Printed Media of Ukraine: Historiographical Aspect

The article deals with the analysis of historiographic scientific researches on origin and development of national printed mass media.Ukraineis presented as a country with long-standing traditions of publishing, a country where there are a lot of scientists studying the history of Ukrainian periodicals. Informatization of human activities becomes more and more profound, thorough and complete, and this fact requires constant analysis, assessment of printed products functioning from the point of view of their role in information, scientific, educational and cultural spiritual provision of society. The peculiarity of this revolutionary change forUkrainelies in the fact, that political and social-political changes, connected with obtaining independence and establishing statehood byUkraine: complex and system-defined historiography of publishing in post-industrial period is scantily explored. The undertaken historiographic investigation shows, that scientists were concentrated on searching rather special components of a publication. The author analyzed the existing periodization of mass media development depending on different factors and generalized, systematized and added the results of the existing investigations. The suggested periodization is, on the one hand, the continuation of scientists’ analytics, who researched shorter time periods, and, on the other hand, the investigations are supplemented with the analysis of the influence of social and economic factors. Besides, the majority of scientists investigate only their regions, often keeping to their ideological bias, that brings contradictions even in such, at first sight, simple questions as: where the first Ukrainian newspaper was published. The deficiency of unified methodological approach to problems under investigation is clarified. It is proved, that the situation in publishing depends on the pluralism, freedom of speech, well-developed party structures. Complex investigation requires not only knowledge in history, but also in economics, management, psychology, political sciences. The ways of bridging gaps are analyzed