Most importantly: Kyiv is on fire right now. We need to keep amplifying Ukrainian voices; it's more important than ever to pay attention, listen to the stories. 🇺🇦

Creators play a key role as contemporary war communicators. Their visibility can both empower and endanger them; our paper calls for acknowledging their lived realities, the ethical tensions they navigate, and their place in reshaping how conflict is understood in the age of platformed media.

3️⃣ Exploiting virality for activism - they feel compelled to use tragic content for engagement, aware that the algorithm amplifies intense material even as they fear its trivialization. Yet, they exploit their proprietary grip on the platform, recognizing that "the algorithm loves the war.”

2️⃣ Negotiating roles & responsibilities - they are not journalists, NGOs, activists, news anchors, or influencers, but they are all of these at once. They admit to blurring identities, reflecting both confidence and uncertainty about their legitimacy and responsibility in reporting on war.

Creators reveal three distinct forms of ambivalence:
1️⃣ Balancing immediacy & visibility - they aim to share raw, authentic accounts of war. Yet, they adapt their content to algorithm-friendly formats to stay within exposure pipelines, as they “need people and TikTok to see the war.”

Right after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, I started observing and analyzing how the conflict is represented on social media and what role content creators play. Then Tom and Moa came along and together, we came up with the concept of "ambivalent visibility":

to se dalo právě v tom projektu Společnost nedůvěry, který publikoval Český Rozhlas :-)

Thank you, Craig! It's reassuring that the dream/nightmare situation is relatable to someone :-) I will def need London related advice - I will get in touch and thank you! And also congrats on the postdoc,hope Munich is now more dream/less nightmare :-)

What I want to say, I guess, is that this type of writing lacks nuance because it assumes a one-directional relationship between users and technology, but we are active agents in this relationship, not passive victims of feeds and algorithms.

than eating fries - yet, we like to eat fries. I like Substack, but it has become a hotbed for these takes - I am better than you because I scroll less (no, you just scroll on a different platform). And it's fine - you're a normal person with good and bad habits.

a nejde jenom o to, že to spoustu lidí dostane do hrozný situace - jde i o to, že Fulbright funguje desítky let a je to smysluplná, fungující instituce. Já mám za sebou víc různých stipendií a pobytu a Fulbright byl jednoznačně nejlepší, nejpřínosnější z nich.