Olga Baysha

As I strive to show in this chapter, “progressive” Ukrainian media contributed to the tragic post-Maidan developments in the East of Ukraine by adopting the Jacobin practice of marginalising and silencing opponents in the name of progress. By presenting the anti-Maidan movement as an absolute that was outside of the Ukrainian social order, they created the conditions of totalitarian intolerance emerging from the terrain of democratic revolution. As a result, antidemocratic and totalitarian tendencies in post-Yanukovych Ukraine not only reemerged but were even facilitated—a paradoxical outcome for a progressive revolution waged in the name of democracy.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the “progressive” imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the “more advanced” Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between “progressive” and “retrograde” forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the “White Ribbons” social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013–2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpetntier, this book shows how “progressive” articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

It has been argued that the advent of transnational media technologies leads to the formation of a global public sphere. By means of framing analysis, this article examines whether signs of global public deliberation were present in American and Ukrainian media coverage of the Russia-Georgia military conflict of 2008. To embrace the range of ideas presented in the American and Ukrainian public spheres, several popular national dailies and weeklies were selected for analysis ("The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "Time," "Newsweek" and "US News" in the USA; "Segodnya," "Gazeta Po-Kievski," "Den," "Mirror Weekly," and "2000" in Ukraine). To check for less mainstream views, niche periodicals of diametrically opposed political orientations were also analyzed ("National Review" and "Nation" in the USA, "Crimska Pravda," and "Visokiy Zamok" in ...

Drawing on the ideas of Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Carpentier (2017), this paper shows how, on the one hand, discursive-material assemblages within the digital environment of interconnected information networks prevent the possibility of final discursive closures, while, on the other hand, they may weaken discourses, preventing them from serving as a mobilizing force for social change. To illustrate this, the paper discusses the case of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who banned oppositional television channels in a bid to shut down oppositional discourse by both discursive (the reduction of oppositional arguments) and material means (the physical closure of the studios). Discourse-material analysis presented in the paper draws on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and Nico Carpentier's Discursive-Material Knot.

Many CDA scholars present the idea of “democracy” as a normative yardstick against which injustices of all kinds and in any type of society can be measured; many also assume there is an inherent opposition between democratization with its advances toward social justice and neoliberal marketization with its array of negative consequences. Analyzing the discourse of democratization in the context of contemporary Ukraine, this paper argues that the issue is more complicated. Neoliberal marketization can go hand-in-hand with the discourse of universal democratization, which only contributes therefore to the perpetuation of neocolonial injustice as manifested in ongoing neoliberal projects.

This article argues that we need to be more cautious with the dichotomy between “corporate” and “alternative” media widely accepted within critical media studies. This division can be misleading, especially if applied to non-Western societies. I explicate my argument using the case study of the Russian alternative radio station, Echo of Moscow, and analyzing its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. My research is based on a qualitative content analysis of 73 hard news pieces on OWS that Echo of Moscow released from September 17 to November 18, 2011. The results of my analysis show that Echo’s framing of the OWS was typical “protest paradigm” framing, which corporate media usually employ when covering social protests.

This article argues that we need to be more cautious with the dichotomy between “corporate” and “alternative” media widely accepted within critical media studies. This division can be misleading, especially if applied to non-Western societies. I explicate my argument using the case study of the Russian alternative radio station, Echo of Moscow , and analyzing its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. My research is based on a qualitative content analysis of 73 hard news pieces on OWS that Echo of Moscow released from September 17 to November 18, 2011. The results of my analysis show that Echo ’s framing of the OWS was typical “protest paradigm” framing, which corporate media usually employ when covering social protests.

Employing Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, this paper analyses the populist discourse of the Euromaidan, a Ukrainian movement for European integration. Articulating their democratic demands equivalentially, Euromaidan leaders and activists brought to the field of Ukraine’s discursivity the impossible totality of “the Ukrainian people” fighting against the “anti-popular regime.” The purpose of this study was to trace the formation of this populist discourse by answering the following research question: How did the Euromaidan come to articulate itself as a totality representing the whole of the Ukrainian people? This paper discusses thirteen speeches delivered by Euromaidan leaders onsite in Kyiv’s main square from December 1, 2013, to February 22, 2014.

This chapter discusses how Ukrainian politicians have been exploiting conspiratorial populist discourses to instigate public fears and shift attention from the internal dimensions of Ukrainian problems to external ones. The case study discussed is the Odessa tragedy that happened on May 2, 2014, when forty-eight people died as a result of street clashes between two groups of Ukrainians – the opponents and proponents of the revolution called ‘Euromaidan’. Using framing analysis, the chapter investigates the coverage of the tragedy by the news programs of three national television networks and Ukraine’s five most popular news websites: news articles posted online by these outlets on May 3 and 4, the two days immediately after the fire.

It has been argued that by allowing users to unfriend, unfollow, and block political and cultural ‘others,’ Facebook facilitates the discouragement of dialog between those holding different views on political issues. Using a case study of a civil confrontation in Ukraine, the paper analyzes the reasons for unfriending political ‘others’ reported by 699 respondents of a qualitative survey. Its findings are in line with researchers who have also found that the likelihood of selective avoidance is higher among people who are more politically active, emotionally involved, and who have more online friends. The paper also discusses an interesting discovery that has not been previously considered. The respondents often shunned political ‘others’ out of suspicion that they were trolls. As this paper suggests, whether real or imagined, trolling has turned out to be a real force influencing people’s decisions to withdraw from communication on the most important issues of public life.

Many CDA scholars assume there is an inherent opposition between democratization with its advances toward social justice and neoliberal marketization with its array of negative consequences. Analyzing the discourse of democratization in the context of contemporary Ukraine, this paper argues that the issue is more complicated. Neoliberal marketization can go hand-in-hand with the discourse of universal democratization, which only contributes therefore to the perpetuation of neocolonial injustice as manifested in ongoing neoliberal projects. RESUMO Muitos estudiosos de Análise Crítica do Discurso assumem que há uma oposição inerente entre democratização, com seus avanços em direção à justiça social, e mercantilização neoliberal, com sua gama de consequências negativas. Analisando o discurso da democratização no contexto da Ucrânia contemporânea, este artigo argumenta que a questão é mais complicada. A mercantilização neoliberal pode andar de mãos dadas com o discurso da democratização universal, o que apenas contribui, portanto, para a perpetuação da injustiça neocolonial, tal como ela se manifesta nos projetos neoliberais em andamento Palavras-chave: Análise Crítica do Discurso. Democratização. Neoliberalismo. Neocolonialismo. Ucrânia. RESUMEN Muchos académicos del ACD asumen que existe una oposición inherente entre la democratización, con sus avances hacia la justicia social, y la mercantilización neoliberal, con sus consecuencias negativas. Por medio del análisis el discurso de la democratización en el contexto de la Ucrania contemporánea, este artículo argumenta que la cuestión es más compleja. La mercantilización neoliberal puede ir de la mano del discurso de la democratización universal, y por lo tanto contribuye a la perpetuación de la injusticia neocolonial, como se manifiesta en los proyectos neoliberales contemporáneos. Palabras clave: Análisis crítico del discurso. Democratización. Neoliberalismo Neocolonialismo. Ucrania.

This article argues that we need to be more cautious with the dichotomy between "corporate" and "alternative" media widely accepted within critical media studies. This division can be misleading, especially if applied to non-Western societies. I explicate my argument using the case study of the Russian alternative radio station, Echo of Moscow, and analyzing its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. My research is based on a qualitative content analysis of 73 hard news pieces on OWS that Echo of Moscow released from September 17 to November 18, 2011. The results of my analysis show that Echo's framing of the OWS was typical "protest paradigm" framing, which corporate media usually employ when covering social protests.

This article analyzes how the ‘progressive’ imagination of democratically minded intellectuals in Russia discursively produces the internal ‘other’ – Vladimir Putin’s supporters – as a singular monolithic subject whose ‘underdeveloped’ intellectual condition is judged against an imagined
scale of human progression. Discussing the case study of a Russian independent radio station Echo of Moscow, the author argues that its democratizing anti-Putin discourse is organized along the lines of a mythological narrative well known since colonial times: struggle between ‘moderns’ identifying themselves with progress and ‘barbarians’ whose barbarian identity is ascribed to them by modernizers. Drawing on postcolonial and media studies, the author suggests that antidemocratic
divisions into ‘civilized’ wedom and ‘underdeveloped’ theydom are unavoidable until we realize the full extent of the enslaving potential of the progressive narrative of the Enlightenment.

Although criticism of Enlightenment ideas has become widespread within academic circles, the basic Enlightenment narrative-an inexorable movement to a progressive condition-remains a dominant assumption within the discourses of modernization and democratization. This article analyzes how the 'progressive' imagination of Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine discursively produced the internal 'other' as a singular monolithic subject whose 'underdeveloped' intellectual condition was judged against an imagined scale of human progression. The argument is explicated through the discourse analysis of popular blogs on Ukrainian Pravda-a political web site that played a crucial role in organizing Maidan protests. The article analyzes 189 postings of Ukrainian Pravda bloggers starting from 26 November 2013-the day when the bloggers' group 'Maidan' was formed-until 21 January 2014, which denoted the beginning of a murderous stage of the Maidan protest.

Drawing on Ernesto Laclau's theory of articulation, this article analyzes Barack Obama's and Vladimir Putin's public speeches on the Ukrainian crisis of 2014. The article discusses how the presidents constructed rival discourses by erasing the nuances of complex tensions between the logics of equivalence and difference existing within the Ukrainian discursive space. Acting like imperial administrators from colonial times, Obama and Putin pushed representations of Ukraine based on two 'impossible wholes': a unified nation whose sovereignty was threatened from outside (Obama's discourse) and a consolidated pro-Russian Southeast needing to be defended from Kyiv-based nationalists and extremists (Putin's articulation).

The discourse of terrorism is one of the most powerful political
discourses of our times. More often than not, its labels and
assumptions – including the division of the world into sharp
dichotomies of ‘free’ and ‘civilized’ states vs. ‘evil’ and ‘barbarian
terrorists’ – go unquestioned in related political speeches, media
reports, and public deliberation. These unquestioned assumptions,
however, become problematic when the signifier ‘terrorism’ is
used to depict an armed struggle of ethno-nationalistic groups for
independent self-governance. This is because struggle against
‘terrorism’ justifies a completely different arsenal of response
strategies, which might lack legitimacy when countering
separatism. This problem becomes apparent when states respond
to separatism by manipulating the fear of terrorism to justify
undemocratic actions in the name of national security. Using as a
case study the post-Maidan confrontation in the East of Ukraine
and analyzing related coverage by three political websites, this
paper discusses how the discourse of terrorism has been formed
within the public sphere of Ukraine.

In his recent book The Discursive-Material Knot, [Carpentier, N. (2017).
The discursive-material Knot: Cyprus in conflict and community media
participation. New York: Peter Lang]. Nico Carpentier identifies three
nodal points of antagonistic discourse: the need for destruction of
the enemy, homogenization of the self as opposed to the enemy,
and the radical difference of the enemy. The latter appears when
the self and the other are thought to be irreconcilably at odds,
and the enemy is presented as inferior. In the more extreme
cases, this radical othering leads to a dehumanization and
demonization of the other, which makes the destruction of the
enemy easier. Using post-Maidan social confrontation within
Ukraine and its Facebook discussions as a case study, this paper
analyzes how exactly the radical othering and subsequent
dehumanization of the enemy is discursively structured, and
describe the conditions under which such extreme manifestations
of conflict could be eliminated with the ultimate goal of
transforming antagonistic into agonistic discourse.

This book explores the detrimental effects on global peace of populism’s tendency to present complex social issues in simplistic "good versus evil" terms. Analyzing the civilizational discourse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with respect to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine—with his division of the world into "civilized us" versus "barbarian them"—the book argues that such a one-dimensional representation of complex social reality leaves no space for understanding the conflict and has little, if any, potential to bring about peace.

To deconstruct the "civilization versus barbarism" discourse propagated by Zelensky, the book incorporates into its analysis alternative articulations of the crisis by oppositional voices. The author looks at the writing of several popular Ukrainian journalists and bloggers who have been excluded from the field of political representation within Ukraine, where all oppositional media are currently banned. Drawing on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the author argues that the incorporation of alternative perspectives, and silenced voices, is vitally important for understanding the complexity of all international conflicts, including the current one between Russia and Ukraine.

Book Description

This book explores the reasons behind the unexpected rise to power of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian with no political background, and offers an in-depth analysis of the populist messages he delivered to the Ukrainian people via his TV show.

Taking a discourse analysis approach, the author draws on two main arguments of critical scholarship: the “populist explosion” of the recent decade came as a reaction to the inequalities and injustices of the global neoliberal order, and the success of neoliberalism can be explained by its ability to mask itself under attractive progressive covers. Developing these lines of argument, the book demonstrates not only how the “populist explosion” can lead to  further neoliberalization, but also that the euphemizing effect can be achieved by mixing the virtual and the real, as in the case of Zelensky.

The results of this investigation are in line with the “digital skeptics” arguing that new SNS, instead of networking, can disconnect people by allowing them to create a digital environment that is much more homogeneous than the non-digital social world. As my research shows, in the case of the Ukrainian Maidan, social media did not facilitate intercultural communication; rather, through the function of “unfriending,” they allowed the deepening of already existing cleavages and enabled the creation of new splits.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the “progressive” imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the “more advanced” Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between “progressive” and “retrograde” forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the “White Ribbons” social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013–2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpentier, this book shows how “progressive” articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

As I strive to show in this chapter, “progressive” Ukrainian media contributed to the tragic post-Maidan developments in the East of Ukraine by adopting the Jacobin practice of marginalising and silencing
opponents in the name of progress. By presenting the anti-Maidan
movement as an absolute that was outside of the Ukrainian social order, they created the conditions of totalitarian intolerance emerging from the terrain of democratic revolution. As a result, antidemocratic and totalitarian tendencies in post-Yanukovych Ukraine not only reemerged but were even facilitated—a paradoxical outcome for a progressive
revolution waged in the name of democracy.