The Global in the Local: A Case Study on Deforestation in a Ukrainian Journalistic Field

Abstract

It is widely assumed nowadays that in order to effectively respond to environmental challenges, humanity must cultivate cosmopolitan ethical consciousness. An important role, according to this outlook, should be assigned to journalists, who must possess a cosmopolitan sense of responsibility. How can this global responsibility emerge out of the local sense of belonging? To examine this question, we present the case study of the decision of 107495 the Kharkov (Ukraine) municipal council to cut down a local recreation forest. The content of local news and the interviews with journalists are presented and analyzed. The study shows that local patriotism appears not to be a decisive factor in forming journalists’ sentiments toward the issues of global responsibility. Rather, it is a sense of exclusion from the global community that explains the fact that no news medium under analysis has managed to relate local events to the global problem of deforestation.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitan
• Ethics
• Journalism
• Environment
• Deforestation

Notes

1. Throughout the text, all translations from Russian and Ukrainian into English are by one of the article's authors, Olga Baysha.

2. Here and throughout this section all quotations are drawn from journalists’ statements.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Baysha

Olga Baysha is a Doctoral Student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder

Andrew Calabrese

Andrew Calabrese is a Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder