Thursday, November 20, 2025, 12:00
Daria Batychko (GSSR – IFiS PAN) will deliver a talk “Representation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Ukrainian Media Discourse. Stability and Transformation”
Yaroslava Bukhta (University of Oxford) will deliver a talk “Mediating war: from newsrooms in Kyiv to communities in Oxford”
Moderator: Katarzyna Andrejuk, IFiS PAN
The meeting will be held online.
Link Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/92418073407?pwd=kkZo6ZuXbPCfIapUpCadXXNWbn7jb1.1
Daria Batychko
Representation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Ukrainian Media Discourse. Stability and Transformation
ABSTRACT. The research focuses on the trending yet sensitive topic of the war in Ukraine. It examines the impacted group of Ukrainian war-displaced individuals – the internally displaced persons (IDPs). The writing aims to explore the portrayal of IDPs in the Ukrainian media discourse from the onset of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2022-2025) to analyze how various factors influence their representation and to understand how displaced persons are depicted in the Ukrainian media. It assesses the stability and transformation of IDPs’ representation by comparing the findings with existing research in this area, identifying key differences in the portrayal of IDPs before and after the Russian full-scale invasion.
The research uses critical discourse analysis, supplemented by framing and content analysis elements, to examine articles published by reputable Ukrainian media sources about IDPs. The findings validate the assumption that the media sources’ affiliations significantly influence how IDPs are portrayed in Ukrainian media discourse, as well as the region of publication, changes in Ukrainian laws concerning IDP status and rights, and messages from public officials.
Several articles discuss the challenges faced by IDPs in Ukraine and how civil society has responded since the full-scale invasion. However, research on media portrayals of IDPs since 2022 remains limited, creating a gap in understanding how government actions, international migration policies, and other factors influence public perceptions of IDPs and their decisions to leave Ukraine or return to occupied territories, which is essential for improving migration policies.
BIO. Daria Batychko is a third-year PhD student in Sociology at the Graduate School of Social Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a member of the Institute’s Migration Research Group. Master of Science in International Economy (Mariupol State University, Ukraine) and Financial Management (Polonia University in Czestochowa, Poland), a former PhD student in Political Science at the European University, Kyiv, Ukraine. Within the previous PhD studies, Daria published the following articles: “European educational migration policy: challenges for Ukraine” (“Evropský Politický a Právní Diskurz”/“European Political and Law Discourse”, 2020) and “Educational migration policy: the COVID-19 pandemic impact” (“Економіка i Управління”/“Economics and Management”, 2021).
Daria’s research on the framing of refugees and IDPs in the Ukrainian media was presented in 2024-2025 at the IFiS PAN Migration Seminar held in Warsaw, Poland; at the 16th ESA Conference “Tension, Trust and Transformation” held in Porto, Portugal; at the Scuola Normale Superiore’s MigraMove Seminar held in Florence, Italy; at the Migration and Societal Change conference at Utrecht University, Netherlands; and during the European Sociological Association Summer School “Minorities and Marginalities: From Discrimination Towards More Equal Societies” at the University of Palermo, Italy.
Yaroslava Bukhta
Mediating war: from newsrooms in Kyiv to communities in Oxford
ABSTRACT. Yaroslava will present key insights from three years of her MPhil and DPhil research on how the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is mediated across borders—through journalism, podcasting and vlogging, and the everyday activities of refugee communities in the United Kingdom. Her MPhil research examined the work of Ukrainian journalists under wartime conditions, focusing on censorship and self-censorship, propaganda, ethics, and the professional boundaries of those reporting on war in their own country. Tracing how stories are selected, shaped, and circulated, she explored how journalists negotiate what can be said and what must remain unsaid, and how emotional proximity becomes part of professional judgment. Her ongoing DPhil research moves from Ukrainian newsrooms to the mediation environments of the UK, expanding the focus from journalists to vloggers, podcasters, and displaced Ukrainians, as well as to the British hosts and audiences who encounter the war through them. It examines how trust and proximity are created across distance, and how the full-scale war is imagined and made tangible for “distant audiences” through both media and the physical presence of Ukrainians in host communities.
BIO. Yaroslava Bukhta is a DPhil candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, where she researches the knowledge production on contemporary warfare, focusing on the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She previously completed an MPhil in Social Anthropology at Oxford, with research focusing on the work of Ukrainian journalists covering the first two years of the full-scale war. Ms Bukhta holds master’s and undergraduate degrees from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in journalism and political science, respectively. Before beginning her studies at Oxford, she worked for more than 5 years in media and communications in Ukraine and Brussels. Her research brings together anthropology, media studies, and war analysis to examine how knowledge is shaped, circulated, and contested in times of conflict.