Digital war diaries: Witnessing the 2022 Russian War against Ukraine

Abstract

Digital media have changed the ways people mobilise and act collectively in times of crisis. During the Russian aggression against Ukraine, they have been at the forefront of war coverage giving users the possibility to share experiences of wartime reality. To critically engage in the mediatisation of the current war in the context of war witnessing, this article aims at studying the war diaries shared on media during the Russo-Ukrainian war. More precisely, this study focuses on the analysis of Facebook and MyWar platform digital war diaries that were triggered by Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine 2022. The article seeks to understand the main tools for experiencing and constructing wartime reality and war trauma. The experimental work presented here provides one of the first investigations into how wartime witnessing of Russian aggression is happening and how it is shared in the contemporary space of digital media and fosters intellectual discussion about the dynamics of digital participation while witnessing and narrating war experiences.