Language Policy in the Ukrainian Media: Authorities,Producers and Consumers

This article deals with language policy in one crucial domain, the media. It treats language policy as the interaction between actions or inactions of the authorities, producers and consumers contributing to change or continuity of existing practices. It is argued that the main long-term contribution of all three actors, despite some notable changes, is the maintenance of the status quo characterised by the coexistence of Ukrainian and Russian with the predominance of the latter language. In particular, consumers mostly maintained their accustomed language preferences, although they did not resort to any protest actions when those preferences were disregarded.