Participation in Times of War
The Ambivalence of Digital Media
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13054609 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Olga Zvonareva (0000-0001-5548-7491, Maastricht University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Publication date | 2025-02-06 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Inclusion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2183-2803 • E-ISSN: 2183-2803 |
| Publisher | Cogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.17645/si.9128 |
| OpenAlex | W4407239675 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 28 |
Do digital media support or undermine democracy and freedom? Building on recent scholarship that highlights the diversity of digital media’s effects, this article begins with the premise that digital media do not clearly shape political life in contemporary societies one way or another but are instead ambivalent. The article seeks to explicate how exactly the ambivalence of digital media emerges and to arrive at a suitable conceptualisation of their role. Empirically, to capture how digital media become embroiled in very different kinds of political action, I draw on a prolonged ethnographic engagement with two war‐time volunteer initiatives in Russia. Both initiatives participate in politics by assisting Ukrainian war refugees who fled in the direction of Russia, and both rely on the messaging app Telegram. However, the participation of one amounts to resisting the imperative of supporting the aggression foisted by the state on Russian citizens, while the participation of another heightens this very imperative. I engage with these two contrasting digitally mediated initiatives doing similar activities but acting on vastly different commitments to illuminate the digital media’s ambivalence. I show how digital media contribute to the creation of and cracking down on democratic openings by becoming actors in the collective action networks that strive to resist oppressive political strategies and, simultaneously, in the networks that strive to further strengthen the very same strategies
Ambivalence · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
Participation in America
Material Participation
Republic
Online political participation
Contentious connective action
The Capitol Riots
A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy
Device activism and material participation in healthcare
Affordances-in-practice
Civic political engagement and social change in the new digital age
The Issues Deserve More Credit
Fugitive coproduction
Lifestyle politics and the concept of political participation
Is Telegram a “harbinger of freedom”? The performance, practices, and perception of platforms as political actors in authoritarian states
The continuous expansion of citizen participation
Political participation and civic engagement
The Logic of Connective Action
How to Turn Politics Around
Disastrous Publics
Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space
The Conceptualization of Digitally Networked Participation
Everyday and unavoidable coproduction
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |