Audience as Epistemic Agent: Negotiating Truth Through Online Memes in Russia’s War in Ukraine

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine presented citizens with unique challenges in navigating strategically disseminated falsehoods. On one hand, by accessing first-hand information on the ground and sharing it via social media and messaging apps, they could bypass conventional gatekeepers and emerge as epistemic agents—that is, legitimate producers of public knowledge—in their own right. On the other hand, increasingly punitive legal measures surrounding the dissemination of war-related information in Ukraine have restricted citizens’ ability for cross-verification, a core epistemic practice. This study explores shifting epistemic boundaries within that volatile information climate. Drawing on an analysis of online memes—a form of vernacular communication widely used by pro-Ukrainian users to express their epistemic judgment—the study finds that online audiences have evolved into resourceful agents who can deploy a varied epistemic repertoire to evaluate competing claims from domestic and foreign stakeholders, while remaining mindful of their own biases and limitations. The findings indicate that when empirical validation becomes inaccessible to citizens and traditionally privileged epistemic agents, online audiences may attain a comparatively advantageous position by leveraging memetic language—tapping into visual and linguistic cues grounded in shared cultural knowledge that serve as heuristic credibility shortcuts and reduce the need for thorough independent verification.