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A close reading of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s self-produced social media content alongside Western news outlets’ profiles of Zelensky from the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 illuminates a symbiotic relationship of drama-making that is mutually beneficial for Zelensky’s military and the West’s journalistic interests. Performing as a scrappy underdog turned brilliant military mind, Zelensky provides the Western press with an authentic protagonist figure who makes ideal fodder for a Western news style steeped in drama-making and a natural fit for the individualized storytelling core to the genre of the profile piece. While genre is an aesthetic categorizing tool, it is also a signal of the sociohistorical conditions of texts’ production and circulation. Thus, taken as products of their moment, the profile pieces and their interplay with Zelensky’s short form, seemingly grassroots social media videos are revealing of the value system underpinning journalism in the West, and the society it reflects.
Liz Hallgren (Fri,) studied this question.