Information is Powerful: Research on Ukraine
On the second anniversary of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I want to acknowledge and thank the growing number of researchers who are exploring the incredibly wide range of issues tied to the war in Ukraine. Many academics at all levels of academia are contributing their skills and training to Ukraine in one of the major ways they know – through their research.
Some remarkable work has been published, such as Simon Shuster’s (2024) story about the transition of Volodymyr Zelenskyy from a television star to the charismatic President of Ukraine, or Jon Roozenbeek’s (forthcoming) book on the impact of Russian propaganda. These are but two of many other examples of work that helps the world move beyond the news to better understand the social and political dynamics of this war. It is important as public understanding can shape policy and practice moving forward.
My colleagues and I have seen the growth of work on the war in Ukraine in the process of developing the Ukraine case studies project. In this project, we have been working on a case study of the Russia-Ukraine War (RUW) over the past two years, supplemented by embedded case studies of particular issues. This case study is our big ambition as it promises to yield original insights to help people understand a complex set of issues of this war that can inform theory and research on other wars equally tied to advances in approaches to the use of information, communication, and cyber capabilities.
But over these two years, we witnessed the growth of work on this topic through three events we organised to feed into this work. In putting together these events, it was clear that a burgeoning number of academics, from early career to senior researchers and legal scholars, are putting their theoretical and methodological backgrounds to work on Ukraine.
We began with an early roundtable at The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), which hosted our first event, the HIIG Roundtable, with the help of Niva Elkin-Koren, at the University of Tel Aviv, Chair of the HIIG Advisory Board.
A second roundtable was held in Oxford, at the Dean’s Board Room of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, on 26 September 2023. Entitled ‘Reshaping Global Information, Communication, and Security: The Russo-Ukraine War’, the roundtable engaged thirty-five participants in a hybrid format. A brief synopsis of the second roundtable is posted here. https://portulansinstitute.org/reshaping-global-information-communication-and-security/
Our most recent event, on 26 January 2024, was the Oxford Research Forum for early career researchers, held at the Oxford Internet Institute. This third forum focused as well on the implications of the Russian-Ukrainian War (RUW) for information, communication, innovation, and cybersecurity. There is a summary of the forum on the Portulans website, and on this blog. The forum brought together a diverse mix of early career researchers from 12 universities representing 8 countries.
The contributions of many across these three events have added a great many ideas, observations, and insights to our own interviews and related research on the many dimensions of the RUW and its long-term implications for Ukraine and the world. Seeing the growing network of colleagues working in this space has been a major motivation and inspiration for continuing to pursue our work.
We want to again thank those who have supported our research, including the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), Portulans Institute, Saïd Business School, Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC), Chief Justice Meir Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). And we thank the many academics who have taken part in our events in person and online.
In the next phase of the Ukraine case studies project we are planning to continue the dialogue and strengthen the connections formed at these events and focus on our overview case study, with a working title of “To Win in Ukraine: Understanding the Nested Ecologies of the War”. Our plans include this broad overview case study; some embedded case studies of specific events and activities; continued networking, providing help in expanding the network of researchers and practitioners identified in organising the forum and the preceding roundtables; and developing additional support to continue and expand our work.
Thanks again to all those who have contributed to our work and those of you who find it of value and interest. We would like to hear about new work and new publications. We welcome your thoughts on the factors shaping the RUW as well as the war’s longer-term consequences of information, communication, innovation, and security, and all the research challenges faced in addressing these issues.
You may find updates of our work at: https://billdutton.me/about-2/the-ukraine-case-studies/
References
Jon Roozenbeek (forthcoming), Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simon Shuster (2024), The Showman. London: William Collins