The Ukrainian crisis became one of the main challenges for Europe, while Ukraine was one the main sources of EU-related narratives during initial stages of the crisis – the Euromaidan protests of 2013-2014. At the beginning of the Euromaidan, a narrative of Europe provided a ground for emerging of the protest movement. During the later military stage of the conflict, Europe was still a noticeable, but mostly background issue. Simultaneously, the Ukrainian crisis also became rather a second-rate issue for the EU. However, we still know little about how the European narratives promoted during the Euromaidan could have contributed to polarization of Ukrainian society and the military crisis in its Eastern part.
The paper presents the results of the research conducted in Ukraine in 2015. The research concentrates on the phenomenon of polarization of national public sphere on the internet during crisis events. It draws on attitudes and practices of digital activists that were active members of the Euromaidan protest movement from its early days. Those activists developed and supported the communication infrastructure of the Euromaidan, which was mainly promoted online rather than on largely censored traditional Ukrainian media. Therefore, the studied activists significantly contributed to articulation of a European narrative during the Ukrainian crisis. I studied seven most prominent groups of digital activists employing the methods of semi-structured interviews, virtual observations, and analysis of the campaign materials.
I argue that the Ukrainian protest community was imaged by the digital activists as something in-between Europe and Russia. Europe helped to define the targeted audience of the activists. It was communicated as a symbolically attractive space that contrasted to the “Russian World.” Similarly to Kundera’s narrative of the “Tragedy of Europe” (1984), the activists presented members of the movement as someone who struggled for Europe. In constant, the discourse of Russia signified negative consequences of possible failures of the Euromaidan, highlighting Russia’s otherness (Bugge 1999) in relation to Europe. Following that discursive polarization, the activists of the Euromaidan enthusiastically concentrated their media practices on more “progressive” and “clever” “euro-romantics” rather than tried to convince some supporters of the “Russian World” to accept agenda of the Euromaidan, particularly their European narrative.
The polarization of national public sphere became apparent on the Ukrainians social networks, which were dominated by the Russian site VK. Importantly, the audience of VK was considered by the Euromaidan digital practitioners as mostly “pro-Russian” with negative attitudes towards the EU, while much less significant in numbers audience of Facebook in Ukraine was seen as “pro-European.” The activists planned and coordinated their activities on Facebook at large, leaving millions of VK Russian-speaking Ukrainians on their own. In addition, the Russian internet “activism” and censorship made it less possible to work with VK. Consequently, it lowered chances for identification of a larger proportion of Ukrainians with narratives and values of the Euromaidan movement. These obstacles probably contributed to polarization between different groups of society that ultimately led to deepening of the crisis in Eastern Ukraine.
