Damsels in distress: Fragile masculinity in digital war

Abstract

The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was a culmination of anti-Ukrainian rhetoric that Russian political elite and state-controlled media have been promoting at least since 2013. Apart from accusing Ukraine of being a Neo-Nazi state, pro-Kremlin commentators have espoused a heavily gendered rhetoric describing Ukraine as a loose woman in need of saving by its older brother. Gendered discourse was instrumentalized in Russian foreign policy not only through aggressive masculinity, but also through femininity. The latter, in contrast, sought to downplay the aggressive masculinity associated with fascism and consequently diminish Ukraine’s agency and status compared to Russia. This article offers a taxonomy of feminization rhetoric that shows how different types of gendered constructs influence the success of securitization process. Drawing on empirical material from Russian social networks during the first war in Ukraine in 2014–2016, this article argues against gender’s silencing role but, instead, its central role in influencing every stage of securitization process. Moreover, the author shows how feminization rhetoric paved the way to the legitimation of the current war.

#Azovsteel: Comparing qualitative and quantitative approaches for studying framing of the siege of Mariupol on Twitter

“…These methods range from visual content analysis (e.g. Makhortykh and Sydorova, 2017) to discourse analysis (Gaufman, 2015(Gaufman, , 2022 to transformer-based computational models for text summarisation (e.g. Urman and Makhortykh, 2022).…”

“…One of the main challenges of addressing these complex roles of social media in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war relates to the diverse methodological approaches used to study them. So far, the majority of studies rely on qualitative approaches ranging from discourse analysis (Gaufman, 2022) to close reading (Makhortykh, 2018) to qualitative content analysis (Schmüser et al, 2022). However, despite the usefulness of qualitative approaches, their application is limited by the relatively small samples of data to which these approaches can be feasibly applied.…”

“…Studies looking at the use of social media (mainly during the earlier stages of the war) showed the multitude of aims which these platforms can serve in the context of war framing. These aims vary from reinforcing the state propaganda and legitimizing the violence (Gaufman, 2022; Makhortykh, 2018) to countering propagandist claims by spreading counter-narratives and debunking misinformation (Khaldarova and Pantti, 2020; Makhortykh and Lyebyedyev, 2015) to enhancing the war narration by professional journalists (Ojala et al, 2018; Pantti, 2019) and citizen journalists (Golovchenko et al, 2018; Makhortykh and Sydorova, 2017) to enabling peer-to-peer security advice (Schmüser et al, 2022).…”

Kön, heterosexualitet och (o)trygghet: En feministisk analys av svenska säkerhetsdebatter i skuggan av kriget i Ukraina

“…Betydelsen av könade metaforer i beskrivningar av fienden för att rättfärdiga krig är också tydliga i hur Ryssland beskrivit Ukraina som ett offer för västs dekadens (Gaufman 2022). Antagonismen mellan öst och väst har även kopplats till den maskulinitet som den ryske presidenten Vladimir Putin förkroppsligar och som både beskrivits som hypermaskulin och förlöjligats (Novitskaya 2017;Romanets 2017;Wiedlack 2020).…”

Rusya’nın Geleneksel Değerler Savunuculuğunu Jeopolitik Bağlamda Konumlandırmak

“…Associating these rights with pedophilia, drug addiction, and unhealthy generations is a part of the narrative that demonizes the opponents on moral grounds and scapegoats the LGBT+ activists. The message was that Ukraine is faced with making an existential choice between moral "good" and "evil" (Gaufman, 2022), which are located at opposing sides of modernity.…”