We present research conducted at ISS PAS as part of the POLONEZ BIS 2 programme of the National Science Centre (NCN):
Dr. Orest Semotiuk from Ukraine is implementing a project entitled „Laughter during the war: Russian aggression in Ukraine in political cartoons and memes”. The supervisor of the project on the part of the Institute is dr hab. Roman Roszko, prof. IS PAN.
Project description:
Modern wars differ from the classic ones in that they use not only military equipment and regular troops. Values, ideology, culture, symbols, media, humor are becoming weapons in the 21st century. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass, has been evaluated as a “hybrid war”. After the full-scale invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022, Ukraine not only became a theater of hostilities in Europe, but also a topic №1 in the world media. Political humor in Ukraine and worldwide became a weapon. The heroic resistance of Ukrainians and Russia’s war crimes against civilians have been reflected in political humor both in Ukraine and around the world. Accordingly, the project aims to analyze the implementation and evolution of the discursive dimension of the Ukrainian-Russian War in cartoons and memes. We are going to investigate similarities and differences in conflict depiction („self-image” and “external image” of the conflict course, conflict participants, conflict consequences) in Ukrainian and World political cartoons and memes. Special attention is paid to a) rapid growth of global interest in Ukraine, opposing the aggressor; b) gradual changes in the attitude of world leaders to the Russian-Ukrainian war, due to public pressure and diplomatic efforts of Ukraine; с) Putin’s transformation into a global pariah; d) the evolution of President Zelensky’s attitude to ways to resolve the conflict before and after 24.02. The project integrates national and international (global) levels of political humorous discourse and proposes a contrastive analysis of the discursive dimension of the Russian-Ukrainian war and its implementation in political humor. The project is based on significant correlation of the real and discursive dimension of the conflict (international military and political assistance to Ukraine and the reflection of this support in the national and international political humor).
Dr. Orest Semotiuk — media linguist, political humor researcher, MAXQDA trainer (computer-aided content analysis). His research interests include: political cartoons and memes, medialization of armed conflicts and hybrid warfare, quantitative and qualitative research methods. Member of the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore (Amsterdam, NL), Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies (Pittsburgh, USA), International Association of the Humanities (Kyiv, UA). Author of the book Rossijsko-ukrajinska vijna v suchasnij politychnij karykaturi. Mediatizatsia vojennych konfliktiv suchasnosti/The Russian-Ukrainian war in modern political cartoon. Mediatization of modern military conflicts (2021).
POLONEZ BIS is co-financed by the European Commission and the National Science Centre under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND grant.
More information on the competition and the results is available on NCN’s website:
https://ncn.gov.pl/aktualnosci/2022-12-06-wyniki-opus23-preludium21-polonezbis2