The Battle of Ilovaisk in Ukrainian Digital Political Discourse

In the digital times, texts about a war may be written with some new techniques. The evidences of locals, posts of volunteers, experts may be used more often, thus the public dialogue may be more diverse and balanced. Meanwhile, free discussion about the war in the digital times is can be a problem. So it is important to understand, how the new possibilities are used to shape the discourse, and how the process of public discussion is generated.Battle of Ilovaisk – the turning point of the war in Donbas (Ukraine) – was chosen for this research. The materials of two Ukrainian leading news sites (Ukrainskaya Pravda and Livyi Bereh) were content analyzed for three months (August – October 2014).Reprints were predominantly used as a way of news gathering (Facebook accounts were cited in 62% of cases) in the digital discourse about the battle. The average number of positions in a publication is 1,4 (a typical text contained only one mention of a political subject). Some new non-official participants were included to the public discussion (like Semenchenko, battalion Donbas commander, or, Tymchuk, an expert), but other sources, which could be newsworthy as well, were rarely mentioned.Free and opened public discussion is a crucial thing for the democracy durung the war and conflicts, however, the illusion of online media as forum of ideas, accessible for everyone is formed in the discourse. And having in mind an increasing number of people who prefer to get news online, we should raise a question about the future of the democracy in the reality of fast, rarely checked and incomplete information.