Olga Pasitselska

Based on interviews with urban residents in Germany and Israel, this study examines how residential instant messaging groups (e.g., WhatsApp, Telegram) reshape the norms of “good neighboring”: reciprocity, distance, and speaking out. Drawing on Blokland’s public familiarity framework and Rosenblum’s theorizing of neighborly norms, we ask how digital co-presence transforms the relational conditions of neighboring and how these norms are negotiated within residential chat groups. We show that messenger groups lower the threshold for mutual support but introduce tensions through persistent mutual awareness, which are thenresolved through norm negotiation. Extending the public familiarity framework, we identify a complementary axis of performativity–discretion that manifests through norm negotiation. Residents calibrate between engagement and restraint, enacting “good enough” neighboring within the double-bounded constraints of a building and a chat group. We contribute to research on digitally mediated neighborhood communication by showing how urban dwellers achieve pragmatic coexistence through calibrated visibility.

Throughout the years, media literacy has been considered an aid for many societal ills in the Western world: from fighting against stereotypical representations of different (marginalized) groups to combating mis- and disinformation. However, these educational initiatives build upon a Western view of the world, and do not take into account issues faced by societies in permanent crisis. The aim of this article is to propose a conceptual framework called H.E.L.P. that positions media literacy as a form of resilience in areas fraught with wars, migration, famine, climate catastrophe, and other adversities. In the H.E.L.P. framework, we identify four core elements: habit (focusing on media use and media environment); escapism (focusing on entertainment and media avoidance); listening (discussing attentiveness to affective and bodily reactions); and participation (highlighting active engagement with media). We discuss implications for media literacy research and provide guidelines for practitioners.

Messaging groups are emerging as “meso-spaces”—digital environments that enable sustained dialogue and collective action through their distinct affordances. We examine how such spaces facilitate civic self-organization through their hybrid online/offline, public/private, and local/global dynamics and how they function as local civic infrastructure during times of crisis. Using a mixed-methods analytical approach, we examined 47 public Telegram groups from Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified a fundamental tension between political discussion and practical help in these spaces, resolvable through active horizontal participation (including norm negotiation and self-moderation), or strict vertical moderation. Additional challenges included a lack of access to vulnerable groups and limited outreach to local civil society actors, both of which hindered group activity and structural connections within local civic infrastructure. Despite these challenges, our study highlights the potential of local chat groups for self-organization, albeit primarily among privileged urban individuals. We discuss the implications for democratic theory and practice.

Digital media literacy becomes crucial in modern conflict zones, as conflicts are increasingly digitized and hyperconnected. While a dangerous environment raises the need for orientation, propaganda and fakes discourage audiences’ sense-making efforts. Older adults often experience digital and social exclusion and might be vulnerable to mis- and disinformation. Previous research, focusing mostly on Western Europe, has studied digital media practices of older adults, however, there is very little knowledge on digital media literacy skills and needs of older adults in conflict zones. Drawing on eight focus groups, this article explores Ukrainian older adults’ challenges and compensation strategies during the digitized war. An inductive-qualitative analysis identifies three main factors that shape digital practices and dictate the literacy needs of Ukrainian older adults: (a) (lack of) access, grounded in material infrastructure and social ties; (b) self-(in)efficacy that often stems from pre-convictions about one’s agency and position in society; and (c) resilience that becomes crucial in the situation of continuous exposure to (mediated) violence. This research contributes to the understanding of the media literacy needs of older adults and lays the foundation for developing digital literacy study programs in conflict zones.

Contemporary media environments are rife with contested information. Unable to rely on contradictory or deliberately distorted media accounts, socially interactive audiences turn to trustworthy others to make sense of the political world outside. This study uses the context of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, marked by discordant media agendas and ideological narratives, to explore how citizens produce shared understandings of conflicting political issues. It draws upon a series of focus groups with media audiences in Eastern Ukraine to explore the socially embedded, interactive reconstruction and renegotiation of shared meaning. Based on a discourse and conversation analysis of the content, group dynamics, and non-verbal cues in the discussions, the study distinguishes three interaction modes (inquiry, narrative, and avoidance) that define the conditions for audiences’ opinion formation. The findings show that cooperation in inquiry mode facilitates deliberation, the adoption of rigid consensual boundaries in narrative mode increases polarization, whereas cynical detachment in avoidance mode preserves confusion. The article concludes by discussing the implications for socially mediated meaning-making and democratic potential of political talk.

During violent conflict, the evaluation of information sources often presents a complex challenge. Social interactions play a critical role for mediating audiences’ trust as they negotiate contested information spreading across the media and social networks. This study uses focus groups and individual interviews, conducted in the propaganda-saturated environment of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, to investigate how audiences develop and negotiate practices for assigning trust to the mediated and social sources. It identifies three verification practices, each based on a different notion of pragmatic trust: Reliance on ideologically close sources; skepticism toward individual sources while trusting media as institution; or institutional distrust and cynical disillusionment. Each practice is embedded in participants’ social environment, which both supplies information and helps negotiating appropriate verification practices. The article concludes by discussing implications for studies of media trust and socially shaped understanding of the media.

As expressions without clear definition but with strong normative charging, empty signifiers play an important role in political discourse. Uniting diverse populations under a common banner and endowing political demands with self-evident legitimacy, they constitute a potent tool for rallying support for political action. Among empty signifiers, one particularly versatile construct are ‘the people’ as bearers of ultimate political legitimacy. In this paper, we investigate how ‘the people’ are constructed in propagandistic conflict narratives during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, imbuing the concept with different meanings in the pursuit of competing political ends. We show how ‘the people’ are constructed as democratic sovereign, enduring nation, moral humans or dispersed media publics, each time summoning different kinds of legitimacy and using different strategies to construct encompassing consensus and marginalize dissent. We discuss implications for the study of ideological discourse, populism and political communication.

The Ukrainian–Russian conflict of 2013–2017 is characterized as ‘hybrid’ warfare, with a crucial role of informational component. Using ideological discourse analytic tools, this article demonstrates how two prominent Russian TV channels shaped the persuasive message, creating strong unity and mobilizing a high level of support among the national audience. Based on legitimation and de-legitimation patterns, Channel One and Russia-1 built ideologically polarized opposition between ‘Our’ and ‘Their’ sides of the conflict. The wide range of editorializing tools, socio-cultural and historical Soviet-time constructs, and references to gay culture served to promote one group and to debase the opposition. Close institutional ties between government and media in Russia sustain multiplicity and intertextuality of ‘general line’, thus eliminating discordant interpretations. The article shows strong evidence that the analyzed TV news programs present a typical illustration of ideological discourse, exploited by the Russian government in order to achieve its political goals.