Hopko H. Environmental publicism (essayism): paradigm of the world perception (on the examples of the international and the Ukrainian media in 1992-2008)

The thesis investigates trends in covering environmental problems from 1992 till 2008, examines in the detail the role of modern mass media in preventing ecological crisis, covers the phenomenon of "environmental publicisim" and peculiarities a modern environmental journalism. The first part of the thesis discusses the relationship between humans and the environment throughout the last century until the early 2000s, and analyses the impact of globalization on the environment and the role of the mass-media in solving environmental problems. In the second part the author presents the results of a comparative analysis of environmental publications that appeared in Western and Slavic media, looking on environmental journalism as a factor of ecological change. The thesis analyses how Ukrainian and international media presented such events as the World Summits in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in Johannesburg in 2002. (The Johannesburg Summit, named "the giant jamboree" by "The Economist", was criticized in the West, whereas Ukrainian media provided a very superficial, much less informed and more positive description of the event). The authors makes general conclusions about how environmental journalism functions in modern conditions, and how the Western, Ukrainian, and Russian media cover global environmental problems. The role of preventive environmental journalism is highlighted in today's world which is fast approaching a combined crisis of morality and the state of the global environment.