Framing wartime resistance: a case study of Ukrainian digital political communication
Date
2023
Authors
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Apart from the daunting military quandary, the Russian invasion presented the Ukrainian
government with complex socio-political challenges that call for resourcefulness and innovative
solutions. Taking advantage of the ongoing digital transformation, novel political communication
strategies were implemented throughout the governmental levels to consolidate public resistance
to the existential threat. Thus, multiple factors warrant academic examination of the ensuing
phenomenon: the dire context for the innovative communication in Ukraine, its seeming success,
the understudied nature of discursive mechanisms facilitating social resistance and the swelling
importance of digital and social media in world politics. Besides, earlier political communication
literature focused predominantly on discourse pertaining to electoral campaigning or
anti-government protests, with analysis of constructive governmental communication in times of
national crises being virtually unprecedented. The following paper stimulates precisely such
further research, offering a single-case study of resistance framing in the Telegram
communication by Governor Vitaliy Kim of Mykolayiv Oblast during the first month of the
full-scale invasion. The study develops an original taxonomy of collective-connective action
framing, engaging the theoretical frameworks of collective and connective action logics and
organisational hybridity. The research conducts qualitative data coding to identify and interpret
relevant themes and frames that facilitate a robust resistance movement via social media
networks and their technological affordances. Securing public trust, preventing panic and
reinforcing identity thus appear as major tools of wartime political communication in the studied
case. Effectively, this discursive toolkit aids the communicator in promoting social cohesion,
unity and solidarity, all of which are integral for public resistance.