Social media and visual framing of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine

What is it about?

The paper looks into the ways pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian users of social media employ digital technology to represent the conflict in Eastern Ukraine visually.

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Why is it important?

Our findings show that the ways in which the conflict was represented on social media by pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian users were vastly different. The former presented the conflict as a humanitarian disaster, whereas the latter presented it as an anti-terrorist operation against armed insurgents. Consequently, these contrasting representations have led to divergent expectations in Ukraine and Russia concerning the outcome of the war in Donbas.