Media and the War in Ukraine

This volume aims to deepen our understanding of the dynamic intersections of war and media in the rapidly transforming media ecology and the reordered geopolitical context. Since Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a new set of media practices and actors have entered the field of contemporary war. The volume examines the ways in which the digital media and communication environment is involved in and shape the war in Ukraine. The chapters in the volume analyse the expanding mesh of media--from mainstream broadcasting and press to social media platforms, and the latest digital technologies--and address four key themes: media infrastructures and the interplay between platforms, technologies, institutions and civic actors; open-source intelligence contributing to (dis)information about the war; the everyday life of war performed and documented on social media; and different interplays between the local and the global in the news coverage of the war.

Mette Mortensen is Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen. Her research is concerned with media and conflict, visual media studies, and popular culture and populism. She is the author or editor of ten books, including the monograph Eyewitness Images and Journalism: Digital Media, Participation, and Conflict (2015) and the volume Social Media Images and Conflicts co-edited with Ally McCrow-Young (2023).

Mervi Pantti is Professor in Media and Communication at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research is concerned with conflict and disaster journalism, emotion in media, media and immigration, digital platforms, disinformation and media accountability. She is co-author of Disasters and the Media (with Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Simon Cottle, Peter Lang 2012) and editor of Media and the Ukraine Crisis: Hybrid Media Practices and Narratives of Conflict (Peter Lang 2016).