PhD in media and communication. Previously connected to universities in Kyiv, Aarhus, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. Senior lecturer at Södertörn University, and a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University in Media and Communication Studies.
Roman Horbyk was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He has worked as a journalist.
Roman Horbyk
PhD in media and communication. Previously connected to universities in Kyiv, Aarhus, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. Senior lecturer at Södertörn University, and a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University in Media and Communication Studies.
Roman Horbyk was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He accomplished his BA and MA degrees with majors in Journalism at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. Roman received an international Master’s degree in “Journalism and Media within Globalisation: a European Perspective” in 2012 with a joint certificate from Universities of Aarhus and Hamburg, having also studied in Amsterdam and completed courses from UC Berkeley.
As a researcher, he is primarily interested in how the media functions within power relations; other topics of interest include postcolonial theory as well as media history, particularly in relation to the popular genres in the 1920s and 1930s. Roman has also extensively worked as a print and TV journalist with a 10-year career. His reports and columns were published in Ukraine, Germany, Brazil, and Denmark.
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Articles by Roman Horbyk
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Rather than moving towards arguments or ideological standpoints, the politics in Ukraine has moved farther towards selling emotions, stories and images. This time it was the politics of mediatised emotion on steroids. Is this simply a new politics that can be used in a populist and non-populist ways, or for progressive as much as reactionary causes? It may look like it is a neutral tool but I would still argue that this kind of politics substitutes political mobilisation with political immersion by submerging the audience into a story, an emotional environment, an experience.
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In less than 15 years, activist journalists have enjoyed a vertiginous career in Ukraine, from a persecuted and marginal minority to one of the most influential social groups and key actors in the political field. This was certainly facilitated by the technological shift that made media work more cost-efficient and less resource-demanding. But the transformation could also only happen because the culture had a long tradition of journalists taking a stand against authorities, and the idealized figures of an honest publicist, a passionately engaged writer, and a resistance fighter were familiar and readily accepted by the public.
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The ambiguity of the 1920s Ukrainianization is well known among its scholars. A curious fact is that was becoming less intense and effective where the initial positions of the Ukrainian were weaker. Donbas was specifically one such region.
If Ukraine is a borderland, Donbas is a borderland multiplied by itself, notes the author and further claims that "Donbas will retain its hybridity no matter the outcome of the current unrest. Still, the volatile situation brings not only risks but also yet another chance for belated modernisation."
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Issue 2020, 4