War through the Eyes of the Military (Based on Photocontent of Official Pages of Infantry Brigades in the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook)

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to definite the features of the military view of the current stage of the Russian-Ukrainian war, as one of the part of its contemporary «multiplex» vision. The research methodology combines quantitative (content analysis, statistical calculations) and qualitative (structural semiotic-semantic analysis) methods with culturological interpretation of the outcomes. Moreover, some personal observations of the authors on social platforms in Ukraine have been used. The scientific novelty consists in the theoretical reconstruction of the visual image of «war through the eyes of the military», which is markedly different from every day and journalistic assumptions about it. Conclusions. As a result of a quantitative content-analysis of the photocontent of the official Facebook-page of the Kholodny Yar 93rd separate mechanised brigade, the most popular among the 23 infantry brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the authors came to the conclusion that it forms a special point of view – «war through the eyes of the military». Paradoxically, the war does not look like a chain of combat operations with the massive use of tanks, artillery, and other weapons, the result of which is the destruction of the maximum number of enemies. It appears as a special type of human existence. This was the result of the intersection of the «peaceful» beliefs of the Operator, the professional media people who generated this content, and the real combat environment in which the shooting took place. The specified vision performs a motivational function for the active pro-Ukrainian community, which is the main audience of this page. Recognition of the peculiarities of other visions of the Russian-Ukrainian war current phase, for example, a purely journalistic one, can become a relevant direction of further research, an important component of the scientific formalisation of the modern view of it.

Key words: content-analysis, media, military vision, Russian-Ukrainian war, Ukrainian culture, Facebook.