Bottom-Up Visual Doublespeak and Meta Community Guidelines During Modern Conflicts : The case of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022
(2024) MKVM13 20241Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- After the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, content depicting the war atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers flooded social media. Facebook and Instagram kept removing the videos and photographs depicting violence and breaking their community guidelines. This study critically examines the effectiveness of the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists that emerged in response to Facebook and Instagram’s limitations. In the form of illustrations, Ukrainian artists were disguising the violent events of the Russian war in Ukraine.
This thesis explores the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists as a case of doublespeak in order to exemplify the negative implications of the relativist understanding of truth.... (More) - After the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, content depicting the war atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers flooded social media. Facebook and Instagram kept removing the videos and photographs depicting violence and breaking their community guidelines. This study critically examines the effectiveness of the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists that emerged in response to Facebook and Instagram’s limitations. In the form of illustrations, Ukrainian artists were disguising the violent events of the Russian war in Ukraine.
This thesis explores the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists as a case of doublespeak in order to exemplify the negative implications of the relativist understanding of truth. Previous studies understood doublespeak as a top-down communication approach aimed to deceive the receiver of the information. However, through the modern digital environment, Ukrainian artists are reclaiming power by reinventing doublespeak as a bottom-up strategy. Bottom-up doublespeak emerges to navigate social media’s relativist vision of truth and communicate war-related events through illustrations. The theoretical framework comprises literature on truth, social media moderation, conflictual media events, visual art aesthetics, and power. I examine the material from the production and reception sides through the multi-method approach. First, I conduct the iconological analysis of 8 illustrations depicting war events by Ukrainian artists. Then, I demonstrate these pictures arranged by their increasing complexity to understand during 11 semi-structured interviews with Swedish citizens, following their meaning-making process.
The iconological analysis uncovers that Ukrainian artists employing visual doublespeak aim to create a precise copy of the photographed war-related events or fill in the picture with symbols that enable the viewer to decipher the meaning behind the illustration more easily. The interviews demonstrate that the increasing complexity of understanding makes the viewer think of illustrations as referring to abstraction rather than reality. Illustrative elements and humor also influenced the perception of violence, decreasing its intensity. Textual signature triggered rational perception, while illustrations without text were deemed polysemic. When the interviewees needed help interpreting the illustration, they often addressed stereotypes and popular culture references to explain the unknown. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9151465
- author
- Kmyta, Roman LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- conflictual media events, social media, content moderation, political art, meaning-making
- language
- English
- id
- 9151465
- date added to LUP
- 2024-06-04 16:32:40
- date last changed
- 2024-06-04 16:32:40
@misc{9151465,
abstract = {{After the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, content depicting the war atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers flooded social media. Facebook and Instagram kept removing the videos and photographs depicting violence and breaking their community guidelines. This study critically examines the effectiveness of the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists that emerged in response to Facebook and Instagram’s limitations. In the form of illustrations, Ukrainian artists were disguising the violent events of the Russian war in Ukraine.
This thesis explores the communication strategy of Ukrainian artists as a case of doublespeak in order to exemplify the negative implications of the relativist understanding of truth. Previous studies understood doublespeak as a top-down communication approach aimed to deceive the receiver of the information. However, through the modern digital environment, Ukrainian artists are reclaiming power by reinventing doublespeak as a bottom-up strategy. Bottom-up doublespeak emerges to navigate social media’s relativist vision of truth and communicate war-related events through illustrations. The theoretical framework comprises literature on truth, social media moderation, conflictual media events, visual art aesthetics, and power. I examine the material from the production and reception sides through the multi-method approach. First, I conduct the iconological analysis of 8 illustrations depicting war events by Ukrainian artists. Then, I demonstrate these pictures arranged by their increasing complexity to understand during 11 semi-structured interviews with Swedish citizens, following their meaning-making process.
The iconological analysis uncovers that Ukrainian artists employing visual doublespeak aim to create a precise copy of the photographed war-related events or fill in the picture with symbols that enable the viewer to decipher the meaning behind the illustration more easily. The interviews demonstrate that the increasing complexity of understanding makes the viewer think of illustrations as referring to abstraction rather than reality. Illustrative elements and humor also influenced the perception of violence, decreasing its intensity. Textual signature triggered rational perception, while illustrations without text were deemed polysemic. When the interviewees needed help interpreting the illustration, they often addressed stereotypes and popular culture references to explain the unknown.}},
author = {{Kmyta, Roman}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Bottom-Up Visual Doublespeak and Meta Community Guidelines During Modern Conflicts : The case of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022}},
year = {{2024}},
}