Refugees, evacuees, or distant others?: Exploring the limits and possibilities of cosmopolitan engagement in Japanese-language issue publics related to the war in Ukraine

This paper explores the role of social media in complex and global moral crises using the concept of cosmopolitanism. It starts from the premise that we live in a world faced by unprecedented global challenges, which is increasingly interconnected and separated at the same time. This makes it critical to ensure that communication in digital public spaces makes the participants aware of collective challenges facing societies across national borders, and willing to cooperate in addressing those challenges. In this paper, this attitude of openness and responsibility towards individuals and communities in distant places is defined as cosmopolitanism. The role of several types of media for the formation of cosmopolitan attitudes has been examined in the past, but the scholarship has not reached a consensus on whether mediated communication can make us more cosmopolitan. These studies often focus on the ways in which distant others are represented in the mediated discourses. While it is important to critically engage with ways mediated communication represents those affected by global crises, it is not only discourse that may be enabling or preventing the participants of digital publics from demonstrating openness and responsibility to them. Investigation of cosmopolitanism mediated by digital technologies needs to be expanded to include material elements and user practices on these platforms. For this reason, I approach my research problem using Wanda Orlikowski and Susan Scott’s concept of sociomateriality (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008) that conceives of user practices as shaping and being shaped by technological properties of the environments where they unfold. The paper also deploys issue mapping methodology developed by Jean Burgess and Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández (2016), which combines computational and qualitative methods. Following this methodology, I perform network analysis to identify influential actors, and use computational text analysis methods, including topic modelling and dictionary-based analysis to get a higher-level understanding of the online communication regarding the issue. I then perform qualitative analysis of the posts and shared media objects to capture users’ motivations and strategies of usage of platform affordances. The study focuses on online Japanese-language discussion regarding Ukrainians fleeing the war to Japan. This case is significant as Japan’s assistance to Ukrainians contrasts starkly with the strict exclusionary immigration policy of the country. However, as evident from the official naming of Ukrainian refugees as “evacuees” used by Japanese government and media, Ukrainians are not given an official refugee status, and their settlement is seen as temporary. Understanding the online practices of Japanese citizens encountering Ukrainian refugees, or “evacuees” in their midst will allow to gain insights into Japanese publics’ engagement with issues of immigration and humanitarian assistance, and the role social media platforms play in it. References: Burgess, J., & Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2016). Mapping sociocultural controversies across digital media platforms: One week of #gamergate on Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 79–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2016.1155338 Orlikowski, W. J., & Scott, S. V. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization. Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433–474.