{"id":28937,"date":"2022-03-10T04:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=28937"},"modified":"2022-03-11T15:55:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T15:55:47","slug":"ukraines-twitter-account-is-a-national-version-of-real-time-trauma-processing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/ukraines-twitter-account-is-a-national-version-of-real-time-trauma-processing\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Twitter account is a national version of real-time trauma processing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jessica Maddox<\/a>, University of Alabama<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TikToks of cats in cardboard tanks<\/a>. Flirty comments<\/a> on Instagram accounts dedicated to Vladmir Putin, begging him to stop Russia\u2019s attacks on Ukraine. Memes bemoaning<\/a> what it\u2019s like to live during a pandemic and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memes, cats and TikToks are central features<\/a> of contemporary internet culture. And sometimes, internet culture is all three at the same time, using commonly understood templates in conjunction with cute and silly themes and materials that don\u2019t automatically seem to mesh with the catastrophic consequences of Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a scholar of social media platforms and internet popular culture<\/a>, I know that cute animal images, including cat images, are a defining communication practice online. While cats, memes and TikToks \u2013 and sometimes cat memes and cat TikToks \u2013 are ways to process and respond to current events, they are also emerging, most recently in the Ukraine war, as a way to cope with toxic, harmful and tragic situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the public\u2019s way of thinking about the internet has been through dichotomies: There\u2019s online, and then there\u2019s offline. There are cute cat videos, and then there are misinformation and harassment. There\u2019s TikTok, and then there\u2019s world politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if Russia\u2019s attacks on the 2016 United States election<\/a> taught anything , it\u2019s that internet culture is now world politics, not some separate and distinct realm. There are recent examples of this, such as the TikTok livestreaming<\/a> of the Taliban\u2019s takeover of Afghanistan, and TikTok users\u2019 organizing to buy tickets for a rally for then-U.S. President Donald Trump, only to not show up<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famed media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said that the medium is the message<\/a>, meaning that the mode of communication carries meaning as well as the communication itself. And if that\u2019s the case, then Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine reveals that memes and cute cat content aren\u2019t just for fun and entertainment any longer. Now, the cultural practices underscoring internet culture have become a frame through which to process catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memes of official Ukraine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to understand<\/a> how to manipulate the cultural practices and tactics of the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s Russia knew how to use<\/a> memes, Facebook groups and other social media platforms to sow discord in 2016 and beyond. In the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia\u2019s Internet Research Agency planted polarizing memes and tweets<\/a> on police brutality, Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ issues on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But memes, TikToks and tweets aren\u2019t just used for polarizing ends. The official Ukraine Twitter account<\/a>, run by the Ukrainian government, has used internet culture to communicate about Russia\u2019s aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As tensions escalated between Russia and Ukraine in the latter half of 2021, the official Ukraine Twitter account began tweeting about the aggression. This often came through using memes, two of which are good examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one meme, Ukraine communicates the overall message that living next to Russia is a constant source of stress and pain. The meme shows in red the specific location on the head of three types of common headaches: migraines, hypertension and stress. But there\u2019s a fourth headache depicted, called \u201cLiving next to Russia.\u201d Its location covers not just one spot on the head, but the entire head and neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second meme has a dog sitting calmly next to a life-size werewolf statue. At the top, the meme says, \u201cPutin\u2019s real fears.\u201d Lower in the picture, the dog has the words \u201cUkraine in NATO\u201d superimposed on top of it. Next to the dog, the vicious-looking werewolf has text over it saying, \u201cHuman rights, free press, fair elections.\u201d The juxtaposition of the harmless-looking dog and threatening werewolf communicates that Putin is actually afraid of freedoms for the Russian people, because such freedoms are a threat to his power – while Ukraine joining NATO is not, the meme suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Large-scale trauma processing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After Russia began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a> on Feb. 24, 2022, many on social media noticed Ukraine\u2019s tweets for the first time and seemed baffled<\/a> by why a nation\u2019s official Twitter account would tweet such things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But again, if memes, cats and TikToks are ways to process catastrophe in real time, then Ukraine\u2019s Twitter account is a national version of real-time trauma processing, using formats people are familiar with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The communal nature of memes, cats, TikToks and social media in general cannot be ignored. Memes are digital communication devices that grow and expand the more people share and create them. Cats invite sharing a cute image with another person. TikTok\u2019s mission is to \u201cinspire creativity and bring joy,\u201d and platform features invite interaction with others. And social media are fundamentally social, based almost entirely on communication with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, Ukraine\u2019s memes and tweets tell something else \u2013 that this is their nation\u2019s invitation for more people to enter the conversation. I believe this tells of their need for the rest of the world to stand in communal solidarity with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the medium is the message, then internet cultural practices have become intertwined with geopolitical and military conflicts. Meming war and conflict isn\u2019t always silly \u2013 it can be an invitation to communicate, witness, communally process and share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[The Conversation\u2019s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.<\/em> Sign up for Politics Weekly<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Maddox<\/a>, Assistant Professor and Co-Director, Office of Politics, Communication and Media, University of Alabama<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessica Maddox, University of Alabama TikToks of cats in cardboard tanks. Flirty comments on Instagram accounts dedicated to Vladmir Putin, begging him to stop Russia\u2019s attacks on Ukraine. Memes bemoaning what it\u2019s like to live during a pandemic and war. Memes, cats and TikToks are central features of contemporary internet culture. And sometimes, internet culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[10401,4519,11479,702,7437,949,1212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28939,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937\/revisions\/28939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}