Columnist corpus of Anne Applebaum: the peculiarities of media texts on Ukrainian issues

Abstract

In the article, the author analyzes the columnist works of the public intellectual Anne Applebaum on the Ukrainian topic, their features, and their significance. The article's relevance is due to the need for comprehensive research on the topic of Ukraine in the world media, including the format of columnism. The subject of the study is Anne Applebaum's articles on Ukrainian issues in The Atlantic and The Washington Post. The aim is to outline the journalist's text features and to identify her style. The following methods were used during the research: comparative, historical, systemic analysis, content analysis, and others. The novelty is due to the analysis of journalistic rather than popular science works by Anne Applebaum.

During the research, the author reviewed the journalist's articles in periodicals on Ukrainian topics published from the beginning of the current Russian aggression against Ukraine to the present day. Anne Applebaum is known to the Ukrainian audience as the author of a book about the Holodomor of 1932–1933 (Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine), which has sparked many discussions in Ukrainian and foreign media. We focused on Anne Applebaum as a columnist because, in this format, the author's style and even subjectivity are significant. The article identifies the peculiarities of the journalist's media texts: an attempt to familiarize the English-speaking reader with the causes and consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war. In particular, many of the author's articles are devoted to explaining historical clichés and propaganda narratives used by Russia to portray Ukrainians as Nazis and chauvinists. Within the context of considering Russia's war against Ukraine, it is crucial to highlight the historical continuity of this issue, and Anne Applebaum also writes about this. The author also emphasizes that modern Russia is a threat to peace not only for Ukrainians but for the entire world, and the international community must realize this.

The journalist analyzes the methods of manipulation and propaganda used by the Russians and has noted that some have stood the test of time while others have emerged in the process of modern challenges. In this research, we have separately examined the columnist's media texts, in which she views the Ukrainian resistance through the prism of geopolitics and concludes that it is necessary for the world order that Ukraine wins; otherwise, totalitarianism may become the dominant regime in the world. It covers the Russia-Ukraine war for a foreign audience and explains to Ukrainians how the world perceives their struggle. Given this, there is a need to further research Anne Applebaum’s articles.