Search Results (19)

Recent research in digital migration studies analyzes both refugee populations’ social media use and so-called integration outcomes. Against the backdrop of digitalization, we argue for understanding belonging as part of an ongoing process in physical, virtual and hybrid continuities, where material aspects cannot be divorced from imagined constructions. We take the case of Ukrainian women arriving in the Netherlands following the Russian aggression against Ukraine, in 15 semi-structured interviews from 2023. Adopting an intersectional lens, our research asks the following questions: How does social media use mediate or inform a sense of belonging? How do observations correspond to or differ from previous studies on refugees and social media, given this population’s temporary protection (TP) status? As participants leverage digital platforms differently in evolving situations, they navigate connectedness to the new community; we argue this may be linked to distinct TP status and other characteristics of difference, including educational levels and digital literacy. Conclusions indicate that an intersectional lens could be applied in understanding Ukrainian perspectives in other Member States—or beneficiaries of differing origin—to better account for how intersectional dimensions like legal status can be mutually constitutive of virtual connectedness versus material, physical rootedness or vulnerability. Full article

This study examines Lombardy’s response to the Ukrainian migration crisis which was triggered by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It focuses on the on the innovative experience of refugee reception that emerged as the traditional system became overwhelmed. It analyzes which aspects proved effective and which did not in the development of this alternative approach and the collaboration among various actors. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 28 participants, including professionals from both traditional reception systems and new collaborative actors and entities. Results highlight four specificities of the Ukrainian migration: geographic and cultural proximity, the demographic composition (predominantly women and children), positive media portrayal, and the activation of new actors. The study delves into six motivations driving this collaborative effort, ranging from historical ties, and pre-existing communities to emotional involvement and a perceived urgency for support. The challenges in coordinating between traditional systems and new collaborative entities are also examined, including communication barriers, the need for flexibility, and the lack of clear guidelines. This study recommends establishing a steering committee for enhanced collaboration and emphasizes the importance of long-term sustainability of these collaborative efforts. The findings offer valuable considerations for managing migration emergencies and fostering collaboration between different organizations and stakeholders. Full article

Intuitive reasoning is a fundamental aspect of both the creation and interpretation of art. It allows artists to express their deepest emotions and subconscious thoughts, leading to works that can evoke strong reactions in viewers. For those who interpret art, intuition enables a direct and holistic understanding that goes beyond analytical fragmentation, allowing for a more personal and profound engagement with the work of art. Academic research conducted on the works of Polish and Ukrainian students has shown that art in times of unrest reflects deeply hidden emotions. The works of students from Zaporizhzhia collected less than a week before the armed invasion of Ukraine in 2022 indicated national sentiments, fears, and premonitions that were absent from the works of Polish students. The armed conflict with Russia, which has been ongoing since 2014, has strengthened the sense of national identity and patriotism among Ukrainian youth. A comparison of the perspectives of Polish and Ukrainian youth shows differences resulting from direct experience of the conflict and the influence of media, education, and politics on their perception. Full article

The outbreak at the end of February 2022 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine—and the Russian–Ukrainian hostilities that began in 2014 with the Euromaidan—has led to numerous dramatic episodes from both a humanitarian and an informative perspective. In this context, social media have been filled with rhetoric and narrative mechanisms, both from civil society organisations and from European media and institutions, in their eagerness to define their position within the dialectical battle. This research aims to address organisational communication in the European Union during the first year after the invasion, taking as its object of study the publications of four institutional bodies: European Commission, European Parliament, European Council, and European External Action Service. For this purpose, a content analysis of tweets was carried out, as well as in-depth interviews with specialised actors in institutional communication and disinformation at the EU level. Overall, the results show that the parallel narrative of the Commission, the Parliament, the Council, and the EEAS has been quite similar and lacks significant divergences, reflecting coherence and coordination in the communication strategies around the Ukrainian war, although there are interesting findings on the interaction of the institutions with the media and other civil society actors in communicating this international crisis via social media. Full article

Background: The conflict of the Russian–Ukrainian War that began on 24 February 2022 has profoundly changed Europe. The primary objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of anxiety, stress, depression, and insomnia among a group of surveyed Poles in the first months after the outbreak of war in 2022. The secondary goal was to analyze potential risk factors for these mental disorders. Methods: A cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted. An anonymous questionnaire was created using Google Forms and distributed through social media from March 2022 to June 2022. The questionnaire included the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and an evaluation of the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). Results: Overall, 11.26% of 311 participants had depression, 10.29% had anxiety, and 24.12% experienced stress. Further, 62.05% of them declared sleep disturbances, and about 60% of them reported experiencing fears associated with the war. The outcomes of the assessment of psychiatric symptoms (depression, anxiety, stress and sleep disturbance) were associated with following factors: self-reported health status, fear of Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fear of the war extending to Poland. When the results for psychiatric symptoms were categorized into two groups, severe and non-severe, logistic regression analysis was only feasible for the insomnia variable. For this variable, multivariate logistic regression identified key potential factors: age, stress, and fear of Russian invasion of Ukraine. Conclusions: The respondents were found to be highly concerned about the war. In total, almost half of them manifested symptoms of anxiety, depression, and/or stress. Slightly less than two-thirds had sleep disorders. This study confirms that in a crisis situation, mental health screening is necessary. Full article

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health has been widely demonstrated; however, few studies have investigated the psychological processes involved in this impact, including core beliefs violation, meaning-making disruption, interpersonal support, or one’s relational functioning. This study explored the mental health of 215 Italian adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent outbreak of the Russian–Ukrainian war. By administering a set of questionnaires, several cognitive and emotional variables were investigated, including core belief violation, meaning attribution to the pandemic and war, attachment, and emotion regulation, social media addiction, and relationships with significant others and teachers. We conducted some descriptive, mean difference, correlational, and predictive analyses that revealed a significant association between core belief violation caused by war and pandemic, ability to integrate war and pandemic within personal meaning universe, the relational support received, and mental health. The relationship with teachers during these challenging periods improved significantly according to the respondents’ opinion, becoming both more authoritative and empathic. This study offers insights into what cognitive and relational processes are useful to intervene on to reduce the distress of adolescents who are facing significant moments of crisis due to events that challenge their cognitive and emotional balance. Full article

African swine fever (ASF) has posed a significant threat to Ukrainian pig farming since its identification in 2012. In this study, recognising the pivotal role of pigkeepers in disease control, we conducted ten focus groups involving 52 smallholders across eight regions in Ukraine. Using participatory methods, we revealed their awareness of ASF signs, transmission routes, preventive measures, and the perceptions of stakeholders involved in ASF control. Furthermore, we identified the smallholders’ acceptance of eradication and restriction measures, the perceived impact of zoning consequences, and their main sources of ASF information. Smallholders identified fever and skin haemorrhage as the most indicative signs of ASF and highlighted rodents as a primary transmission concern. Disinfection was seen as the most effective measure for preventing the introduction of ASF. Pigkeepers who perceived their stakeholder role in ASF control showed more trust in themselves and veterinarians than in central veterinary authorities. Farm-level ASF eradication measures were generally accepted; however, culling within the protection zone was least accepted, with economic losses listed as the most impactful consequence for pigkeepers. For ASF information, pigkeepers favour web searches and veterinarians, as well as traditional media and word-of-mouth news. This study provides valuable insights into refining the ASF communication strategies in Ukraine. Full article

Recent events in Europe, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Russo–Ukrainian War (RUW), might have sparked anxiety among adolescents. This study aimed to compare anxiety levels in Lithuanian adolescents post-COVID-19 peak (Study 1, October 2021) and during the onset of the RUW (Study 2, April–June 2022). Data from 459 participants in Study 1 and 6637 in Study 2, aged 11–17, were collected through HBSC pilot and national surveys in Lithuania. Self-reported questionnaires assessed anxiety, social media use, stress, loneliness, self-efficacy, and peer support factors. Analysis was conducted using multivariable logistic regressions. Notably, anxiety prevalence in Lithuanian adolescents showed no significant difference between Study 1 and Study 2, stabilizing around 24%. In 2021, stress (OR = 5.89, 95% CI 3.11–11.17), problematic social media use (OR = 4.58, 95% CI 1.89–10.58), and female gender (OR = 2.87, 95% CI 1.58–5.22) significantly predicted anxiety. By 2022, stress (OR = 3.68, 95% CI 3.14–4.30), loneliness (OR = 2.85, 95% CI 2.43–3.35), and lower self-efficacy (OR = 1.40, 95% CI 1.20–1.60) emerged as important predictors. This study enhances our understanding of adolescent anxiety during crises, emphasizing the urgency of addressing multiple factors to manage and support vulnerable youth. Full article

Russian interference and invasion in Ukraine have transformed that nation’s historical practice of mural painting. A traditional art form with deep religious and political resonance in Ukraine, murals have become an instrument for patriotic mass mobilisation against the Russian military threat. From the mid-2000s, spraypaint graffiti underwent a gradual process of professionalisation and reconciliation with mainstream culture as Ukrainian municipalities pursued urban beautification initiatives and city-branding strategies to mitigate the socioeconomic challenges of postsocialism. It was this legacy of apolitical, privately funded street art that provided the foundations for patriotic muralism following the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Amidst the post-Maidan search for a postcolonial understanding of Ukrainian culture disentangled from Soviet and Russian influences, professionally produced murals in central urban districts proposed new visions of national identity. The war’s intensification since 2022 has resulted in a decentralisation of mural production. No longer reliant on international festivals in urban centres, conflict murals are now made by Ukrainian artists in large cities and small towns across the country. The newest murals represent a blending of the physical and digital—with a subject matter often inspired by viral conflict memes; artworks are, in turn, shared with worldwide audiences via social media. Full article

Utilizing social media data is imperative in comprehending critical insights on the Russia–Ukraine cyber conflict due to their unparalleled capacity to provide real-time information dissemination, thereby enabling the timely tracking and analysis of cyber incidents. The vast array of user-generated content on these platforms, ranging from eyewitness accounts to multimedia evidence, serves as invaluable resources for corroborating and contextualizing cyber attacks, facilitating the attribution of malicious actors. Furthermore, social media data afford unique access to public sentiment, the propagation of propaganda, and emerging narratives, offering profound insights into the effectiveness of information operations and shaping counter-messaging strategies. However, there have been hardly any studies reported on the Russia–Ukraine cyber war harnessing social media analytics. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the crucial role of social-media-based cyber intelligence in understanding Russia’s cyber threats during the ongoing Russo–Ukrainian conflict. This paper introduces an innovative multidimensional cyber intelligence framework and utilizes Twitter data to generate cyber intelligence reports. By leveraging advanced monitoring tools and NLP algorithms, like language detection, translation, sentiment analysis, term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), Porter stemming, n-grams, and others, this study automatically generated cyber intelligence for Russia and Ukraine. Using 37,386 tweets originating from 30,706 users in 54 languages from 13 October 2022 to 6 April 2023, this paper reported the first detailed multilingual analysis on the Russia–Ukraine cyber crisis in four cyber dimensions (geopolitical and socioeconomic; targeted victim; psychological and societal; and national priority and concerns). It also highlights challenges faced in harnessing reliable social-media-based cyber intelligence. Full article

The purpose of this study was to assess the Greek public’s perceptions of the reliability of information received about the Russo-Ukrainian war in the spring of 2022. The study was conducted through an online questionnaire survey consisting of closed-ended statements on a five-point Likert scale. Principal components analysis was performed on the collected data. The retained principal components (PCs) were subjected to non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis to group respondents into clusters based on the similarity of perceived outcomes. A total of 840 responses were obtained. Twenty-eight original variables from the questionnaire were summarised into five PCs, explaining 63.0% of the total variance. The majority of respondents felt that the information they had received about the Russo-Ukrainian war was unreliable. Older, educated, professional people with exposure to fake news were sceptical about the reliability of information related to the war. Young adults who were active on social networks and had no detailed knowledge of the events considered information about the war to be reliable. The study found that the greater an individual’s ability to spot fake news, the lower their trust in social media and their information habits on social networks. Full article

Disasters do not follow a predictable timetable. Rapid situational awareness is essential for disaster management. People witnessing a disaster in the same area and beyond often use social media to report, inform, summarize, update, or warn each other. These warnings and recommendations are faster than traditional news and mainstream media. However, due to the massive amount of raw and unfiltered information, the data cannot be managed by humans in time. Automated situational awareness reporting could significantly and sustainably improve disaster management and save lives by quickly filtering, detecting, and summarizing important information. In this work, we aim to provide a novel approach towards automated situational awareness reporting using microblogging data through event detection and summarization. Therefore, we combine an event detection algorithm with different summarization libraries. We test the proposed approach against data from the Russo-Ukrainian war to evaluate its real-time capabilities and determine how many of the events that occurred could be highlighted. The results reveal that the proposed approach can outline significant events. Further research can be carried out to improve short-text summarization and filtering. Full article

The local press finds its vocation in the community it addresses and in its territory of deployment, taking proximity as the main news value in the choice of events. The war in Ukraine, as an international theme, has imposed itself on the national media agenda, and, as such, we have proposed to evaluate its presence in the regional media agenda. For this case study, we have selected the local daily newspapers Diário As Beiras and Diário de Viseu (located in the center region of Portugal) and analyzed twelve consecutive editions of each newspaper, starting on the first day of the conflict, 24 February 2022. The results point to an appreciation of the event, either from an international perspective or through a regional lens, essentially evident in the coverage of solidarity actions and tributes. The sources used by the newspapers are mostly institutional, which leads us to a “seated journalism” in line with previous studies specific to the local press. This analysis also highlights the emphasis on the information obtained from the prism of sources on the Ukrainian side of the conflict, which, in the case of Diário de Viseu, is underlined by biased discourse and some marks of subjectivity. Full article

The armed conflict in Ukraine has caused a lot of emotions around the world. Many countries have been involved in helping brutally attacked people, especially mothers and children. The versatile involvement of large powers is monitored and noticeable by the media. Active help from Poland is a very visible sign of human solidarity with the suffering Ukrainian nation. Open hearts, houses and institutions and humanitarian and medical aid are elements of Polish kindness and empathy. The aim of the research was to collect Poles’ opinions about the need to provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians from the territories of the Russian–Ukrainian war. Capturing feelings of Poles towards Ukrainians during the war is an interesting issue that shows subjective opinions about the existential situation perceived in the space of mutual personal interactions. The results showing opinions on help were collected from a group of 1012 people throughout Poland with the help of an authorial questionnaire. The obtained data shows a positive attitude of Poles to Ukrainians. The most willing to help are people over 49 years old, more often with a good and very good financial situation. Respondents believe that general assistance from other countries and the European Parliament is not sufficient. Military support is accepted the most by the oldest participants of research, and less by the age group up to 30 years who support medical help more. More concerned about the ongoing conflict are respondents under the age of 30 and the least wealthy, including, more often, women. The richest respondents are least afraid of the effects of the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian conflict. The conducted research confirms the openness of Polish society to refugees and brings opinions about existential solidarity with the suffering Ukrainian nation. Full article

Armed conflicts are public health emergencies that affect human lives at multiple levels. The mental health of adolescents and young adults is at high risk during crisis settings; therefore, this cross-sectional survey-based study aimed to evaluate anxiety and depressive symptoms among university students in the Czech Republic following the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022 (RUW-22). The study used standardized screening instruments; the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) for anxiety and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for depression. Of 591 students who participated in this study, 67.7% were females, 68.2% held Czech citizenship, and 63.8% were enrolled in medical or healthcare programs. The participants were highly concerned about the RUW-22 news, with a mean score of 7.17 ± 2.50 (0–10). While 34% and 40.7% of the participants in this study manifested moderate to severe levels of anxiety and depression, respectively, the mental health burden of the RUW-22 was confirmed by the positive correlation between “feeling concerned”, GAD-7 (ρ = 0.454), and PHQ-9 (ρ = 0.326). Female gender, higher frequency of news following, and social media use were associated with higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms; thus, proposing them to be risk factors for psychological disorders following the RUW-22. Full article