Topics and Themes of Vitalii Portnikov’s Social and Political Journalism (the Case of Materials of the Internet Outlet Radio Liberty)

The article deals with the topics and themes of materials of V. Portnikov, the well-known political journalist in Ukraine and abroad. The urgency of scientific research is to study and expand the scientific discourse on political journalism, its topics and themes, relevance and reliability of information and introduction of new names. The objective of the study is to identify and analyze the main thematic lines and features of themes of V. Portnikov’s journalistic materials. The task of the study is to carry out a brief biographical analysis, which is necessary for understanding the personality of V. Portnikov; to ascertain and to generalize the thematic range of publicist’s materials; to define the problems of author’s materials through the line of topical issues, political situation and processes in Ukraine and the world as whole; to systematize creativity and professional attitudes of a publicist to political processes, leadership, states, authorities, regimes, etc. that helped in achieving the objective of the study. The methodological basis of the study that consisted of the topics and themes of V. Portnikov’s political journalism was based on the principles of historicity, objectivity, complexity and authenticity. A number of general and specific scientific methods were used to analyze the topics and themes of his publicistic materials. The descriptive method was used to outline the available materials of socio-political themes and topics of a journalist in the Internet outlet “Radio Liberty” for 2017-2018 and the first quarter of 2019. The content analysis method was used to identify the problem-thematic aspect of the publicist’s materials. The biographical method was used in studying the peculiarities of his creative activities and the method of differentiation in work was used to determine the thematic peculiarities and to find out the problematic aspects of his creativity. The qualitative analysis of V. Portnikov’s texts was the leading method of the study. The analysis of the author’s journalistic speeches showed that V. Portnikov accentuated the readers’ attention on the ugent issues, gave an objective and thorough assessment of the current situation. This author lets each topic pass through himself, thereby stimulating and appealing the audience to reflection, and also helped to understand and to rethink the most important sociopolitical processes.