Edited by: Mette Mortensen, Mervi Pantti

Dear community members,

As we mark today two years since the invasion of Ukraine (February 24, 2022), I wish to introduce you to a meaningful book publication - "Media and the War in Ukraine" - published by Peter Lang. Edited by Mette Mortensen and Mervi Pantti, this timely volume gathers the work from diverse scholars on the pivotal role digital media and communication play in influencing and shaping the narrative of the war in Ukraine. The book delves into the complex network of media, spanning from traditional broadcasting and press to cutting-edge social media platforms and digital technologies. The book explores four critical themes: (1) the dynamics of media infrastructures and their interactions with platforms, technologies, institutions, and civic actors; (2) the impact of open-source intelligence on the war's (dis)information; (3) the portrayal and documentation of the war's day-to-day realities on social media; and (4) the complex relationship between local and global perspectives in war reporting. 

Please see the table of contents: 

Introduction

Part One: Media Infrastructures

Chapter 1. Understanding the Ukrainian Informational Order in the Face of the Russian War \ Göran Bolin and Per Ståhlberg

Chapter 2. Swarm Communication in a Totalising War: Media Infrastructures, Actors and Practices in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian Invasion \ Kateryna Boyko and Roman Horbyk

Chapter 3. Social Media Platforms Responding to the Invasion of Ukraine \ Mervi Pantti and Matti Pohjonen

Part Two: The Use of Open-Source Intelligence

Chapter 4. Open-Source Actors and UK News Coverage of the War in Ukraine: Documenting the Impacts of Conflict and Incidents of Civilian Harm \ Jamie Matthews

Chapter 5. Faking Sense of War: OSINT as Pro-Kremlin Propaganda \ Marc Tuters and Boris Noordenbos

Part Three: Everyday Media in War

Chapter 6. TikTok(ing) Ukraine: Meme-Based Expressions of Cultural Trauma on Social Media \ Tom Divon and Moa Eriksson Krutrök

Chapter 7. ‘Grandma Warriors’ on YouTube: Negotiating Intersectional Distinctions and De/legitimisations of the War in Ukraine \ Marja Lönnroth-Olin, Satu Venäläinen, Rusten Menard, Teemu Pauha and Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti

Part Four: News and Geopolitics

Chapter 8. The Emotional Gap? Foreign Reporters, Local Fixers and the Outsourcing of Empathy \ Johana Kotišová

Chapter 9. Indian Press Coverage of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine \ Antal Wozniak and Zixiu Liu

Chapter 10. Reporting the War in Ukraine: Ecological Dissimulation in a Dying World \ Simon Cottle

Afterword

Participative War: The New Paradigm of War and Media \ Andrew Hoskins

The book is available for purchase at this link - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1311889 - and I encourage you to recommend it to your universities and institutions. Adding this work to their collections will provide students and researchers with broader epistemological frameworks for understanding how digital media influences, shapes, and transforms the representation of war.