Too Tired to Meme: The Limits of Participatory War

• In Event: Media Participation and Narrative Warfare in Ukraine

Abstract

Ukraine was hailed as the exemplary case of participative war, whereby ordinary citizens self-organize for total defense through horizontal ties and communication channels. However, after a year of successful resistance, this model started showing cracks: the falling amounts of donations, the smaller numbers and circulations of memes, the lack of persuasive narratives that would easily go viral. Old approaches obviously do not work, and new ones are lacking. Using the concept of participatory attrition, proposed in my Flensburg keynote, I aim to contextualize and explain the meandering fortunes of citizen participation in the war effort through media, drawing significant theoretical conclusions.

Author

• Roman Horbyk, U of Zurich (Switzerland)