Ukrainian-language periodicals are of great importance because they are the means of consolidation of Ukrainian Diaspora in the USA and serve to unite it around the ideas that it preaches, above all, when it comes to the national identity preservation. Periodicals in the Diaspora are a significant communicative means through which information exchange takes place, social mood is formed, moral norms and social consciousness develops.
Updating the experience of the Ukrainian Diaspora national identity preservation in the multicultural and foreign-language environment of the United States, presented through its Ukrainian-language periodicals, is important and useful for those regions of Ukraine where self-identification continues to be vulnerable to both globalization processes and the influence of one dominant culture.
The topicality of the research is also in the usefulness of the information from periodicals that demonstrates the old national traditions of entrepreneurship, credit financing and the civil society model formation, reflected in the activities of the Ukrainian Diaspora for economic and socio-political life of Ukraine. Ukrainian-language US magazines have proved to be remarkable advocates of the positive image of independent Ukraine as well as of the Ukrainian culture integration into the world cultural space.
The direction of the current state policy is focused on the developing of mechanisms for effective cooperation with the Diaspora as their homeland representative, supporting its national, cultural and linguistic needs and is of vital importance.
The purpose of the thesis is to characterize comprehensively and highlight the role of the Ukrainian-language periodicals of the USA Diaspora in preserving its national identity (1991-2017) on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of feature materials and the generalization of the achievements of historiography as well as the data of the heuristic search.
The subject of research is the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States of the designated period.
The research focuses on the role of Ukrainian-language periodicals of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States in the national identity preservation (1991-2017).
The theoretical and methodological principles of the investigation of Ukrainian-language periodicals of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the USA have been considered, and the terminological tools have been specified in the thesis.
The author has followed the principle of historical anthropologism, systematicity, historicism, scientificity, comprehensiveness, continuity, that made it possible to carry out the detailed analysis of the development of Ukrainian-language periodicals of the USA in the context of general scientific investigations on the history of the Ukrainian Diaspora, the national self-determination in general and the issues on the Ukrainian national identity preservation abroad as well as the functioning of the Ukrainian-language periodicals in the Ukrainian Diaspora.
The complex of general scientific (analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction, generalization, logical, structural-functional, informational, sociocultural), historical (problem-chronological, retrospective and perspective, synchronous and diachronic, genetic, comparative, institutional, historical and comparative, historical-typological), interdisciplinary and special-scientific (method of content analysis, mathematical processing of materials, statistical, method of expert evaluations) of research methods has been applied.
The selective approach has been used while analyzing the Ukrainian-language periodicals of the USA. It has been applied primarily to those publications that were focused on general matters of Ukrainian community in the USA, preserving its national identity with relevant ideological meaningfulness regardless of political orientation as well as of the periodicals of certain public organizations.
The practical significance of the obtained results makes it possible for scientists to use the theoretical conclusions and the specific factual material for the development of manuals, thematic directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other teaching materials that will contribute immensely to improving the learning efficiency, along with the scientific-research and propaganda activities on the topic of the functioning of Ukrainian-language periodicals of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the national identity preservation during 1991-1917. Scientific concepts and generalizations can be useful for the organization of the modern media space in independent Ukraine, for transforming strained totalitarian past Ukrainian mentality and for overcoming the inferiority complex.
