. It was emphasized that the role of media criticism in Ukraine is different from European and American in that it is not so much a factor in the functioning of civil society as an expression of media relations with the audience. The reach of the audience is insignificant today. The correction role of media activity negative manifestations through media criticism, in particular, related to the commercialization of journalism is considered. As a result, a number of trends in media criticism in Ukraine were identified: simultaneous interaction of professional and specialized media criticism; interest mainly from the professional audience; low prevalence among the general public; much attention to the country’s media, but little information about the media industry in the world. Emphasis was given that promising areas for media criticism are the study of the media effects on the audience mental health, information immunity formation in society, authors competence question