„Laughter during the war” – Dr. Orest Semotiuk in workshops and lectures (POLONEZ BIS)

On May 31, 2023, Dr. Orest Semotiuk conducted an online workshop entitled “How to analyze political cartoons”. The event was organized by the Center for Journalist Solidarity of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. More information about the workshop can be found on the organizer’s website.

Photo: personal archive of Orest Semotiuk.

On June 2, at the invitation of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), Dr. Semotiuk gave an online lecture entitled “Humor as a Weapon of War”.

Photo: personal archive of Orest Semotiuk.

In turn, from June 7–10, Dr. Semotiuk was in Brno (Czech Republic) for the 16th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF), “Living Uncertainty”. The Congress was organized by the Department of European Ethnology of the Masaryk University. The Congress was attended by ca. 800 participants, and its program included 100 panels covering 16 topics – from achitecture to religion. Dr. Semotiuk took part in the panel “Heritage as resistance – looking forward to cultural recovery,” during which he delivered a speech entitled “Superhero vs. butcher: Zelensky & Putin in political cartoons on Russian aggression”.

Dr. Semotiuk in Brno. Photo: personal archive of Orest Semotiuk.

Dr. Orest Semotiuk is implementing a project entitled „Laughter during the war: Russian aggression in Ukraine in political cartoons and memes” at ISS PAS as part of the POLONEZ BIS programme of the National Science Centre (NCN).

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POLONEZ BIS 2 projects at ISS PAS: „Laughter during the war: Russian aggression in Ukraine in political cartoons and memes”

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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. Photo Franz Kurz (Regensburg).

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).

Dr. Orest Semotiuk. Photo: Zofia Świrek

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

Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

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