Logics of Exclusion: How Ukrainian Audiences Renegotiate Propagandistic Narratives in Times of Conflict

ABSTRACT

Contemporary media environments are rife with contested information. Unable to rely on contradictory or deliberately distorted media accounts, socially interactive audiences turn to trustworthy others to make sense of the political world outside. This study uses the context of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, marked by discordant media agendas and ideological narratives, to explore how citizens produce shared understandings of conflicting political issues. It draws upon a series of focus groups with media audiences in Eastern Ukraine to explore the socially embedded, interactive reconstruction and renegotiation of shared meaning. Based on a discourse and conversation analysis of the content, group dynamics, and non-verbal cues in the discussions, the study distinguishes three interaction modes (inquiry, narrative, and avoidance) that define the conditions for audiences’ opinion formation. The findings show that cooperation in inquiry mode facilitates deliberation, the adoption of rigid consensual boundaries in narrative mode increases polarization, whereas cynical detachment in avoidance mode preserves confusion. The article concludes by discussing the implications for socially mediated meaning-making and democratic potential of political talk.

KEYWORDS:

• Social interaction
• political talk
• boundary-work
• discourse
• conflict
• propaganda

Acknowledgments

I thank Christian Baden for his guidance, generous feedback and support; Roni Danziger, Zohar Kampf, and Sandra Simonsen for their comments on earlier versions of this paper; Dara Tverdokhlib, Vadim Prokopov, Artem Loban, Larisa Blokhina, and Iryna Pasitselska for helping to organize focus group interviews; and study participants for their time and patience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See Appendix for more information on the groups’ composition.

2. Alina is a pseudonym, as are all other interviewees’ names mentioned in this paper.

3. In particular, the indignant speakers refer to the alleged oppression of the rights and freedoms of Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine that, according to the Russian state narrative, called for Russian support and “protection”, which justified Crimean and Donbas intervention.

4. The battle of Ilovaisk was one of the severest in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Pasitselska

Olga Pasitselska is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation project is supported by the Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program. Her research interests include political conversation and deliberation, media trust, and construction and reception of ideological discourse.