Representations of disability in print news media in postsocialist Ukraine

Abstract

This article examines the narrative discourses that shape representations of disability in newspapers in postsocialist Ukraine, arguing that narratives about disability are linked to a meta-discourse of ‘transition’ that emphasizes disorder. Further, newspaper coverage prescribes competing and contradictory models of citizenship and personhood for postsocialist subjects living with disabilities. The article offers recommendations for improving press coverage of disability issues.

Keywords:

• disability
• media
• citizenship
• neoliberalism
• postsocialism
• Ukraine

Notes

1. Law of Ukraine on the Basis of Social Protection of Invalids of Ukraine, 1991, N 21, Statute 252. http://naiu.org.ua/content/view/21/75/.

2. See http://www.ifex.org/ukraine/2010/05/19/censorship_letter/.

3. I thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point.

4. Although journalists increasingly are using people-first terminology new to the Ukrainian context, this more inclusive language is by no means supplanting the ‘invalid’ terminology (see Barnes 1992), and disabling language is still common: ‘wheelchair bound,’ ‘confined to a wheelchair,’ ‘bedridden,’ and so forth.

5. I thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point.

6. This observation contrasts with arguments made by Paul Longmore (1985), who in his study of film and television portrayals of people with disabilities in the West found disability depicted as a lonely and isolating experience for the individual. The difference may have to do with the different media being analyzed and the historical differences in how personhood is perceived (individualistic versus sociocentric) in the two world areas and political contexts.

7. There are 321 so-called home-internaty (permanent residential institutions) in Ukraine, 83 of which house the elderly and adults with disabilities and 56 of which are for children age 18 and under (MLSP 2008, 69). As of 2004 a total of 56,455 persons lived in internaty; of these, an estimated 38,000 had disabilities (MLSP 2008, 69).